· Private foundation
Thing 123 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 $10k12 grants · $59k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $198k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BOOK HARVEST | $25,000 |
| NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK | $20,000 |
| ELMHURST YORKFIELD FOOD PANTRY | $17,500 |
| ST JAMES FAITH LAB | $15,796 |
| SECOND HARVEST FB OF OC | $15,000 |
| NOURISHING HOPE FOOD PANTRY | $15,000 |
| JOSSELYN CENTER | $15,000 |
| EXODUS WORLD SERVICES | $12,500 |
| GIRL SCOUTS OF AMERICA | $12,000 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $10,000 |
| TRANS YOUTH EQUALITY FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| GAY AND LESBIAN CENTER OF OC | $10,000 |
| CARE FOR FRIENDS | $10,000 |
| CHICAGO YOUTH PROGRAMS INC | $10,000 |
| EVERY MOM CHICAGO | $7,500 |
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 (FY17–25, $338k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 93% 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.
26 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 8 since wound down; 8 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, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $44k 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
- CFCARE FOR FRIENDS6× · 2020–2025 · $243k · revenue +546%
- EFELMHURST-YORKFIELD FOOD PANTRY7× · 2017–2025 · $83k · revenue +90%
- CLCHICAGO LIGHTS8× · 2017–2025 · $83k · revenue +5%
Funded once
- DCDUBUQUE COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2018 · $100k
THE NIGHT MINISTRYone grant, 2020 · $14k · revenue -7%- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2024 · $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.
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
Thrive chicago's mission is to prepare chicago's youth for a vibrant future by aligning efforts and outcomes from cradle to career.
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…
To provide high-quality early learning and out-of-school time enrichment in under-resourced neighborhoods to holistically support children of all ages, their families, and their communities.
Arise chicago builds partnerships between faith communities and workers to fight workplace injustice through education, organizing, and advocating for public policy changes.
At legal aid chicago, we work together to provide high quality civil legal aid to people living in poverty and other vulnerable groups.through advocacy, education, collaboration, and litigation we empower individuals, protect fundamental…
Providing academic support to children experiencing homelessness in Chicago and providing resources and services to families experiencing homelessness in Chicago.
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…
Child Link provides foster care, family counseling, and therapy services to Chicago area adolescents who are at risk of homelessness. Child Link also refers adolescents to other agencies that are able to provide additional resources and…
Chicago Votes is a non-partisan, non-profit organization building a more inclusive democracy by putting power in the hands of young Chicagoans. We're engaging and developing a new generation of leaders by opening the doors of government,…
We partner with youth to realize their full potential, by creating opportunities, removing barriers, and promoting racial justice.
Chicago family health center will promote health, work to prevent disease and provide treatment through the delivery of quality, accessible primary healtcare that is culturally sensitive, affordable, and responsive to community and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Ucan and the most unlike its peers is All Paws On Deck. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 25 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
43 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. 43 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 CARE FOR FRIENDS ↗
- Who funds ELMHURST-YORKFIELD FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO LIGHTS ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds ST JAMES FAITH LAB ↗
- Who funds THE JOSSELYN CENTER NFP ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO YOUTH PROGRAMS INC ↗
- Who funds EXODUS WORLD SERVICE ↗
- Who funds BOOK HARVEST ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds Time Out Youth Inc ↗
- Who funds Kaleidoscope Youth Center Inc ↗
- Who funds HEART AND MIND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHILD GUIDANCE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds EVERYMOM NFP ↗
- Who funds The Beacon Place NFP ↗
- Who funds Culinary Care ↗
- Who funds By The Hand Club For Kids ↗
- Who funds Good Kids Mad City - Englewood ↗
- Who funds THE NIGHT MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds Cultiva La Salud ↗
- Who funds BUILD INC ↗
- Who funds NOVA UKRAINE ↗
- Who funds SAVE OUR YOUTH SOY ↗
- Who funds AURORA AREA INTERFAITH FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds ARC ACTIVE RESOLUTE CONNECTED ↗
- Who funds MOD COLLECTIVE ↗
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: Imc Chicago Charitable Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · The Chicago Community Trust · Northwestern Memorial HealthCare Group · Robert R McCormick Foundation · Orange County Community Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Lyon Family Foundation · George M Eisenberg Foundation for Charities · Dr Scholl Foundation · Synchrony 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 Thing 123 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.
- Cradles to Crayons Inc — 2% 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.