· Public charity
Bright Promise
To strengthen and sustain partner christian schools by generating new sources of revenue so that more families may experience the benefit from urban christian education.
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
- $10k–50k11 grants · $241k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHICAGO WEST SIDE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL | $50,000 |
| PUI-TAK CHRISTIAN SCHOOL | $42,505 |
| DAYSTAR SCHOOL | $42,500 |
| THE FIELD SCHOOL | $28,000 |
| UNITY CHRISTIAN ACADEMY | $20,500 |
| CALVIN CHRISTIAN SCHOOL | $20,000 |
| SOUTHWEST CHICAGO CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS | $17,000 |
| CAMBRIDGE CLASSICAL ACADEMY | $15,930 |
| CORNERSTONE ACADEMY | $15,000 |
| MIDWESTERN CHRISTIAN ACADEMY | $15,000 |
| CALVARY ACADEMY | $15,000 |
| LANSING CHRISTIAN SCHOOL | $10,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% of your 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.
17 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2025, 5 since wound down.
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
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.
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
- DEDAYSTAR EDUCATION ASSOCIATION9× · 2017–2025 · $368k · revenue +38%
- TFTHE FIELD SCHOOL9× · 2017–2025 · $186k · revenue +852%
- UCUNITY CHRISTIAN ACADEMY7× · 2018–2025 · $73k · revenue ×11
Funded once
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.
Christ Community School strives to provide a superior education in a warm, caring atmosphere that will equip students to serve and lead in Christ.
Christian education preK-12
Covenant Christian School (CCS) is committed to the academic, spiritual, physical, and social growth of our children in a Christ-centered environment. Continued on Schedule O Covenant Christian School cultivates a distinctive generation…
Provides Private Christian Education from Kindergarten through Grade 12.
Covenant Christian School exist to partner with Christian parents in training their children: to provide quality Christ-centered academic education for children, and to actively promote service in the local church, community and nation.
Primary & Secondary Education
The school provides a biblically sound education program of high academic standards in a loving environment that meets the need of the whole child: spiritually, academically, physically, and socially.
The organization operates a non-denominational school providing a christian environment for learning.
To provide christian education for grades k through 12
The mission is to provide a biblically based classical college preparatory education that inspires a passion for excellence a heart of grace and the character of Christ.
To provide a comprehensive education and spiritual development for students in the Sycamore/Dekalb, IL area.
Summit Classical Christian School is a PreK-12 school that exists to cultivate generations of joyful disciples of Christ by partnering with faithful Christian families to educate their children from a Biblical worldview using classical…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Calvin Christian School Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Deer Creek Christian School. 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 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 CHICAGO WEST SIDE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds DAYSTAR EDUCATION ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE FIELD SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Cornerstone Academy co Richard Van der Molen ↗
- Who funds UNITY CHRISTIAN ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds CALVIN CHRISTIAN SCHOOL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Southwest Chicago Christian School Foundation ↗
- Who funds Lansing Christian School Foundation ↗
- Who funds Cambridge Classical Academy ↗
- Who funds DEER CREEK CHRISTIAN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds TRINITY CHRISTIAN COLLEGE ASSOCIATION ↗
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: Barnabas Foundation · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · 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 Bright Promise 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 Bright Promise?
Find your warmest path to Bright Promise 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.