· Private foundation
The Baila 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 you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k15 grants · $29k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $26k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| University of Chicago | $26,000 |
| Music Will | $7,500 |
| Northwestern University | $5,000 |
| Marine Biological Laboratory | $5,000 |
| Basketball & Mentorship Academy | $3,000 |
| Goodman Theatre | $1,000 |
| Anti-Defamation League | $1,000 |
| CJE Senior Life | $1,000 |
| St James Cathedral | $1,000 |
| The Selfhelp Home | $1,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| Chicago Architecture Center | $600 |
| International Women Associates | $500 |
| Lincoln Park Zoo | $500 |
| Chicago Botanic Gardens | $400 |
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 (FY17–25, $12k) 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 +21% since the first grant, against +4% for the ones you funded once.
38 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2025, 26 since wound down; 4 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, 70% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $17k 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
University of Chicago8× · 2017–2025 · $89k · revenue +56%
Northwestern University7× · 2017–2025 · $58k · revenue +41%- ALANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE8× · 2017–2025 · $13k · revenue +78%
Funded once
- GTGoodman Theaterone grant, 2022 · $6k
- ACAmerican Committe for the Weizmann Institute of Scienceone grant, 2021 · $3k
- ACAmerican Committe for the Weitmann Institute of Scienceone grant, 2020 · $3k
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 educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
The Chicago History Museum strives to be a destination for learning, inspiration, and civic engagement. Through dynamic exhibitions, tours, programs, digital resources, and special events, the Museum connects people to Chicago's history…
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
The music institute of chicago ("music institute") leads people toward a lifelong engagement with music, by providing widely accessible resources for high quality music teaching, performing, and service activities.
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…
Chicago opera theater expands the tradition of opera as a living art form by engaging lovers of music and storytelling through innovative experiences, predominantly of new and rarely performed works.
Chicago sun-times serves the public interest by strengthening the well-being of our local communities and our democracy through independent local journalism.
The Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University ("The Auditorium"), an Illinois not-for-profit corporation, is committed to presenting the finest in international, cultural, community and educational programming to Chicago and to the…
To inspire conservation leadership by connecting people with wildlife and nature.
To give members the ability to control their financial destiny by providing members with the means to satisfy their needs for financial services in a comfortable family-like environment. in doing so, the credit union strives to maintain…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Theatre Group Inc and the most unlike its peers is Court Theatre Fund. 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 54 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
41 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. 41 of the 73 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 University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS MUSLIM COMMUNIITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Chicago Architecture Foundation ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO SHAKESPEARE THEATER ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL FOR JEWISH ELDERLY ↗
- Who funds MUSIC WILL INC ↗
- Who funds PANDAS NETWORKORG ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds International Women Associates Inc ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO JEWISH DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ↗
- Who funds BLIND SERVICE ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE CHICAGO RIVER ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE LATIN SCHOOL OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds THE SELFHELP HOME INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO THEATRE GROUP 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 · Walder Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · AbbVie Foundation · Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 The Baila 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.
- Marine Biological Laboratory — 20% 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.