· Private foundation
WAG 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Greater Chicago Food Depository | $4,500 |
| Greater Boston Foodbank | $2,500 |
| Community Partners - Affordable Housing | $2,000 |
| Chicago Intl Puppet Theater Festival | $2,000 |
| Lyte Collective | $2,000 |
| Crossroads Fund | $1,500 |
| Misericordia Heart of Mercy | $1,000 |
| Moraine Township Food Pantry | $1,000 |
| Highwood Library and Comunity Center | $1,000 |
| Highland Park Community Foundation | $1,000 |
| Forging Opp for Refugees in America | $1,000 |
| North Suburban Legal Aid | $1,000 |
| The Simple Good | $250 |
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 (FY19–25, $8k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% 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.
22 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2025, 12 since wound down; 2 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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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
GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY4× · 2020–2025 · $30k · revenue +17%- CFCROSSROADS FUND INC9× · 2017–2025 · $23k · revenue +167%
- KOKenwood Oakland Community Organization5× · 2017–2021 · $13k · revenue +263%
Funded once
- MPMEDFORD PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2019 · $10k · revenue -91%
- ACARTS COLLABORATIVE MEDFORD INCone grant, 2024 · $7k · revenue 0%
- FOFRIENDS OF MEDFORD ROWINGone grant, 2018 · $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.
Connecting and amplifying the power of individuals to build a just, equitable, and inclusive city.
The Chicago Refugee Coalition is a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated ot the alleviation of human suffering through innovative partnerships, advocacy and community empowerment.
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
The Chicago Parks Foundation is a separate 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization that also serves as the strategic partner for the coordination of fundraising and charitable resources for the Chicago Park District.
The Chicago Cultural Alliances mission is to connect, promote, and support centers of cultural heritage for a more inclusive Chicago. We are an active consortium of 50 cultural heritage museums, centers, and historical societies that…
The GI Research Foundation works to treat, prevent, and cure digestive diseases. In collaboration with the physicians and scientists at the University of Chicago Digestive Diseases Center, we fund innovative clinical and laboratory…
To promote public appreciation, understanding and support of the humanities through festivals and educational programs.
The chicago bar foundation brings the legal community together through advocacy, funding, and innovation to improve access to justice for people in need and to make the legal system more fair, equitable, and effective.
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…
Seeks to address the traumas of police violence and institutionalized racism through access to healing and wellness services, trauma-informed resources, and community connection. The Center is a part of and supports a movement to end all…
Secure racial equity and economic opportunity for all
The Commons Project Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit charitable organization established to build and operate digital services for the common good. Our mission is to empower individuals with access and control of their data, beginning…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Crossroads Fund Inc and the most unlike its peers is Health Professionals Network for Tigray. 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 23 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) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 5% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
24 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. 24 of the 40 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 GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds CROSSROADS FUND INC ↗
- Who funds Kenwood Oakland Community Organization ↗
- Who funds MORAINE TOWNSHIP CHARITABLE FUND CHARITABLE FUND ↗
- Who funds Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago ↗
- Who funds Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival ↗
- Who funds MEDFORD PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE CLEAR FUND ↗
- Who funds Highland Park Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds ARTS COLLABORATIVE MEDFORD INC ↗
- Who funds THE LYTE COLLECTIVE ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF MEDFORD ROWING ↗
- Who funds Teach Democracy ↗
- Who funds The Simple Good ↗
- Who funds GREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds CLIMATE VAULT ↗
- Who funds FOOD FOR FREE COMMITTEE INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES FOR RESTORATIVE JUSTICE INC ↗
- Who funds COMPASS TO CARE ↗
- Who funds CONCORDIA PLACE ↗
- Who funds FEEDING PEOPLE THROUGH PLANTS NFP ↗
- Who funds HAROLD E EISENBERG FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE ↗
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: Julian Grace Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Network for Good · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 WAG 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Greater Boston Food Bank Inc — 22% of income from government
- Communities for Restorative Justice Inc — 8% of income from government
- Food for Free Committee Inc — 3% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to WAG Foundation?
Find your warmest path to WAG 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.