· Public charity
Build-A-Bear Foundation Inc
Build-a-bear foundation seeks to add a little more heart to life by sharing hugs, inspiring creativity, and making days a little bit brighter for those in need.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 8 grants below total $1,185,000 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,670,696 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $485,696 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k5 grants · $55k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $130k
- $250k+1 grant · $1.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| First Book | $1,000,000 |
| Make A Wish Foundation of America | $75,000 |
| American Red Cross | $55,000 |
| Make A Wish Missouri | $15,000 |
| Marine Toys for Tots | $10,000 |
| National Urban League | $10,000 |
| First Responders Children's Foundation | $10,000 |
| Pflag Inc | $10,000 |
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.
Your human-services grants (FY20–24, $579k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% of those 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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.
10 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- MTMARINE TOYS FOR TOTS FOUNDATION5× · 2020–2024 · $460k · revenue +45%
MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF AMERICA5× · 2020–2024 · $429k · revenue +30%- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches5× · 2020–2024 · $429k · revenue +38%
Funded once
- BBABY2BABY4× · 2020–2023 · $150k · revenue +15%
- SLSt Louis Community Foundationone grant, 2020 · $100k
- TTTHE TOY FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $53k · revenue +206%
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 organization's mission is to relentlessly pursue a better world for every child. unicef usa advances the global mission of unicef by rallying the american public to support the world's most vulnerable children. through fundraising,…
Together, we create life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses.
The make-a-wish foundation of the mid-atlantic creates life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses.
Together, we create life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses.
Child welfare league of america engages its network of public and private agencies and partners to advance policies, best practices, and collaborative strategies that result in better outcomes for vulnerable children, youth, and families.
Childfund alliance is a global network of 11 child-focused development and humanitarian organizations working in more than 70 countries. we help nearly 30 million children and their families to overcome poverty and the underlying…
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
We believe every child in america should have equal opportunity and resources to engage in a quality education. by partnering with teachers and students in under-resourced schools, we provide the support needed to create equitable learning…
The children's hospital of philadelphia, the oldest hospital in the united states dedicated exclusively to pediatrics, strives to be the world leader in the advancement of health care for children by integrating excellent patient care,…
Together, we create life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses.
Save the children is an international nonprofit children's relief and development organization. our mission is to inspire breakthroughs in the way the world treats children and to achieve immediate and lasting change in their lives.
Organization's mission to improve health outcomes for children; be a leader in creating innovative solutions to pediatric healthcare problems; and excel in care, advocacy, research. as the nation's children's hospital, the mission of…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Make-a-Wish Foundation of America and the most unlike its peers is National Law Enforcement and Firefighters Childrens Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 33 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
26 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.
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 FIRST BOOK ↗
- Who funds MARINE TOYS FOR TOTS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREATER ST LOUIS INC ↗
- Who funds BABY2BABY ↗
- Who funds St Louis Black Authors of Childrens Literature ↗
- Who funds SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF MISSOURI AND KANSAS ↗
- Who funds THE TOY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Children's Hospital Los Angeles ↗
- Who funds Mid-Ohio Foodbank ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE INC ↗
- Who funds National Law Enforcement and Firefighters Childrens Foundation ↗
- Who funds PFLAG ↗
- Who funds KABOOM INC ↗
- Who funds MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds ST LOUIS AQUARIUM AT UNION STATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CASA OF LOS ANGELES ↗
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 Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Build-A-Bear Foundation Inc 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.
- Shriners Hospitals for Children — 0% 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.