· Private foundation
The Cynthia Elkins Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k23 grants · $79k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $287k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $385k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $137,500 |
| ILLINOIS HOLOCAUST MUSEUM | $92,000 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAGEN DAVID ADO | $55,000 |
| JEWISH UNITED FUND | $50,000 |
| UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MUSEUM | $50,000 |
| URBAN INICIATIVES | $40,000 |
| NSSRA FOUNDATION | $40,000 |
| BRAVE SPACE ALLIANCE | $38,000 |
| LEAP | $36,000 |
| ONE TAIL AT A TIME | $28,000 |
| THE ART CENTER OF HIGHLAND PARK | $20,000 |
| PAT TILLMAN FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| CHICAGO FOOD DIPOSITORY | $14,000 |
| BIG SHOULDERS FUND | $14,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS FOUNDATION | $12,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $324k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 97% 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.
36 repeat relationships — 33 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down; 8 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $65k 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
- CICATO INSTITUTE4× · 2020–2023 · $275k · revenue +93%
- AFAMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAGEN DAVID ADOM5× · 2020–2024 · $199k · revenue +198%
- BSBRAVE SPACE ALLIANCE5× · 2020–2024 · $151k · revenue +23%
Funded once
- IIHMECone grant, 2021 · $36k
- BSBUTTERFIELD SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAMone grant, 2021 · $18k
- CICOMMUNITY IN SCHOOLone grant, 2020 · $10k
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.
The GI Research Foundation works to treat, prevent, and cure digestive diseases. In collaboration with the physicians and scientists at the University of Chicago Digestive Diseases Center, we fund innovative clinical and laboratory…
The chicago public education fund (the fund) is a nonprofit organization that improves public schools in chicago by investing in the talented educators who lead them.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
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.
To Prepare Students for Success in Four-Year Colleges.
See schedule onorc at the university of chicago conducts research and data science on critical societal issues to guide decision-making and the development of programs and public policy. our experts identify relationships and trends, and…
The organization provides professional investment management services for endowed gifts and financial assets entrusted to the ucsf foundation.
Provide pediatric and subspecialty surgical, research, and educational services.
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
The chicago bar foundation brings the legal community together through advocacy, funding, and innovation to improve access to justice for people in need and to make the legal system more fair, equitable, and effective.
Saint xavier university, a catholic institution inspired by the heritage of the sisters of mercy, educates persons to search for truth, think critically, communicate effectively and serve wisely and compassionately in support of human…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Big Shoulders Fund and the most unlike its peers is The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 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 35 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) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 67 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 CATO INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAGEN DAVID ADOM ↗
- Who funds BRAVE SPACE ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds URBAN INITIATIVES INC ↗
- Who funds THE ART CENTER OF HIGHLAND PARK ↗
- Who funds ONE TAIL AT A TIME NFP ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR ENRICHED LIVING INC ↗
- Who funds NSSRA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds PAT TILLMAN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Big Shoulders Fund ↗
- Who funds THE NORA PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Invest for Kids Inc ↗
- Who funds Outreach with Lacrosse Schools ↗
- Who funds University of Illinois Foundation ↗
- Who funds Highland Park Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds Guadalupe Center Inc ↗
- Who funds JESSE WHITE TUMBLING TEAM INC ↗
- Who funds WESTERN GOLF ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE CHICAGO RIVER ↗
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: Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Meg and Tim Callahan Family Foundation · First Bank Chicago Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Cynthia Elkins 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.
- Guadalupe Center Inc — 0% 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 Cynthia Elkins Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Cynthia Elkins 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.