· Private foundation
Wheeler Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k6 grants · $25k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $190k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $503k
- $250k+3 grants · $1.6M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $748,000 |
| CARLE HEALTH CENTER FOR PHILANTHROPY | $462,874 |
| VERMILION ASSOCIATION FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION | $377,964 |
| CROSSPOINT HUMAN SERVICES | $202,419 |
| DANVILLE AREA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $175,000 |
| IROQUOIS SPECIAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION | $73,592 |
| DANVILLE SCHOOL DISTRICT | $52,358 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS FOUNDATION | $45,000 |
| EASTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $45,000 |
| DONOVAN COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT | $43,182 |
| GEORGETOWN RIDGE FARM CUSD #4 | $25,559 |
| IROQUOIS COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT #9 | $16,741 |
| OAKWOOD CUSD #76 | $14,073 |
| COVINGTON COMMUNITY SCHOOL CORPORATION | $8,631 |
| HOOPESTON MULTI AGENCY SERVICES CENTER | $6,400 |
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 (FY23–23, $45k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 9% of Wheeler 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, 100% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 85% — 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +39% since the first grant, against -1% for the ones you funded once.
13 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down; 9 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 57% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $987k 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
- ISILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION5× · 2020–2024 · $1.4M · revenue +24%
University of Illinois Foundation5× · 2020–2024 · $165k · revenue +74%- TATHE ARC OF IROQUOIS COUNTY2× · 2021–2023 · $88k · revenue +26%
Funded once
- ISIROQUOIS SPECIAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATone grant, 2021 · $82k
- WEWORKSOURCE ENTERPRISESone grant, 2020 · $75k · revenue -49%
- HRHUMAN RESOURCES CENTER OF EDGARCLARK COUNTYone grant, 2023 · $72k
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.
Illinois college is a co-educational institution of higher education learning providing a four-year educational program leading to the baccalaureate degree. illinois college is a community committed to the highest standards of scholarship…
The mission of goodwill is to create opportunities for individuals with barriers to enhance their lives. barriers include physical or mental disabilities, lack of education and job preparation, socio-economic disadvantages, and others.…
To develop knowledgeable and effective leaders to become policy and decision makers for the agricultural industry.
Enhancing lives by promoting the safe & efficient use of electricity.
Executive Service Corps is the premier nonprofit consultancy that engages highly skilled professionals who use their experience and expertise to provide nonprofits with the consulting services they need to be successful. Our vision is to…
Pathways of wisconsin provides supported employment opportunities and empowerment through quality, person-centered programming for individuals of all abilities.
The Arc of Illinois is committed to empowering persons with disabilities to achieve full participation in community life through informed choices.
The siue foundation exists to support the mission, vision, and values of southern illinois university edwardsville. on behalf of the university, the foundation provides fundraising coordination and implementation, serves as the steward for…
DePaul Group, Inc. is a parent corporation that provides administrative support to further the strategic purposes and missions of affliated 501(c)3 corporations and affilated for profit corporations which DePaul Group is the sole…
To assist in providing educational opportunitites.
Improve oral health by providing funds for dental education and access to care programs
The purpose of the illinois stewardship alliance is to promote the ecologically sustainable, economically viable, socially just, local food systems through policy development, advocacy, and education.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Illinois State University Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Hoopeston Multi Agency Service. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
9 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. 9 of the 32 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 ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CROSSPOINT ↗
- Who funds DANVILLE AREA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds University of Illinois Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE ARC OF IROQUOIS COUNTY ↗
- Who funds WORKSOURCE ENTERPRISES ↗
- Who funds Eastern Illinois University Foundation ↗
- Who funds DEVELOPMENTAL SERVICES CENTER OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds HOOPESTON MULTI AGENCY SERVICE ↗
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: Iroquois Federal Foundation Inc · Community Foundation of East Central Illinois · 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 Wheeler 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 Wheeler Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Wheeler 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.