· Private foundation
The Potter's Clay 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $165k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE NIGHT MINISTRY | $30,000 |
| CONNECTIONS FOR THE HOMELESS | $30,000 |
| GREATER CHIC FOOD | $25,000 |
| HOWARD BROWN HEALTH CENTER | $25,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD | $25,000 |
| OPEN COMMUNITIES | $10,000 |
| OPENING DOORS | $10,000 |
| GRAND AVENUE CLUB | $10,000 |
| KINSHIP COMMUNITY FOOR CENTER | $5,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $288k) 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 +64% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
11 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down; 2 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $15k 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
THE NIGHT MINISTRY9× · 2017–2025 · $275k · revenue +11%- HBHoward Brown Health Center9× · 2017–2025 · $210k · revenue +169%
- CFCONNECTIONS FOR THE HOMELESS INC9× · 2017–2025 · $205k · revenue +370%
Funded once
- COCITY OF NEW VIENNAone grant, 2019 · $25k
DIVERSE AND RESILIENT INCone grant, 2024 · $10k · revenue 0%- ODOPEN DOORSone grant, 2021 · $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.
Chh honors every person's right to a home and health care, by bridging the housing and health care systems, to improve the lives of chicagoans experiencing homelessness.
Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness (CCH) builds community power and advances racial equity through organizing, advocacy, legal assistance, and education to prevent and end homelessness because housing is a human right.
Strive to improve the health and well being of migrant and seasonal farmworkers and other medically vulnerable populations by providing quality accessable, affordable, and culturally responsive health care within the community we serve.
Live Free Illinois is a statewide organization partnering with over 120 congregations and directly impacted individuals to build safer more equitable communities across Illinois. Operating at the intersection of criminal justice reform and…
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
The mission of goodwill is to create opportunities for individuals with barriers to enhance their lives. barriers include physical or mental disabilities, lack of education and job preparation, socio-economic disadvantages, and others.…
Provide affordable, high-quality health services and remove inequities to improve the lives of all.
To provide decent, safe and sanitary housing that is affordable to low and moderate-income persons and to stabilize and strengthen communities by improving the local housing stock. the corporation shall administer programs that revitalize…
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…
Respond now connects those in need with health, hunger, and housing services in the chicago southland.
Rock river valley blood center, in partnership with our community, is dedicated to providing safe, high value blood products and services to people in need.
Operate homes for the aged and to conduct charitable and benevolent enterprises
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Connections for the Homeless Inc and the most unlike its peers is Young Mens Christian Assoc McGaw Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
11 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. 11 of the 16 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 THE NIGHT MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds Howard Brown Health Center ↗
- Who funds CONNECTIONS FOR THE HOMELESS INC ↗
- Who funds Planned Parenthood of Illinois ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds OPENING DOORS ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO COMMUNITY BOND FUND ↗
- Who funds OPEN COMMUNITIES ↗
- Who funds Young Mens Christian Assoc McGaw Inc ↗
- Who funds DIVERSE AND RESILIENT INC ↗
- Who funds GRAND AVENUE CLUB 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: American Endowment Foundation · Network for Good · 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 Potter's Clay 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.