· Private foundation
Susan and Stephen Baird Family Foundation C/O Stephen W Baird
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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k22 grants · $375k
- $50k–250k11 grants · $1.2M
- $250k+2 grants · $645k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HARVARD UNIVERSITY | $335,000 |
| THE MORTON ARBORETUM | $310,000 |
| CHICAGO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $247,500 |
| THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND | $200,000 |
| FIDELITY CHARITABLESHURWOOD FUND | $170,900 |
| CHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA WBEZ | $125,000 |
| FIDELITY CHARITABLEBAIRD & WARNER GOOD WILL WORKS | $100,000 |
| FIDELITY CHARITABLEGASTEVICH FAMILY GIVING FUND | $85,210 |
| FIDELITY CHARITABLELUCY BAIRD GIFT FUND | $85,210 |
| CAROLE ROBERTSON CENTER FOR LEARNING | $65,000 |
| ALLIES FOR COMMUNITY BUSINESS | $50,000 |
| EVERGREEN CLIMATE INNOVATIONS | $50,000 |
| ASPEN INSTITUTE | $50,000 |
| CHICAGO MEDIA PROJECT | $35,000 |
| AMERICAN RIVERS | $30,000 |
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, $152k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +32% since the first grant, against +23% for the ones you funded once.
53 repeat relationships — 22 still active in FY2024, 31 since wound down; 12 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, 75% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $471k 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
- TMTHE MORTON ARBORETUM5× · 2020–2024 · $1.1M · revenue +100%
- CPCHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA INC3× · 2020–2022 · $629k · revenue +24%
THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND5× · 2020–2024 · $578k · revenue +113%
Funded once
- TUTHE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOISone grant, 2021 · $165k
- UWUNITED WAY OF METRO CHICAGO COVID-19 RESPONDone grant, 2020 · $50k
- BIBENTON INSTITUTEone grant, 2021 · $5k
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.
See schedule onorc at the university of chicago conducts research and data science on critical societal issues to guide decision-making and the development of programs and public policy. our experts identify relationships and trends, and…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Provide post-secondary education leading to a baccalaureate degree. Program service expenditures are made in conjunction with the operation of a liberal arts college spread over 107 acres with approximately 63 educational and support…
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
Be a catalyst! Ignite our community's passion for nature and science.
Uchicago medicine network, inc. supports and encourages health and human service by providing support, directly or indirectly to ingalls memorial hospital, the university of chicago medical center, and other related tax-exempt…
Illinois college is a co-educational institution of higher education learning providing a four-year educational program leading to the baccalaureate degree. illinois college is a community committed to the highest standards of scholarship…
The chicago public education fund (the fund) is a nonprofit organization that improves public schools in chicago by investing in the talented educators who lead them.
The Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
Help improve policy and decision making through research and analysis.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Illinois Humanities Council Inc and the most unlike its peers is Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. 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 44 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% 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.
76 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. 76 of the 106 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 President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds THE MORTON ARBORETUM ↗
- Who funds The Chicago Community Trust ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND ↗
- Who funds ANDERSON RANCH ARTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds EVERGREEN CLIMATE INNOVATIONS ↗
- Who funds ALLIES FOR COMMUNITY BUSINESS INC ↗
- Who funds START EARLY ↗
- Who funds Carole Robertson Center for Learning ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN RIVERS INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO MEDIA PROJECT ↗
- Who funds FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds Vocel Viewing our Children as Emerging Leaders ↗
- Who funds WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds ROARING FORK PUBLIC RADIO INC ↗
- Who funds Erie Family Health Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds Writers Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds The Center for Investigative Reporting formrly Foundation for National Progress ↗
- Who funds PROOFING STATION ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds WORKING IN THE SCHOOLS INC ↗
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 · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Field Foundation of Illinois · Circle of Service Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Vivo Foundation · Dr Scholl Foundation · Builders Vision 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 Susan and Stephen Baird Family Foundation C/O Stephen W Baird 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.
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Wesleyan University — 1% 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 Susan and Stephen Baird Family Foundation C/O Stephen W Baird?
Find your warmest path to Susan and Stephen Baird Family Foundation C/O Stephen W Baird 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.