· Private foundation
The Christopher Family Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k18 grants · $51k
- $10k–50k22 grants · $636k
- $50k–250k39 grants · $3.3M
- $250k+2 grants · $570k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHICAGO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $290,000 |
| FOREFRONT | $280,000 |
| WALTHER LUTHERAN HIGH SCHOOL ASSOCIATION INC | $219,636 |
| CHILDREN FIRST FUND | $200,000 |
| ANN & ROBERT H LURIE CHILDRENS HOSPITAL OF CHICAGO FOUNDATION | $160,000 |
| NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK | $150,000 |
| LUTHERAN MUSIC PROGRAM | $150,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO INC | $105,000 |
| CARA PROGRAM | $100,000 |
| GARFIELD PARK COMMUNITY COUNCIL | $100,000 |
| MEALS ON WHEELS OF SHEBOYGAN COUNTY INC | $95,000 |
| ALLIES FOR COMMUNITY BUSINESS INC | $90,000 |
| FEEDING AMERICA | $90,000 |
| A BETTER CHICAGO | $85,000 |
| MRELIEF | $85,000 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Your human-services grants (FY17–24, $1.7M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 96% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
Which US states your grants reach
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +42% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
105 repeat relationships — 66 still active in FY2024, 39 since wound down; 14 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $453k went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- FFOREFRONT4× · 2021–2024 · $987k · revenue +81%
- BABOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO6× · 2017–2024 · $710k · revenue +39%
- NINORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK6× · 2017–2024 · $677k · revenue +43%
Funded once
- WHWESTSIDE HEALTH AUTHORITYgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $160k · revenue +44%
- TBTHE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOISone grant, 2017 · $125k
- UWUNITED WAY OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO INCone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue -50%
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
Thrive chicago's mission is to prepare chicago's youth for a vibrant future by aligning efforts and outcomes from cradle to career.
Arise chicago builds partnerships between faith communities and workers to fight workplace injustice through education, organizing, and advocating for public policy changes.
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
The chicagoland chamber of commerce combines the power of people, with our legacy of leadership and business advocacy, to drive a dynamic economy. we focus on delivering value for our members, making chicagoland a world-class place to live…
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
The team at kipp chicago schools is guided by a simple, yet powerful mission: to create a network of excellent schools in chicago that teach our students the character and academic skills necessary to succeed in college and beyond, and to…
The Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
To Prepare Students for Success in Four-Year Colleges.
The mission of goodwill is to create opportunities for individuals with barriers to enhance their lives. barriers include physical or mental disabilities, lack of education and job preparation, socio-economic disadvantages, and others.…
Uchicago medicine network, inc. supports and encourages health and human service by providing support, directly or indirectly to ingalls memorial hospital, the university of chicago medical center, and other related tax-exempt…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Kids First Chicago for Education and the most unlike its peers is The Signing Time Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 36 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.6% lost their exemption, against 12% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
161 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 161 of the 188 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds FOREFRONT ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds TIMOTHY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS OF SHEBOYGAN COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGOLAND LUTHERAN EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN MUSIC PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds Garfield Park Community Council ↗
- Who funds CALVIN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds ALLIES FOR COMMUNITY BUSINESS INC ↗
- Who funds The Cara Program ↗
- Who funds Kenneth C Griffin Museum of Science and Industry ↗
- Who funds mRelief ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICES OF ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
- Who funds Chicago Zoological Society ↗
- Who funds Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago Foundation ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds THE WEST COOK YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds JANE ADDAMS RESOURCE CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds NEW MOMS INC ↗
- Who funds A Better Chicago ↗
- Who funds BUILD INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN FIRST FUND THE CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago ↗
- Who funds MHUB ↗
- Who funds HOLY FAMILY MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds Youth Guidance ↗
- Who funds St Leonard's Ministries ↗
- Who funds Maywood Fine Arts Association ↗
- Who funds HIRE360 ↗
- Who funds Inspiration Corporation ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: Polk Bros Foundation Inc · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Circle of Service Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation · Imc Chicago Charitable Foundation · Forefront · Chicago Foundation for Women
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization The Christopher Family Foundation funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Lutheran World Relief Inc — 47% of income from government
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Christopher Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Christopher Family Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.