· Private foundation
The Kara Foundation
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
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k11 grants · $22k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $164k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $240k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SMILES | $125,000 |
| 3 FIRES COUNCIL | $65,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,000 |
| LIFELINE PILOTS | $30,000 |
| LAKELAND SCHOOL OF WALWORTH COUNTY | $26,500 |
| WETOSHA SENIOR COMMUNITY CENTER | $22,000 |
| MOBILE CARE CHICAGO | $20,000 |
| WAYNE TOWNSHIP FOOD PANTRY | $20,000 |
| YORK TOWNSHIP | $15,000 |
| NAPERVILLE RESPONS FOR OUR VETERANS | $10,000 |
| DONKA INC | $10,000 |
| UNITED SPINAL ASSOCIATION | $10,000 |
| TRI CITIES HEALTH DEPARTMENT | $7,000 |
| GIVENKIND | $3,000 |
| BURLINGTOM SENIOR ACTIVITY CENTER | $3,000 |
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, $319k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 61% 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.
28 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2025, 21 since wound down; 16 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, 53% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $201k 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
- LILIFELINE INC6× · 2020–2025 · $136k · revenue +185%
- DIDONKA INCORPORATED6× · 2020–2025 · $115k · revenue +17%
- NRNAPERVILLE RESPONDS FOR OUR VETERANS6× · 2020–2025 · $100k · revenue +52%
Funded once
- BSBURLINGTON SENIOR ACTIVITY CENTERone grant, 2024 · $23k
- NCNEVADA CHILDHOOD CANCER FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $15k · revenue +54%
- TCTRI CITY HEALTH PARTNERSHIPgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $13k · revenue +80%
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.
We provide food, household and personal items as available to combat food scarcity and poverty in our community.
Distribute food to needy families and individuals.
Providing food to needy families in the illinois valley area.
The lockport fish food pantry is a non-profit organization, operated solely by volunteers. the pantry helps supplement food and essentials for individuals and families in need in lockport and homer townships in will county, illinois.
Provide food to those in need in the River Falls Community
The Foodbank's mission is to provide food, and develop awareness of and creative solutions for food insecurity. Annually, the Foodbank distributes approximately 9.5 million pounds of food to 130 food pantries, soup kitchens, children's…
To serve the nutritional needs of children, the elderly, low income residents and the disabled in the Kane County area of Illinois.
Promote the health and independence of lake county, il, older adults
The lake area free clinic is the medical and dental home to low-income residents of waukesha county. the mission is to provide high-quality comprehensive health care to those in need.
Free food pantry. The Organization distributes free food to over 100 needy families per week, totaling almost 5000 visits per year. Over 70 individual volunteers receive, organize, and distribute over 200,000 pounds of food annually.
Reduce hunger and improve the health of people in need by providing food and other resources at no cost
Food Pantry - to provide nutritious food to people in need. Also, to provide used clothing and backpacks for school children and to provide energy assistance outreach site.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Teen Parent Connection Inc and the most unlike its peers is Mote Marine Laboratory 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 27 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% 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.
35 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. 35 of the 86 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 LIFELINE INC ↗
- Who funds DONKA INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds NAPERVILLE RESPONDS FOR OUR VETERANS ↗
- Who funds WAYNE TOWNSHIP PANTRY AND SENIOR SERVICES NFP ↗
- Who funds UNITED SPINAL ASSOCIATION ILLINOIS CHAPTER ↗
- Who funds GIVE N KIND ↗
- Who funds NEVADA BLIND CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LAZARUS HOUSE ↗
- Who funds CHILD'S VOICE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN LAKES AREA LOVE INC ↗
- Who funds YOUTH AND FAMILY COUNSELING ↗
- Who funds Kathy's House Inc ↗
- Who funds FOX VALLEY HANDS OF HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds LAKE GENEVA FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds NEVADA CHILDHOOD CANCER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SHARING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds TRI CITY HEALTH PARTNERSHIP ↗
- Who funds ST MARYS HEALTH WAGON INC ↗
- Who funds TEEN PARENT CONNECTION 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: AbbVie Foundation · The Bersted Foundation · Keefe Foundation Inc · Kunes Family Foundation · The Dupage Community Foundation · The Raymond C and Linda M Stachowiak Foundation · United Way of Walworth County · Fox Valley United Way · Shodeen Family Foundation · The a Montgomery Ward Foundation · Grand Foundation · Visiting Nurse Association of Chicago (Aka) Vna 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 Kara 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.
- See Turtles — 11% of income from government
- Mote Marine Laboratory Inc — 4% 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 Kara Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Kara 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.