Here’s just a sampling of NGOs, out of literally hundreds of non-profits that have been appropriated money – lots of money – in the FY2025 budget. They have euphemistic names and generic missions and likely no legislator can describe their impact for the money they were given.
| $1,000,000 | A Knock at Midnight |
| $4,500,000 | A Ray of Hope on Earth |
| $250,000 | Beyond the Ball |
| $1,600,000 | Care For Real |
| $1,500,000 | Chicago Therapy Collective |
| $150,000 | Demoiselle Femme, NFP |
| $1,100,000 | Fathers Who Care |
| $150,000 | Global Girls |
| $850,000 | HAIBAYO Cares |
| $700,000 | One in a Million |
| $1,000,000 | Project Syncere |
| $2,000,000 | Guitars over Guns |
These NGOs have been designated to get lump sums of money from the budget. It appears the money – given in nice round numbers – isn’t linked to serving a specific number of clients or hosting a specific number of events, trainings, classes, or interventions. It’s just money that is going from taxpayers to support whatever these organizations do in general.
Guitars Over Guns describe themselves as “Professional artists help students overcome hardship, find their voice, and reach their potential as tomorrow’s leaders.”
One in a Million is located in Springfield, Illinois and their purpose is to “build an organization with the power to protect the legitimate interest of our community and advance its right to self-determination. Our mission is to move our community towards Spiritual, Social, Racial, Political, and Economic equality.”
Global Girls’ website says they use “the performing arts and self-development experiences to build confident, global leaders.“
Generally, these are nonprofits serving a particular community in a particular way and they get grants based on supposedly providing mental health services, violence prevention, youth development, support to those affected by domestic abuse, immigrant support, LGBTQ advocacy and other niche services. There’s lots of parent mentoring going on in these NGOs – maybe some of these organizations can work themselves out of a job. And then, some of the NGOs are very specialized such as Neighbor Space a Chicago NGO that teaches people how to garden.
Of course, Chicago is where the vast majority of these NGOs are located. Most of these NGOs started out as non-profits raising funds on their own. But, now many of them receive the majority of their funding from state taxpayers.
Meanwhile, many of the services these NGOs provide are services that should be handled in the private market – think private counselors – or through other government entities or without government funds. Some non-profits show robust and good programming on their websites. But, there’s little accountability for outcomes.
The $600 million to these types of organizations are non-duplicative to the list of chambers of commerce that were appropriated over $72 million in the FY25 budget and are non-duplicative to the religious/ethnic/racial NGOs that received nearly $250 million in the budget. These are lists our organization wrote separately about.
This brings the total to over $900 million in grants to non-profits that could easily be cut from the budget. In my latest analysis, I did not include money going to national NGOs such as Scouts, Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCA, the United Way and others. There is plenty of cuts that can be made to the state budget and that money returned to taxpayers and these non-governmental organizations should be among the first cuts.
There are, of cocurse, plenty of non-profits that do important work in Illinois. Many of them help our most vulnerable citizens, the developmentally disabled. They are to be applauded. Taxpayers should want those non-profits to provide care to those who would otherwise be in government facilities. There’s a difference though, those non-profits have official contracts with the state and are regulated and monitored. They are not on these lists, noted above, as their funding comes from agency budgets.