· Private foundation
Varney 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Kansas State University Foundation | $500 |
| University of Illinois Foundation | $500 |
| First Presbyterian Church | $250 |
| Loaves and Fishes | $250 |
| Smile Train | $100 |
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 (FY20–25, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 20% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 21% of Varney Family Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 56% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 38% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
15 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2025, 11 since wound down; 1 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $250 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
University of Illinois Foundation6× · 2020–2025 · $3k · revenue +74%- KSKANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION5× · 2020–2025 · $2k · revenue +77%
- LFLOAVES & FISHES COMMUNITY SERVICES3× · 2020–2025 · $750 · revenue +124%
Funded once
- KPKNOX PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHone grant, 2020 · $3k
- YNYOUNG NAPERVILLE SINGERSgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $500 · revenue +137%
- YSYOUTH SYMPHONY OF DUPAGE INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $500 · revenue +106%
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.
(msh) saves lives and improves the health of the world's poorest (see schedule o) and most vulnerable people by closing the gap between knowledge and action in public health.
Improve the food value chain in developing countries by mobilizing corporate volunteers to share knowledge and expertise with small and growing food processors.
The mission of the global alliance for improved nutrition (gain) is to improve the consumption of healthier diets for all, especially the most vulnerable, by improving the availability, affordability, desirability, and sustainability of…
Usp's mission is to improve global health through public standards and related programs that help ensure the quality, safety, and benefit of medicines and foods.
To engage and catalyze global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming.
In countries affected by conflict and war, women for women international (women for women) supports the most marginalized women to earn and save money, improve health and well-being, influence decisions in their home and community, and…
The fsmb serves as the voice for state medical boards, supporting them through education, assessment, research and advocacy while providing services and initiatives that promote patient safety, quality health care and regulatory best…
Sign partners with overseas surgeons to build sustainable orthopaedic capacity by donating education, instruments, and implants. by working with teaching hospitals and hosting educational conferences worldwide, sign equips surgeons to heal…
Muso works to create a cure for delay because no one should die waiting for health care.
Technoserve's mission is to fight poverty by helping people build regenerative farms, businesses, and markets that increase incomes.
Isf advisors is the leading strategic and financial advisory group committed to mobilizing capital for a more sustainable, equitable, and productive global food system.
To replace poverty with prosperity by implementing donor-funded projects that provide global humanitarian aid to communities and individuals in developing countries through in-kind, financial and technical assistance.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Medecins Sans Frontieres Usa Inc and the most unlike its peers is Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
15 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. 15 of the 19 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 University of Illinois Foundation ↗
- Who funds KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LOAVES & FISHES COMMUNITY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds UNCHAINED AT LAST INC ↗
- Who funds SMILE TRAIN INC ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC ACTION TO DELIVER SHELTER INC D/B/A HESED HOUSE ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds Metropolitan Family Services ↗
- Who funds YOUNG NAPERVILLE SINGERS ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds ON SITE FOR SENIORS INC ↗
- Who funds PARTNERS IN HEALTH A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds YOUTH SYMPHONY OF DUPAGE INC ↗
- Who funds GRAMEEN FOUNDATION USA ↗
- Who funds FONKOZE USA 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 set of overlaps that mostly run through you, not between each other.
Open a dossier: 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 Varney 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.