Illinois · Nonprofit
Chicago Artists Coalition
Chicago Artists Coalition (Illinois) receives grants from 28 organizations whose IRS filings report $1,598,475 to it, the largest being The Chicago Community Trust ($274,250). 14 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2025
- $532k
- Funders on record
- 28
- Grants received
- $1.6M
- Net assets
- $253k
What Chicago Artists Coalition does
Mission
CAC's programs reflect our commitment to empowering local artists through professional career training, exhibition and networking opportunities, and building a supportive patron base. Our philosophy is that by helping more artists sustain their practice here in Chicago, more will want to live and work here.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Programs
Cac's education strategy is designed to address the vital skill sets and resources that empower artists and arts professionals to nurture and sustain dynamic creative careers. The organization's approach to education building. Bolt offers a unique opportunity for working artists who can benefit from the program's is rooted in two primary programs: field/work and launch invitational residency. Field/work is a year-round program that includes public porgrams and a six month residency, featuring workshops and panel conversations, individula consultations and career stages with the educational skills and community needed for creative and professional success. Launch invitational residency is a nomination-based professional development program organized every june for artists emerging from chicago area undergraduate schools. Offered to a limited number of promising students identified by faculty, the four-day-long experience creates a rigorous environment within which artists learn career-building skills from both professionals and peers.
$167,192 spent$4,420 earned by the program100% of program spendingCac's bolt residency is a highly competitive, juried, one-year artist studio residency program. The artist-in-residence program offers emerging and established artists a platform for the investigation, experimentation, and development of ideas regarding contemporary artistic practice while living and working in the city of chicago. The program's mission is to help artists advance their career in an environment that allows for expansive thinking and opportunities to engage with their co-residents in a group setting, as well as with influential artists, curators, and educators through individual studio visits. Bolt residency provides six (6) professional open-plan studios and a 400-square-foot gallery space for a solo exhibition. The program is nonresidential: no room/board is offered.
Hatch projects is a yearlong, juried incubator for contemporary artists and curators that strive to support an ecology of curatorialand artistic practice. Hatch fosters shared experimentation, exchange, and creativity to produce ground-breaking exhibitions and programs. Artist residents are divided into groups of 4 to work with one curatorial resident. Selected artists will participate in a duo and 4-person exhibition organized by their curatorial resident. Each artist resident receives professional development through dynamic exhibitions, one-on-one studio visits, public programs, and community building to develop a sustainable creative practice. Through this unique hands-on experience and professional development program, artist residents develop valuable insight and experience in contemporary exhibition-making.
The 3 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $167,192.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2022 to 2023, from $174k to $806k (+363%).
How it's funded, over time
Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.
Government-grant reliance: 2018 2% · 2019 37% · 2020 49% · 2022 7% · 2024 61% · 2025 21%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
98% of Chicago Artists Coalition’s revenue is contributions — more reliant on donations than three-quarters of its peers (64% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 6 of the last 9 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Chief executive
Brooks Ebetsch
Executive Director
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
The chief executive listed changed between the FY2023 and FY2024 filings.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 5 funders to 9 funders, grant income rose $187k → $192k.
4 of 28 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 18% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
From the IRS filings of Chicago Artists Coalition’s funders (the co-funder graph). Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How concentrated its funding is
Chicago Artists Coalition has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 17% of grant income, and it takes 4 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 4 funders to its left
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 40% · 2018 49% · 2019 32% · 2020 25% · 2021 34% · 2022 35% · 2023 52% — growing more concentrated.
“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How long its funders stay
50% of Chicago Artists Coalition's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 50% give in more than one year at all.
Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.
Where its funders are
87% of Chicago Artists Coalition's grant income comes from Illinois funders.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $292k arriving through sponsors registered in 4 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Against its field
Chicago Artists Coalition runs a healthier operating margin than three-quarters of the 11,634 arts & culture nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 11,634 arts & culture nonprofits $100k–$1M, FY2025
Government funding Chicago Artists Coalition receives
Grants and contracts to this organization from federal (USASpending) and state checkbooks, reconciled to its EIN. $204k on record.
- National Endowment for the Arts$204k
Federal grants vs contracts are distinguished; state line items keep their reported category. Matched by name + geography (the BMF), so coverage is partial and precision-first.
Organizations like Chicago Artists Coalition
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In Illinois
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
42% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
87%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 1 state
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for Chicago Artists Coalition: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds Chicago Artists Coalition?
- Chicago Artists Coalition (Illinois) receives grants from 28 organizations whose IRS filings report $1,598,475 to it, the largest being The Chicago Community Trust ($274,250). 14 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does Chicago Artists Coalition have?
- IRS filings report 28 organizations giving $1,598,475 in grants to Chicago Artists Coalition, 14 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of Chicago Artists Coalition?
- The Chicago Community Trust is the largest funder on record, with $274,250 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like Chicago Artists Coalition find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Illinois. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
Play a game about who funds Chicago Artists Coalition →
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2025 (financials across 2017–2025), and the filings of 28 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 14, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing