· Private foundation
The Erwin and Linda Arends 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| RICHLAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATI | $6,300 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS FOUNDATION | $6,000 |
| MILLIKIN UNIVERSITY | $5,000 |
| FIVE CITIES BAROQUE FOUNDATION | $4,000 |
| MILLIKIN UNIVERSITY | $3,000 |
| FIVE CITIES BAROQUE FOUNDATION | $3,000 |
| RICHLAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATI | $2,000 |
| CHADDOCK CHILDRENS FOUNDATION | $2,000 |
| SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA GUILD OF DECATUR | $1,125 |
| CUNNINGHAM CHILDRENS HOME | $1,000 |
| FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH | $1,000 |
| THE SALVATION ARMY | $1,000 |
| TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| UNITED WAY | $700 |
| NORTHEAST COMMUNITY FUND | $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, $21k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +26% since the first grant, against +9% for the ones you funded once.
28 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2024, 13 since wound down; 3 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, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $7k 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
- DPDECATUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION3× · 2017–2021 · $40k · revenue +16%
University of Illinois Foundation7× · 2018–2024 · $30k · revenue +49%- NCNORTHEAST COMMUNITY FUND7× · 2017–2024 · $26k · revenue +158%
Funded once
- DPDECATUR PUBLIC SCHOOLSone grant, 2023 · $5k
- RCRICHLAND COMMUNITY COLLEGEone grant, 2020 · $5k
- FUFIRST UNITED METHODISTone grant, 2022 · $3k
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.
Decatur memorial hospital (dmh) serves the healthcare needs of the people of central illinois through operation of a 280-bed acute care hospital and related facilities providing comprehensive inpatient, outpatient and physician services.
The foundation's mission is to support and benefit decatur memorial hospital (a 280-bed acute care hospital and related facilities providing comprehensive inpatient, outpatient and physician service). it does this by conducting fund…
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…
The greater chicago food depository is the nonprofit food bank serving cook county. our mission - is to end hunger. we believe food is a basic human right. to achieve our mission, we work in partnership with a network of community-based…
The foundation encourages, prudently manages and distributes charitable contributions to improve the quality of life of decatur county residents, now and in the future.
Facility providing services and wellness for elderly in decatur and macon county, illinois
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…
Decatur cooperative ministry helps families facing homelessness settle into safe, stable homes and build healthy lives filled with peace, hope and opportunity.
We strive to make aging easier through the development of a network of services for older persons designed to optimize the quality of their lives.
Our purpose is to serve donors in achieving their philanthropic objectives, to create and build a lasting source of revenue to benefit the residents of our community, and to provide leadership and resources in addressing community needs.
We are a credit union serving our members with a place for loans and a place to save their money.
To support social services in decatur county.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is United Way of Decatur and Mid Il and the most unlike its peers is Meals On Wheels. 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 46 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% 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.
27 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. 27 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 MILLIKIN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds DECATUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds University of Illinois Foundation ↗
- Who funds DECATUR PARKS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHEAST COMMUNITY FUND ↗
- Who funds RICHLAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CUNNINGHAM CHILDRENS HOME OF URBANA IL ↗
- Who funds CHADDOCK CHILDRENS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GOOD SAMARITAN INN ↗
- Who funds SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA GUILD OF DECATUR ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S MUSEUM OF ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds DECATUR PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF DECATUR AND MID IL ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MACON COUNTY CASA ↗
- Who funds DECATUR AREA ARTS COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds MAUI HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MACON RESOURCES INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds THE SHRINERS' HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUTS OF CENTRAL ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds DECATUR AND MACON COUNTY ANIMAL SHELTER 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 Community Foundation of Macon County · Andreas Foundation · Amherst F Hardy Foundation · James Millikin Trust A · John Ullrich Foundation Trust Busey Trust Co - Trustee · Ts & Juanita Ballance Foundation · United Way of Decatur and Mid Il · Henry M Staley Declaration of Charit Tr D/B/A Staley Family Foundation · Edward Whinnery Trust · Howard G Buffett Foundation · Michael D Andreas Foundation · Pilling Family Foundation Inc
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 Erwin and Linda Arends 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.
- The Shriners' Hospital for Children — 6% 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.
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Find your warmest path to The Erwin and Linda Arends 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.