About Gorter Family Foundation
The Gorter Family Foundation appears to be a highly place-based funder centered on Lake County/North Chicago, with a strong emphasis on improving outcomes for children, students, and families in under-resourced communities. Its giving is especially concentrated in education and youth success—college access, charter and district schools, and local nonprofit partners—alongside a meaningful secondary focus on basic needs and community health. The foundation also shows a pattern of backing a small set of trusted organizations repeatedly, with North Chicago Community Partners standing out as the clear anchor grantee.
Focus Areas
North Chicago and Lake County youth-serving nonprofitsCollege access and completion for low-income studentsPublic school and charter school support in Lake CountyFamily stabilization, food access, and basic needsCommunity health centers and local health accessLocal environmental and community enrichment in Lake Forest
Giving Approach
Concentrated, relationship-driven giving with a few anchor grantees receiving large recurring support and a smaller set of additional grants spread across local education, health, and family-service organizations. The foundation favors repeat funding and long-term partnerships over broad, one-off giving.
About Gorter Family Foundation
The Gorter Family Foundation’s recorded grantmaking is built around a single confidential recipient: every grant in the dataset goes to "See Schedule Attached" in Illinois, and the awards are all described as general support. That pattern points to a tightly held family philanthropy that favors large, flexible grants over broad public grantmaking. Across the four grants on file, the foundation distributed $10.3 million, with individual awards clustered in the multimillion-dollar range. The most recent gift, a 2025 grant of $3,239,782, continued that same approach, while earlier awards of $2,577,357, $2,519,776, and $1,972,394 show a repeated relationship rather than one-off support. The foundation’s active programs indicate a local portfolio centered on Lake County and nearby Illinois communities, with emphasis on education, child and family well-being, health and wellness, social and community initiatives, and economic stability. Those program labels align with the foundation’s use of unrestricted support and core support language in its philosophy tags, even though the public grant record itself is highly concentrated and confidential.
What Gorter Family Foundation Funds
Education is a clear theme in the foundation’s program structure. Its active programs include post-secondary education grants for college access, scholarships, mentoring, and completion work, as well as K-12 education grants covering literacy, tutoring, career and technical education, and work-based learning in Lake County and Chicagoland. Early childhood is another defined area, with grants for home visiting, teacher preparation, dual language education, and early learning facilities across Lake County and Northeastern Illinois. Beyond schooling, the foundation also names health and wellness grants for mental health services, food security, homelessness services, and youth wellbeing in Northern Illinois. Its social and community initiative grants extend to immigrant services, libraries, community centers, and youth development in Lake County. Economic stability is the fourth major thread, including workforce readiness, small business support, and basic-needs assistance.
How Gorter Family Foundation Gives
The grant-size distribution is tightly clustered at the top end: p25 is $2,246,085, the median is $2,519,776, and p75 is $2,548,566. That narrow band fits a pattern of large awards rather than many small ones. The record shows four grants totaling $10,309,309, all in Illinois and all to the same recipient name, which suggests a recurring relationship rather than dispersed one-time awards. The foundation operates as a family foundation and the listed philosophy tags point to unrestricted, general operating, and core support. All active programs are marked as not accepting unsolicited requests.
Financial Snapshot
Annual Giving
$3.2M
Total Assets
$34.4M
Total Revenue
$4M
Total Expenses
$4M
Typical Grant Size
Most grants fall between $1K and $15K, with a median of $5K.
25th Percentile
$1K
Median
$5K
75th Percentile
$15K
Geographic Reach
Regional19 states funded
Funding intensity
LowHigh
Headquarters
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