· Private foundation
The Ehlert Family 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k6 grants · $30k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $87k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $415k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| INSPIRATION OUTREACH FOUNDATION | $141,018 |
| YMCA METRO OF CHICAGO | $100,000 |
| LIVE 4 LALI INC | $91,981 |
| ORIGINS BEHAVIORAL HEALTHCARE | $82,350 |
| PAWS OF CHICAGO | $37,200 |
| RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION | $30,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| SOLLY'S WAY FOUNDATION INC | $10,000 |
| GOLDEN WILLOW RETREAT INC | $7,000 |
| OFF THE STREET CLUB | $6,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| MULLIGANEERS | $5,000 |
| ST BALDRICK'S FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| MCHENRY COUNTY SUBSTANCE ABUSE COALITION | $1,500 |
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, $118k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 5% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
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 +82% since the first grant, against -8% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down; 5 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, 55% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $239k 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
- L4LIVE 4 LALI INC7× · 2017–2024 · $169k · revenue +369%
- HWHumane World for Animals Inc2× · 2022–2023 · $150k · revenue +32%
- PCPAWS CHICAGO3× · 2022–2024 · $102k · revenue +82%
Funded once
- EWEVANSTON WILMETTE GOLF COURSE ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2023 · $100k · revenue -61%
- TPTurning Point Incgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $50k · revenue +36%
- NDNew Directions Addiction Recovery Servicesgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $15k · revenue +180%
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.
Our mission is to break down barriers to als research to find effective treatments. by uniting academia, the pharma and biotech industry, government, venture capital, related nonprofits, and the als community, we aim to overcome the…
Ann & robert h. lurie children's hospital of chicago is dedicated to the health and well-being of all children. as the pediatric teaching facility for northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, this commitment drives us to be a…
SRAlab is dedicated to providing the best patient outcomes through the highest-quality clinical care, translational research, scientific discovery and education.
Mission is to prevent lung disease, promote clean air and help people live better through education, research, and policy change.
Provides housing and support services to individuals and families impacted by hiv/aids
Our mission at the university of chicago medicine is to provide superior health care through rigorous research, innovative education, and comprehensive care and healing. in partnership with our colleagues, we pursue life-changing…
The lustgarten foundation is the largest private funder of pancreatic cancer research in the world. see schedule o.the lustgarten foundation is boldly leading the way through hope and innovation, turning fear into action through education…
To strengthen communities through educational dialogue, leadership development, emotional resilience, and intercultural competence programs that help people bridge differences and build trust.
Stanley manne children's research institute strives to generate new knowledge and advance the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of pediatric diseases.
Heartland alliance health's mission is to transform healthcare for the most vulnerable, particularly people experiencing homelessness, mental illness or addictions, or struggling with multiple chronic illnesses, improving health for all…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is St Baldrick's Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Inspiration Outreach Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 29 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% 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 16% 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.
22 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. 22 of the 35 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 LIVE 4 LALI INC ↗
- Who funds Humane World for Animals Inc ↗
- Who funds INSPIRATION OUTREACH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PAWS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds EVANSTON WILMETTE GOLF COURSE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds PROJECT HOOD COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds SOLLY'S WAY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Turning Point Inc ↗
- Who funds Golden Willow Retreat Inc ↗
- Who funds New Directions Addiction Recovery Services ↗
- Who funds The Hap Foundation Inc (F/K/A Journeycare Foundation) ↗
- Who funds OFF THE STREET CLUB ↗
- Who funds MULLIGANEERS INC ↗
- Who funds GOOD NEIGHBOR NETWORK ↗
- Who funds ST BALDRICK'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN LUNG ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds PURSUE CHURCH INC ↗
- Who funds FILL A HEART 4 KIDS ↗
- Who funds PALATINE TOWNSHIP SENIOR CITIZENS COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds Ronald McDonald House Global ↗
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: AbbVie Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Endowment Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Network for Good · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · 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 Ehlert 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.
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 Ehlert Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Ehlert 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.