· Private foundation
Bayless Family Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What it funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2024.
Where the money goes
Grants by size, and the largest recipients.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k1 grant · $10k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $86k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $533k
- $250k+1 grant · $255k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NATIONAL MUSEUM OF MEXICAN ART | $255,000 |
| LOOKINGGLASS THEATRE COMPANY | $135,000 |
| CHICAGO COMMUNITY TRUST | $98,334 |
| URBAN THEATER CHICAGO | $60,000 |
| NEO-FUTURISTS THEATER | $60,000 |
| DEFINITION THEATRE COMPANY | $60,000 |
| TIMELINE THEATRE COMPANY | $60,000 |
| AMERICAN BLUES THEATER | $60,000 |
| FILAMENT THEATRE | $25,000 |
| RIVENDELL THEATRE ENSEMBLE | $25,000 |
| CHICAGO DANZTHEATER ENSEMBLE | $15,750 |
| PORCHLIGHT MUSIC THEATRE | $10,000 |
| CHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA | $10,000 |
| CHICAGO COMMUNITY TRUST | $9,802 |
Does the money reach high-need areas?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.
Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
How this is measured
How this is measured
Who it funds again
Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.
Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +49% since the first grant, against +17% for those funded once.
18 repeat relationships: 6 still active in FY2025, 12 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 39% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $476k went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
How this is measured
Backed again, and grew
- TTTIMELINE THEATRE COMPANY4× · 2017–2025 · $215k · revenue +149%
- DTDEFINITION THEATRE COMPANY3× · 2021–2025 · $205k · revenue +155%
- LTLOOKINGGLASS THEATRE COMPANY6× · 2017–2025 · $187k · revenue +40%
Funded once
- DODEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS & SPECIAL EVENTSone grant, 2019 · $150k
- CCCHICAGO CHILDREN'S THEATREone grant, 2024 · $100k · revenue -17%
- IAILLINOIS ARTS ALLIANCEgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue +41%
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.
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.
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…
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 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…
The Alchemy Theatre's mission is to present stories with fierce resonant truth, in an intimate and inclusive environment, with professionalism, and in compelling collaboration with quality theatre artists at large.
Artists repertory theatre's mission is to produce intimate, provacative theatre and provide a home for a diverse community of artists and audiences to take creative risks.
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.
To provide an artistic home for the development and production of contemporary plays that engage and challenge a diverse audience.
How this is measured
31 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. 31 of the 52 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.
Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee
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.
- Who funds The Chicago Community Trust ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL MUSEUM OF MEXICAN ART FKA MEXICAN FINE ARTS CENTER MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds TIMELINE THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds DEFINITION THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds LOOKINGGLASS THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds Shattered Globe Theatre ↗
- Who funds THEATER WIT NFP ↗
- Who funds Albany Park Theater Project ↗
- Who funds JACKALOPE THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds Lifeline Productions Inc ↗
- Who funds STEEP THEATRE ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO CHILDREN'S THEATRE ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS ARTS ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO ACADEMY FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN BLUES THEATER NFP ↗
- Who funds Music Theatre Works Inc ↗
- Who funds Remy Bumppo Theatre Company ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds Cabinet of Curiosity Inc NFP ↗
- Who funds COLLABORACTION THEATRE CO ↗
- Who funds Rivendell Theatre Ensemble ↗
- Who funds HOUSE THEATRE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds RAVEN THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds STRAWDOG THEATRE COMPANY ↗
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.
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
How this is measured
How much its grantees rely on government
Each dot is one organization Bayless Family Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Bayless Family Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.
- World Relief Corp of National Association of Evangelicals: 67% of income from government
How this is measured
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.
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