· Private foundation
Bayless Family Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $10k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $35k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $622k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| INDUSTRIAL COUNCIL OF NEARWEST CHICAGO (ICNC) | $131,814 |
| TIMELINE THEATRE COMPANY | $120,000 |
| DEFINITION THEATRE COMPANY | $120,000 |
| CHICAGO CHILDREN'S THEATRE | $100,000 |
| REMY BUMPPO THEATRE COMPANY | $50,000 |
| THEATRE WIT | $50,000 |
| SHATTERED GLOBE THEATRE | $50,000 |
| FILAMENT THEATRE | $25,000 |
| LOOKINGGLASS THEATRE COMPANY | $10,000 |
| CHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA | $5,000 |
| PORCHLIGHT MUSIC THEATRE | $5,000 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +49% since the first grant, against +41% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2024, 9 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $150k went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). 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
- SGShattered Globe Theatre5× · 2017–2024 · $185k · revenue +104%
- TWTHEATER WIT NFP4× · 2021–2024 · $175k · revenue +39%
- TTTIMELINE THEATRE COMPANY3× · 2017–2024 · $155k · revenue +149%
Funded once
- DODEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS & SPECIAL EVENTSone grant, 2019 · $150k
- IAILLINOIS ARTS ALLIANCEgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue +41%
- CTCOLLABORACTION THEATRE COgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $25k · revenue +51%
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
The Story Theatre will pose questions, rather than provide answers. We develop and produce new work that is whimsical, melancholic, mythic in vision, and intimate in scale. We are run by a governing artistic ensemble, who ensures our work…
Pegasus Theatre Chicago is a professional theater approaching 45 years of supporting Chicagos diverse community by producing accessible, socially relevant theatre and promoting the development of new artists for the stage. Our mission is…
Create connections between diverse artists seeking mutual growth through collaboration.
We strive to create searing hot drama from bold new works to obscure buried treasures that builds empathy dissects cruelty and reveals broader truths. We realize these goals by transforming our tiny black box and its explosive immediacy…
Know Theatre is a small professional theatre showcasing voices, new works, & plays that embrace the inherent theatricality of the live experience. Know Theatre seeks to be a place where artists and audiences feel welcome to take artistic…
Teatro Vista Productions is a non-profit theatre-based company dedicated to multidisciplinary artists of color whose artistic expression on stage and beyond is rooted in the transformative power of owning and telling our own stories.
We strive to champion operatic works that are seldom performed, while advocating social change and providing Chicago emerging artists with performance opportunities.
Studio Theatre produces exceptional contemporary theatre in deliberately intimate spaces, fostering a more thoughtful, more empathetic, and more connected community, in Washington DC and beyond.
Lively productions presents new work for the stage by emerging artists, and seeks to create innovative theatrical opportunities in a world increasingly defined by real time interactions and new technologies
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Timeline Theatre Company and the most unlike its peers is World Relief Corp of National Association of Evangelicals. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 32 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 16% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
28 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 28 of the 46 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds The Chicago Community Trust ↗
- Who funds Shattered Globe Theatre ↗
- Who funds THEATER WIT NFP ↗
- Who funds TIMELINE THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds Lifeline Productions Inc ↗
- Who funds STEEP THEATRE ↗
- Who funds JACKALOPE THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds Albany Park Theater Project ↗
- Who funds DEFINITION THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS ARTS ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO CHILDREN'S THEATRE ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO ACADEMY FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds LOOKINGGLASS THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds Music Theatre Works Inc ↗
- Who funds Remy Bumppo Theatre Company ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds COLLABORACTION THEATRE CO ↗
- Who funds Cabinet of Curiosity Inc NFP ↗
- Who funds HOUSE THEATRE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds RAVEN THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds Gilloury Institute ↗
- Who funds THE HYPOCRITES ↗
- Who funds BROKEN NOSE THEATRE ↗
- Who funds STRAWDOG THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: The Chicago Community Trust · Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation · The Shubert Foundation Inc · Prince Foundation · League of Chicago Theatres Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · The Leonard and Joan Foundation · Elizabeth F Cheney Foundation · Walder Foundation
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization Bayless Family Foundation funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- World Relief Corp of National Association of Evangelicals — 67% of income from government
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 your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not 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 12–24 months.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Bayless Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Bayless Family Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.