· Private foundation
The Wicklander Family 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.
The 15 grants below total $57,500 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $70,000 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $12,500 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Big Shoulders Fund | $6,500 |
| Boys and Girls Clubs of Chicago | $6,500 |
| Shirly Ryan Ability Lab | $6,500 |
| Chicago Jesuit Academy | $6,500 |
| Misericordia Foundation | $5,000 |
| After School Matters | $5,000 |
| Our Lady of Tepeyac | $5,000 |
| Mercy Home for Boys and Girls | $5,000 |
| Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra | $3,000 |
| Josephinum Academy | $2,000 |
| The Chicago Help Initiative | $1,500 |
| Fenwick High School | $1,500 |
| DePaul University | $1,500 |
| Community Support Services | $1,000 |
| Cincinatti Childrens Hospital | $1,000 |
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 (FY17–21, $26k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 85% 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.
31 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 20 since wound down; 4 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, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6k 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
- BSBig Shoulders Fund5× · 2017–2021 · $28k · revenue +67%
- UVUNITING VOICES5× · 2017–2021 · $25k · revenue +22%
- ASAFTER SCHOOL MATTERS INC5× · 2017–2021 · $21k · revenue +90%
Funded once
- BABoys and Girls Club Chicagoone grant, 2022 · $8k
- EVEL VALOR CORPORATIONone grant, 2021 · $7k · revenue +12%
- MHMERCY HOME FOR BOYS AND GIRLSone grant, 2021 · $6k
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.
Saint xavier university, a catholic institution inspired by the heritage of the sisters of mercy, educates persons to search for truth, think critically, communicate effectively and serve wisely and compassionately in support of human…
Create and support one-to-one mentoring relationships that ignite and empower the promise of youth. we nurture children, strengthen communities and believe that inherent in every child is the ability to succeed and thrive in life.
Chicago scholars is transforming the leadership landscape of our city by resolving the fundamental barriers to success for academically driven, first generation college students from under-resourced communities.
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
The team at kipp chicago schools is guided by a simple, yet powerful mission: to create a network of excellent schools in chicago that teach our students the character and academic skills necessary to succeed in college and beyond, and to…
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
We are chicago's jesuit, catholic university - a diverse community seeking god in all things and working to expand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice, and faith.
Alternatives, inc.'s mission is to facilitate personal development,strengthen family relationships and enhance the community's well being. serving over 3,000 youth and families annually, the organization offers a range of counseling and…
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…
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…
See schedule othe mission of skills is to stand as a life-changing employment resource connecting underrepresented job seekers to employers with opportunities across industries. we do this by building multi-level, trusted relationships…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is After School Matters Inc and the most unlike its peers is Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. 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 57 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% 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.
20 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. 20 of the 67 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 Big Shoulders Fund ↗
- Who funds UNITING VOICES ↗
- Who funds AFTER SCHOOL MATTERS INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds UNION LEAGUE BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS ↗
- Who funds Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds BLESSINGS IN A BACKPACK INC ↗
- Who funds THE LEADERSHOP ↗
- Who funds EL VALOR CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF FISHER HOUSE - ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds DEPAUL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds SHARING CONNECTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds ELIM CHRISTIAN SERVICES ↗
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 Service Club of Chicago · Baird Foundation Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Edmond and Alice Opler Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Charities Aid Foundation America · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · American Endowment Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust
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 Wicklander 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 Wicklander Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Wicklander 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.