· Private foundation
The Donald F and Elizabeth Gardner Foundation Inc
Its FY2025 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 65% of THE DONALD F AND ELIZABETH GARDNER FOUNDATION INC’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k16 grants · $40k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $80k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MOOSE CHARITIES | $20,000 |
| ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF KEWAUNEE COUNTY INC | $15,000 |
| RED ARROW FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| CDGA | $10,000 |
| THE WETLANDS INITIATIVE | $10,000 |
| BRIGHT FUTURES FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $8,000 |
| EVANS SCHOLARS FOUNDATION | $7,000 |
| MISERICORDIA FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| IL POLICE ASSOCIATION | $2,000 |
| LEADER DOGS FOR THE BLIND | $2,000 |
| ST JUDES | $2,000 |
| IL FIREFIGHTERS ALLIANCE | $2,000 |
| SHRINERS CHILDREN'S | $2,000 |
| SUSAN G KOMEN | $2,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $42k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% 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.
37 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2025, 20 since wound down; 5 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 61% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $47k 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
- MCMOOSE CHARITIES INC6× · 2020–2025 · $80k · revenue +74%
- RARED ARROW CAMP FOUNDATION INC3× · 2020–2022 · $42k · revenue +151%
- CUCALDWELL UNIVERSITY INC2× · 2017–2018 · $40k · revenue +28%
Funded once
- MMOOSEHEARTone grant, 2018 · $35k
- BFBRIGHT FUTURES FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $15k · revenue +126%
- NSNJ SHARING NETWORKone grant, 2023 · $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 Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, is an independent and separate nonprofit entity from the University of Illinois. Our mission is to encourage and administer private gifts and serve the UI System by working closely with…
To advocate for and support hospitals and health systems as they serve patients and communities in illinois.
The mission of mchc chicago hospital council is to foster, promote, support, develop and encourage charitable, educational, scholastic and scientific purposes; promote cooperative effort and action between hospitals and other health care…
Provide pediatric and subspecialty surgical, research, and educational services.
To give members the ability to control their financial destiny by providing members with the means to satisfy their needs for financial services in a comfortable family-like environment. in doing so, the credit union strives to maintain…
To strengthen the economic social environmental and governmental conditions for manufacturing and allied enterprises in the state of illinois, resulting in an englarged business base and increased employment.
Volunteers of america of illinois partners with the people we serve to create transformational and lasting change in their lives through programs that support, empower, and transform.
The saint louis zoo association was established to support and enhance the saint louis zoo by providing facilities, funds, and advice. the association provides direct financial support to the zoo for renovations, new facilities, programs,…
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.
The mission of the racine zoological society is to foster an enlightening and affordable wildlife experience that improves the bond between people and nature. the society will provide for the recreation and education of the people, the…
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…
Illinois college is a co-educational institution of higher education learning providing a four-year educational program leading to the baccalaureate degree. illinois college is a community committed to the highest standards of scholarship…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Make-a-Wish Foundation of Illinois Inc and the most unlike its peers is K9 Companions Inc. 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 39 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) — 0% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 62 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 MOOSE CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds THE WETLANDS INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds RED ARROW CAMP FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CALDWELL UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER OF CONCERN ↗
- Who funds Home of the Sparrow Inc ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO DISTRICT GOLF ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds BRIGHT FUTURES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF KEWAUNEE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds Lions Clubs International Foundation ↗
- Who funds SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds K9 Companions Inc ↗
- Who funds UNITED SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS OF ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds MISERICORDIA FOUNDATION ↗
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: The Chicago Community Trust · AbbVie Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation
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 Donald F and Elizabeth Gardner Foundation Inc 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.
- Caldwell University Inc — 2% of income from government
- Shriners Hospitals for Children — 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.