· Public charity
The Experimental Station
THE EXPERIMENTAL STATION was organized to promote, encourage and foster innovative educational and cultural initiatives of all genres, including but not limited to art and design, innovative educational models, food, and alternative media and journalism.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 30 grants below total $1,267,324 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,485,767 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $218,443 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k7 grants · $50k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $267k
- $50k–250k9 grants · $950k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GREEN CITY MARKET | $177,500 |
| CERMAK PRODUCE NO 7 INC | $173,175 |
| ONE STOP FOODS & LIQUOR INC | $134,287 |
| A&S SUPERMERCADO INC AKA MI MEXICO | $109,000 |
| THE LAND CONNECTION | $83,950 |
| COMMON GROUND FOOD CO-OP | $75,738 |
| ALBERTSON'S COMPANY INC | $68,324 |
| NEIGHBORHOOD CO-OP GROCERY | $64,525 |
| SUGAR BEET FOOD CO-OP | $63,867 |
| UPTOWN FARMERS MARKET NFP | $32,000 |
| VILLAGE OF SKOKIE | $30,761 |
| FARMERS MARKET OF CARBONDALE | $22,000 |
| CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN | $22,000 |
| MORGAN FOOD LLC | $21,860 |
| THE URBAN CANOPY | $20,000 |
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 (FY22–22, $16k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
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 +49% since the first grant, against +37% for the ones you funded once.
54 repeat relationships — 24 still active in FY2024, 30 since wound down; 6 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $134k 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
- CGCHICAGO'S GREEN CITY MARKET PROGRAM3× · 2022–2024 · $345k · revenue +38%
- TLTHE LAND CONNECTION FOUNDATION INC4× · 2021–2024 · $292k · revenue +116%
- LSLOGAN SQUARE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE5× · 2018–2023 · $157k · revenue +131%
Funded once
- CBCITY BUREAU NFPgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $251k · revenue +173%
- TBTOP BOX FOODSgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $100k · revenue +30%
- CPCERMAK PRODUCE NO 7 INCone grant, 2021 · $100k
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.
North Branch Works is a membership-supported nonprofit neighborhood organization that for more than three decades has promoted balanced, job-creating economic development along the North Branch of the Chicago River.
Local chamber of commerce
Support of area businesses and the neighborhood.
Strengthen companies in the kinzie industrial corridor and facilitate economic and community development by providing services and incubator space.
The illinois business alliance is a nonprofit, member-driven business league that exists to improve illinois' business climate and promote the common economic interests of its members.
The McKinley Park Development Council works to organize, inform, and support neighbors in building the community we want to live in - physically, culturally, and economically.
To promote economic development of downtown peoria, illinois
Friends of Sears Sunken Garden promotes and assists in the redesign, construction and maintenance of the historic Sears Sunken Garden located in the North Lawndale neighborhood of the City of Chicago for the use and enjoyment of the…
Year-round farmers market offering produce, fruit, baked goods, prepared food and flowers serving all economic, social and ethnic backgrounds.
Development now for chicago was formed to promote economic development and improve business conditions in the chicago metropolitan area by promoting the selection of chicago as the site of the 2024 democratic national convention and, if…
To be a voice for business and a forum for the exchange of ideas and through a variety of chamber programs and services, strengthen the economic vitality of east chicago, hammond, and northwest indiana.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Star Farm Chicago and the most unlike its peers is Run a Way Buckers Club Inc. 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 18 years old; the field is 19. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
39 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. 39 of the 154 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 CHICAGO'S GREEN CITY MARKET PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds THE LAND CONNECTION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CITY BUREAU NFP ↗
- Who funds LOGAN SQUARE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ↗
- Who funds ROCK RIVER DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP INC A NOT-FOR-PROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds DEVCORP NORTH DBA ROGERS PARK BUSINESS ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds FOOD WORKS ↗
- Who funds TOP BOX FOODS ↗
- Who funds BLACK OAKS CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE RENEWABLE LIVING ↗
- Who funds URBAN GROWERS COLLECTIVE INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds STAR FARM CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Peoria Riverfront Association ↗
- Who funds RUN A WAY BUCKERS CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds ALTON MAIN STREET INC ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN SPRINGFIELD INC ↗
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: Forefront · Builders Vision Foundation · Field Foundation of Illinois · The Lumpkin Family Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · The Morton Arboretum · Reva and David Logan Foundation · Illinois Stewardship Alliance · Walter S Mander Foundation · Openlands
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 Experimental Station 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 Experimental Station?
Find your warmest path to The Experimental Station 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.