· Private foundation
Trillium 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 FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k12 grants · $63k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| URBAN GATEWAYS | $10,000 |
| COMMUNITY PARTNERS FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING | $10,000 |
| FAMILY FOCUS INC | $9,000 |
| ZACHARIAS SEXUAL ABUSE CENTER | $8,000 |
| ROTARY CLUB OF HIGHLAND PARKHIGHWOOD | $8,000 |
| FENIX HEALTH CENTER INC | $8,000 |
| HIGHLAND PARK COMMUNITY NURSERY SCHOOL | $7,500 |
| CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN | $5,000 |
| NORTH SUBURBAN LEGAL AID CLINIC | $5,000 |
| RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOC | $5,000 |
| JEWISH CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES | $2,500 |
| ASPIRITECH NFP | $2,500 |
| HIGHLAND PARK COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| HIGHLAND PARK SENIOR CENTER | $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 (FY21–25, $78k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 81% 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 +23% since the first grant, against -30% for the ones you funded once.
13 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2025, 0 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION5× · 2021–2025 · $59k · revenue +53%
Family Focus5× · 2021–2025 · $51k · revenue +154%- ZSZACHARIAS SEXUAL ABUSE CENTER5× · 2021–2025 · $42k · revenue +27%
Funded once
- FSFAMILY SERVICE OF LAKE COUNTYone grant, 2021 · $20k · revenue -30%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $5k
- LOLYRIC OPERAone grant, 2021 · $5k
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.
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…
The mission is to preserve Highland Park's unique heritage and to promote its vast horticultural, educational and recreational resources. Continued on Schedule OWe support planning, management and restoration, and engage the community…
To enhance the quality of life for children and families by inspiring hope and empowerment and growth within all whom we serve.
Chicago Free School provides pre-kindergarten through 8th grade instruction and support activities. The faculty consists of qualified indiviuals with the appropriate education and experiende to provide students with the education that…
The chicago high school for the arts (chiarts) develops the next generation of diverse, artistically promising scholar-artists through intensive pre-professional training in the arts, combined with a comprehensive college preparatory…
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…
To Prepare Students for Success in Four-Year Colleges.
Jewish Family Service is a nonprofit social service organization that supports people of all faiths as they navigate through lifes's challenges - illness, aging , finanical uncertainty, mental health concerns, family problems, or personal…
Local chamber of commerce
Administering an array of critical, intensive therapeutic interventions and/or facilitation services to emotionally and behaviorally disturbed clients for whom DCFS is legally responsible in order to stabilize their traditional or home of…
Standing with our neighbors, Lakeshore Legal Aid fights poverty and injustice through advocacy and by providing meaningful and dignified access to the legal system.
Northbrook community nursery school, through the cooperation of staff, board and parents, is committed to meeting the social, emotional, intellectual and physical needs of each child. the preschool strives to facilitate this development…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Family Focus and the most unlike its peers is Rotary Club of Highland Park- Highwood. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
12 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. 12 of the 17 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 RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds URBAN GATEWAYS ↗
- Who funds Family Focus ↗
- Who funds ZACHARIAS SEXUAL ABUSE CENTER ↗
- Who funds ROTARY CLUB OF HIGHLAND PARK- HIGHWOOD ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds HIGHLAND PARK COMMUNITY NURSERY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds NORTH SUBURBAN LEGAL AID CLINIC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY SERVICE OF LAKE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds ASPIRITECH NFP ↗
- Who funds Jewish Child and Family Services ↗
- Who funds Highland Park Community Foundation ↗
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 · Highland Park Community Foundation · Healthcare Foundation of Highland Park · The Lake County Community Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Mills Family Charitable Foundation · First Bank Chicago Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Network for Good · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · 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 Trillium 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 Trillium Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Trillium 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.