How much does Bader Family Foundation give?

Bader Family Foundation reported 36 grants totaling $3,343,800 in its FY2024 IRS filing. It funded between 25 and 42 organizations a year over FY2017 to FY2023.

What does Bader Family Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2024, its largest causes are Civil Rights (42%), Crime & Legal (21%), Human Services (20%).

Who are Bader Family Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2024: Center for Individual Rights ($3.3M), Family Reunion ($3.0M), Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression Inc ($2.6M).

Does Bader Family Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2023, 12% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does Bader Family Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it accepts unsolicited grant applications.

Which funders back the same organizations as Bader Family Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Donors Trust Inc, Bradley Impact Fund Inc, Sarah Scaife Foundation Incorporated.

Where is Bader Family Foundation based?

Bader Family Foundation is based in VA.

Bader Family Foundation

Bader Family Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

Bader Family Foundation

Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$3.3M

Granted FY2024still arriving

Grants FY2024still arriving

States reached

$430k

Largest

01What it funds

0199% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2024.

Civil Rights$13MCrime & Legal$6.6MHuman Services$6.3MPublic Benefit$1.6MSocial Science$1.5MEducation$812kCommunity Improvement$366kPhilanthropy$261kOther$0

02FY2024 · 36 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2024

Under $10k5 grants · $32k
$10k–50k16 grants · $327k
$50k–250k11 grants · $1.5M
$250k+4 grants · $1.5M

$32,000

Median grant

States reached

$80M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
SPEECH FIRST	$430,000
FAMILY REUNION	$400,000
WISCONSIN INSTITUTE FOR LAW & LIBERTY	$321,000
CENTER FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS	$300,000
PARENTS DEFENDING EDUCATION	$247,000
BECKET FUND FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY	$210,000
HAMILTON LINCOLN LAW INSTITUTE	$200,000
CRIMINAL JUSTICE LEGAL FOUNDATION	$158,000
MOUNTAIN STATES LEGAL FOUNDATION	$150,000
PACIFIC LEGAL FOUNDATION	$123,000
CENTER FOR PROSECUTOR INTEGRITY	$120,000
NATIONAL PARENTS ORGANIZATION	$108,000
ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM	$90,000
MANHATTAN INSTITUTE FOR POLICY RESEARCH	$68,000
GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION	$60,000

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its human-services grants (FY17–24, $3.2M) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 20% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Its grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

99%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$30M · 54 repeat orgs$358k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +42% since the first grant, against +16% for those funded once.

54 repeat relationships: 32 still active in FY2024, 22 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$30M

$288k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+42%

+16%

Still filing today

85%

82%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $70k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

Civil RightsCrime & LegalPublic BenefitEducationSocial ScienceHuman ServicesOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as new. Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.

Backed again, and grew

CF
CENTER FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS
8× · 2017–2024 · $3.3M · revenue +87% · 39% of their budget
FF
FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND EXPRESSION INC
6× · 2017–2022 · $2.6M · revenue +267%
WISCONSIN INSTITUTE FOR LAW & LIBERTY
7× · 2018–2024 · $1.6M · revenue +217%

Funded once

SOUTHEASTERN LEGAL FOUNDATION INC
one grant, 2021 · $70k · revenue -7%
CP
CRACK'S PROJECT PREVENTION
one grant, 2021 · $65k
PO
Project on Fair Representation Inc
one grant, 2023 · $50k · revenue -58%

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Open Markets Institute

The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.

Education

American Civil Liberties Union Fund of the District of Columbia

Preservation of civil liberties through litigation and public education.

—

Frontiers of Freedom Institute

To educate the public on constitutional issues and public policy matters. We are dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, peace through strength, limited government, free enterprise, and the values embodied in the Declaration of…

Public Benefit

Litigators for Liberty Network

Support public interest litigators by leveraging resources and creating opportunities for collaboration to advance freedom under the rule of law.

Crime & Legal

American Law Institute

The institute's mission, as set out in its certificate of incorporation, is to promote the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs, to secure the better administration of justice, and to…

Crime & Legal

International Republican Institute

Iri advances freedom and democracy worldwide by developing political parties, civic institutions, open elections, democratic governance and the rule of law.

Education

American Constitution Society for Law & Policy

The american constitution society for law and policy (acs) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, non-partisan legal organization. through a diverse nationwide network of progressive lawyers, law students, judges, scholars, advocates, and many others,…

Education

The Campaign Legal Center Inc

The nonpartisan campaign legal center advances democracy through law at the federal, state and local levels, fighting for every american's rights to responsive government and a fair opportunity to participate in and affect the democratic…

Crime & Legal

Academic Freedom Alliance

The Organization's members are dedicated to protecting the rights of faculty members at colleges and universities to speak, instruct, and publish without fear of sanction or punishment.

Philanthropy

Legal Advocates for Safe Science and Technology Inc

Using legal advocacy to make advances in science and technology safer for people and the planet.

Science & Tech

Center for Individual Freedom

To investigate, explore and focus public, legislative and judicial attention on all areas of individual freedom and individual rights as guaranteed by the u.s. and state constitutions and free market principles.

Public Benefit

Mit Free Speech Alliance

To promote free expression, academic freedom, viewpoint diversity, and open scientific inquiry in the MIT community

Civil Rights

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation; the most unlike its peers is Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

67 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 67 of the 77 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

66/67

Grantees still filing

48/67

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Civil Rights$12,101,213Crime & Legal$5,019,000Education$3,720,000Human Services$3,243,000Other$3,472,300Public Benefit$2,154,000Social Science$1,514,000

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Donors Trust IncVA53.8× affinity25 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Donors Trust Inc · Bradley Impact Fund Inc · Sarah Scaife Foundation Incorporated · The Searle Freedom Trust · John William Pope Foundation · Adolph Coors Foundation · The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation Inc · The 85 Fund · Holman Foundation Inc · The Achelis & Bodman Foundation Co Manice & Budd LLP · The Seminar Network Inc · The Snider Foundation

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Bader Family Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Bader Family Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

2get no government money at all

2report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–10%

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12 to 24 months.

Play a game based on Bader Family’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home