· Private foundation
The Banks Baldwin Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ASSEMBY FOR THE ARTS | $5,000 |
| LIFE ACT | $5,000 |
| COLLEGE NOW GREATER CLEVELAND | $4,500 |
| FAIRMONT MONTESSORI SCHOOL | $4,000 |
| TALESPINNER CHILDRENS THEATRE | $3,500 |
| BRITE ENERGY INNOVATORS | $3,500 |
| NEAR WEST THEATRE | $3,500 |
| AMERICA SCORES CLEVELAND | $3,500 |
| LAKE ERIE INK | $3,500 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF NE OH | $3,000 |
| EVANS SCHOLARS FOUNDATION | $3,000 |
| CLEVELAND-MARSHALL LAW SCHOOL | $3,000 |
| SEEDS OF LITERACY | $3,000 |
| HERITAGE FOUNDATION CUP | $3,000 |
| DAILY DOSE OF READING | $3,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $29k) 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.
41 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2024, 23 since wound down; 13 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, 64% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $31k 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
- TWTHEATRE WORKSHOP OF NANTUCKET INC4× · 2018–2021 · $28k · revenue +48%
- TCTHE CLEVELAND MUSIC SCHOOL SETTLEMENT7× · 2017–2024 · $25k · revenue +92%
- LLIFEACT7× · 2017–2024 · $23k · revenue +76%
Funded once
- NCNANTUCKET COMMUNITY MUSIC CENTERone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +12%
- HMHIGH MOUNTAIN INSTITUTE INCone grant, 2019 · $5k · revenue -19%
- DTDUNHAM TAVERN MUSEUM & GARDENSgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $5k · revenue +178%
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.
Cal champions creative learning, drives educational innovation, and transforms lives through collaborative efforts involving teaching artists, students, educators, and communities.
The mission of cleveland leadership center (the organization) is to build a continuum of civic leaders committed to our community's excellence by serving as a catalyst for civic engagement. the organization achieves its mission by…
The mission of the cleveland museum of art (cma) is to fulfill its dual roles as one of the world's most distinguished comprehensive art museums and as one of northeastern ohio's principal civic and cultural institutions. the museum,…
The literacy cooperative of cleveland was formed for public, charitable, scientific, and educational purposes relating to the improvement of the literacy rate in the greater cleveland area.
Dobama theatre, inc. is dedicated to premiering important new plays by established & emerging playwrights in professional productions of the highest quality. through theatrical production, community engagement, and education programming,…
Balletmet will celebrate dance by engaging the community through quality performances, instruction, education programs, and creation of new work.
The city club of cleveland's mission is to create conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive. we do this in pursuit of our vision of strong, informed individuals and communities that prize freedom of speech and civil, civic…
Clci facilitates the ongoing engagement of the greater cincinnati community to promote the development of all schools as community learning centers, each with a set of financially self-sustaining, co-located community partners.
The cleveland arts prize identifies, rewards, publicly honors and promotes those creative artists whose original work and accomplishments have set a standard of excellence to which other artists can aspire. additionally, the cleveland arts…
Literary Cleveland assists writers and readers at all stages of development, promotes new and existing literature of the highest quality, and advances Northeast Ohio as a vital center of diverse voices and visions.
Mission: for all of our students to achieve optimal health by integrating mental and physical well-being and life purpose. values: we will improve the lives of our students and our community. we will fight inherently inequitable systems.…
The cleveland pops orchestra, led by conductor carl topilow, performs the highest quality symphonic pops music to entertain and enrich a wide and diverse audience and provides educational programs to develop an enduring appreciation of…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Family Promise of Greater Cleveland and the most unlike its peers is Contemporary Youth Orchestra. 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 27 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
55 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. 55 of the 91 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 THEATRE WORKSHOP OF NANTUCKET INC ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND MUSIC SCHOOL SETTLEMENT ↗
- Who funds LIFEACT ↗
- Who funds ACHIEVEMENT CENTERS FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds LAKE ERIE INK ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE NOW GREATER CLEVELAND INC ↗
- Who funds ASSEMBLY FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HELLO NEIGHBOR ↗
- Who funds SHAKER LAKES REGIONAL NATURE CENTER DBA NATURE CENTER AT SHAKER LAKES ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds CUYAHOGA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND KIDS' BOOK BANK ↗
- Who funds LAKE ERIE COUNCIL BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds MONTESSORI DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIPS ↗
- Who funds INLET DANCE THEATRE ↗
- Who funds FREE ARTS FOR ABUSED CHILDREN OF NEW YORK CITY INC ↗
- Who funds SEEDS OF LITERACY ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF NORTHEAST OHIO ↗
- Who funds NEDERLANDSE SCHOOL CLEVELAND INC ↗
- Who funds EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds DAILY DOSE OF READING ↗
- Who funds NANTUCKET COMMUNITY MUSIC CENTER ↗
- Who funds HIGH MOUNTAIN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds DUNHAM TAVERN MUSEUM & GARDENS ↗
- Who funds ROOTS OF AMERICAN MUSIC ↗
- Who funds NEAR WEST THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds CITY YEAR INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICA SCORES CLEVELAND ↗
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 Cleveland Foundation · The Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation · The George Gund Foundation · Treu Mart Fund · The Abington Foundation · Cavaliers Youth Foundation · The Reinberger Foundation · Martha Holden Jennings Foundation · The Helen F & Louis Stolier Family Foundation · Jewish Federation of Cleveland · Thomas H White Fdn Ta · The Sk Wellman 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 The Banks Baldwin 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.
- City Year Inc — 11% of income from government
- Beyond Soccer Inc — 7% of income from government
- Nantucket Community Music Center — 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 The Banks Baldwin Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Banks Baldwin 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.