· Private foundation
Washington Square Health Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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 $10k48 grants · $115k
- $10k–50k27 grants · $502k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| A Silver Lining Foundation | $50,000 |
| Shirley Ryan AbilityLab | $43,478 |
| Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago | $36,115 |
| Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago | $30,000 |
| Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago | $30,000 |
| La Rabida Children's Hospital | $25,000 |
| University of Illinois Foundation | $25,000 |
| Howard Brown Health Center | $25,000 |
| Keshet | $25,000 |
| Gilda's Club Chicago | $25,000 |
| Wauconda Fire Protection District | $20,000 |
| Sinai Chicago | $20,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $17,500 |
| Cornerstone Community Outreach | $17,330 |
| Easter Seals Metropolitan Chicago | $17,220 |
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, $465k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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 5% of Washington Square Health 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, 97% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 91% — 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.
91 repeat relationships — 36 still active in FY2025, 55 since wound down; 15 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, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $146k 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
Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago9× · 2017–2025 · $614k · revenue +60%- ASA SILVER LINING FOUNDATION9× · 2017–2025 · $379k · revenue +37%
- RIRehabilitation Institute of Chicago6× · 2017–2025 · $292k · revenue +31%
Funded once
- FCFamily Chrstianone grant, 2017 · $100k
- HHHorizon Hospiceone grant, 2017 · $78k
- LULOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGOgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $47k · revenue +39%
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.
Uchicago medicine network, inc. supports and encourages health and human service by providing support, directly or indirectly to ingalls memorial hospital, the university of chicago medical center, and other related tax-exempt…
Edward-Elmhurst Healthcare follows the mission of Endeavor Health to "help everyone in our communities be their best."
Endeavor Health Clinical Operations follows the mission of Endeavor Health to "help everyone in our communities be their best."
Northwestern memorial healthcare is an integrated healthcare system, consisting of multiple hospitals (including northwestern memorial hospital, an academic medical center) and networks of physicians and healthcare professionals, where the…
Edward Hospital follows the mission of Endeavor Health to "help everyone in our communities be their best."
We, loyola university health system and trinity health, serve together in the spirit of the gospel as a compassionate and transforming healing presence within our communities.lumc is a member of loyola university health system and trinity…
The hospital is a catholic health care organization sponsored by the sisters of st. casimir. by our commitment to witness to the healing mission of jesus, we contribute to healthy communities and promote quality health care to all with…
We are dedicated to the health and well-being of all children. as the pediatric teaching facility for the northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, this commitment drives us to be a leader in: -pediatric health care delivery…
Endeavor Health Medical Group (EHMG) follows the mission of Endeavor Health. The mission of Endeavor Health is to "help everyone in our communities be their best." Central to this mission is a commitment to providing clinical programs and…
We value excellence and innovation in clinical and basic research, coordinated and comprehensive patient care, ongoing physician education, and evidence-based child advocacy. our goal is to provide leadership in endeavors that promote the…
The mission of mchc chicago hospital council is to foster, promote, support, develop and encourage charitable, educational, scholastic and scientific purposes; promote cooperative effort and action between hospitals and other health care…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Health and Medicine Policy Research Group and the most unlike its peers is Sonoma Botanical Garden. 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 41 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.8% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
117 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. 117 of the 172 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 Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago ↗
- Who funds A SILVER LINING FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GILDA'S CLUB CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds ADVOCATE CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Elea Institute ↗
- Who funds ROSELAND COMMUNITY HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds La Rabida Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO CHESED FUND ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds Community Health NFP ↗
- Who funds MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science ↗
- Who funds Howard Brown Health Center ↗
- Who funds LESTER AND ROSALIE ANIXTER CENTER ↗
- Who funds HEALTH AND MEDICINE POLICY RESEARCH GROUP ↗
- Who funds SECOND SENSE ↗
- Who funds PRIMO CENTER FOR WOMEN & CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds Alexian Brothers Bonaventure House ↗
- Who funds POLISH AMERICAN ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR THE WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE INC ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH URBAN MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds MERCY HOUSING LAKEFRONT ↗
- Who funds EASTER SEALS METROPOLITAN CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds CELLMATES ON THE RUN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Illinois College of Optometry ↗
- Who funds THE NIGHT MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds ORCHARD VILLAGE ↗
- Who funds KESHET ↗
- Who funds McDermott Center ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE OF CHICAGO ↗
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: United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Circle of Service Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Visiting Nurse Association of Chicago (Aka) Vna Foundation · George M Eisenberg Foundation for Charities · The Coleman Foundation Inc · The Chicago Community Trust · Northwestern Memorial HealthCare Group · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Dr Scholl 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 Washington Square Health 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.