GRANT GRAPH · the independent grant data index

Who funds animal shelters in Illinois? Grant data from tax filings and federal listings

Name: animal shelter grant funding data (Grant Graph)
Creator: Grant Graph
License: public domain sources; compilation freely citable with attribution

From 2025-2026 IRS filings: 162 grants totaling $3.7 million went to animal shelters-related work in Illinois. The largest funders, the typical grant size, and what is open at the federal level right now, all from public records.

The largest private funders of animal shelters in Illinois, from their own tax filings

Funder	Grants	Total
ZWIRNER FOUNDATION	1	$2.1 million
AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC	25	$276,164
The Irving and Phyllis Millstein	4	$193,460
NETWORK FOR GOOD	1	$91,173
PAYPAL CHARITABLE GIVING FUND	5	$74,421
CHARITIES AID FOUNDATION AMERICA	6	$67,654
PETSMART CHARITIES INC	1	$50,200
Donald Levin Family Foundation	1	$50,000
Dart Foundation	1	$50,000
QUAD CITY PAWS	1	$49,980

Across all funders: 162 grants, $3.7 million total, median grant $5,000.

Largest recipients in Illinois

Recipient	Grants	Total
ORPHANS OF THE STORM ANIMAL SHELTER (EIN 36-6002114)	1	$2.1 million
ANDERSON ANIMAL SHELTER	19	$285,828
HEARTLAND ANIMAL SHELTER NFP	18	$244,507
RED DOOR ANIMAL SHELTER	14	$166,246
HEARTLAND ANIMAL SHELTER	17	$158,500
ORPHANS OF THE STORM ANIMAL SHELTER	9	$82,386
EVANSTON ANIMAL SHELTER ASSOCIATION	11	$74,516
Anderson Animal Shelter DBA Anderson Humane	1	$50,000
ROCK ISLAND CO ANIMAL SHELTER	1	$49,980
Helping Paws Animal Shelter	6	$45,937

Open federal opportunities addressing animal shelters (nonprofit-eligible)

Federal opportunities are listed nationally: a nonprofit in Illinois can apply to any of them, so this table is not filtered by state.

Matched against the full synopsis text of every posted opportunity, not the listing title alone; restricted to opportunities open to nonprofit applicants. Federal programs rarely use the phrase "animal shelter"; this table also matches the agency vocabulary: animal welfare, companion animal.

Number	Title	Agency	Award range	Closes
O-OVC-2026-172758	Invited to Apply – Emergency and Transitional Pet Shelter and Housing Assi	Office for Victims of Crime	up to $600,000	09/23/2026

grants.gov's own loose keyword search returns 292 listings mentioning "animal shelters" anywhere (retrieved 2026-11-02); the table above is our stricter relevance cut.

What these numbers do not say

Private-funder figures come from 990 and 990-PF filings as released by the IRS; filings lag reality by one to two years, and organizations below the e-file thresholds are not represented.
A funder appearing here funded this cause historically. It is not a statement that they are accepting applications.
Filings include corrections: voided checks, returned grants and corpus-distribution adjustments appear as negative amounts and are counted as filed. They are a fraction of a percent of the total.
Cause matching is keyword-based against grant purpose text and recipient names; it undercounts grants described in other words.

Grant Graph is an independent, free index built from public data: IRS Form 990 series e-file releases and the grants.gov API. It is not affiliated with grants.gov or any federal agency. Every figure above is reproducible from the cited public sources.