GRANT GRAPH · the independent grant data index

Who funds food pantries in Illinois? Grant data from tax filings and federal listings

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

From 2025-2026 IRS filings: 733 grants totaling $5.3 million went to food pantries-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 food pantries in Illinois, from their own tax filings

Funder	Grants	Total
AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC	47	$491,197
SOUTHERN COMPANY GAS CHARITABLE FOUNDATION INC	10	$325,000
NETWORK FOR GOOD	4	$278,067
DUNHAM FOUNDATION	3	$162,500
Helen V Brach Foundation	7	$145,000
GENESEO FOUNDATION	2	$135,980
FOREFRONT	1	$125,000
Alliance of Local Service Organizations	1	$113,667
THE DUPAGE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION	3	$106,450
SUMAC FOUNDATION	4	$105,000

Across all funders: 733 grants, $5.3 million total, median grant $2,500.

Largest recipients in Illinois

Recipient	Grants	Total
GLEN ELLYN FOOD PANTRY INC	16	$299,627
CRYSTAL LAKE FOOD PANTRY INC	12	$244,183
NORTHFIELD TOWNSHIP FOOD PANTRY	21	$205,628
AURORA AREA INTERFAITH FOOD PANTRY	21	$193,691
ELMHURST-YORKFIELD FOOD PANTRY	15	$144,151
AURORA INTERFAITH FOOD PANTRY	4	$144,000
GENESEO - ATKINSON FOOD PANTRY	2	$135,980
ABOVE AND BEYOND FOOD PANTRY	1	$125,000
New Life Centers	1	$113,667
KENDALL COUNTY COMMUNITY FOOD PANTRY INC	7	$112,117

Open federal opportunities addressing food pantries (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 "food pantry"; this table also matches the agency vocabulary: food insecurity, emergency food.

Number	Title	Agency	Award range	Closes
USDA-AMS-TM-CCG-G-26-0001	Cold Chain Grants for Emergency Food Assistance	Agricultural Marketing Service	$2.0 million to $7.5 million	10/01/2026

grants.gov's own loose keyword search returns 181 listings mentioning "food pantries" 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.