The Steward Family Foundation is a St. Louis-based private family foundation established in 2013 by David Steward — founder and chairman of World Wide Technology — and his wife, Thelma Steward. It operates across three core areas: the arts, education, and human services, directing resources toward underrepresented communities with a particular emphasis on the St. Louis region. At a time when concentrated wealth in the hands of a few raises serious questions about how that money gets used, the Stewards offer a case study in family-led philanthropy that stays close to both its values and its hometown.
The Origins of the Steward Family Foundation
David Steward didn’t come from money. He graduated from Central Missouri State University in 1973, worked his way through sales roles at companies including Missouri Pacific Railroad and FedEx — where he was recognized as salesman of the year — before co-founding World Wide Technology (WWT) in 1990 with Jim Kavanaugh. That company is now the largest Black-owned business in the United States, pulling in around $20 billion in annual revenue.
The decision to create the Steward Family Foundation in 2013 came, by the Stewards’ own account, from faith and a sense of obligation to give back. Thelma Steward had worked as a nurse and brought her own perspective on community need. Together, they built something that now ranks among the largest private family foundations in the country.
Mission and Guiding Principles
The foundation’s stated mission is to “steward the Word of God through acts of service to help create opportunities for underrepresented and under-resourced individuals and communities.” That language is intentional — Christian faith runs through almost every aspect of how the foundation operates and who it funds.
Three pillars define the approach: faith, family, and flexibility. “Flexibility” is particularly notable in the foundation’s operating model. It doesn’t treat grantmaking as a formula. Instead, it practices what it calls flexible giving within each priority area, adjusting support based on what organizations actually need rather than locking them into rigid categories.
The Three Core Giving Areas
The foundation’s work sits in three buckets: arts, education, and human services. Each one has a clear philosophy behind it, not just a list of eligible recipients. Arts funding is tied to the idea that creative expression helps communities heal and build shared identity. Education giving focuses heavily on STEM, reflecting David Steward’s own path through the tech sector. Human services — the foundation’s largest area by dollar volume — targets basic needs, housing stability, mental health, and case management for vulnerable families.
These aren’t treated as separate silos. The foundation consciously looks for overlap, funding organizations where education and human services intersect, or where arts programming serves a therapeutic or social function.
Human Services: The Foundation’s Largest Commitment
In terms of sheer dollars, human services is where the Steward Family Foundation puts most of its weight. The bulk of this giving flows through the United Way of Greater St. Louis, which has received the foundation’s largest single grants over the years. In 2023 alone, the foundation distributed over $11.5 million in total grants, and in 2024, around $9.6 million went out the door.
Grants in this category support organizations working on housing, homelessness, mental health services, and basic-needs assistance. The foundation specifically describes its interest as helping “vulnerable individuals and families” find support during periods of hardship — not just emergency aid, but case management and counseling that can produce longer-term change.
Education Giving and the STEM Focus
David Steward’s rise through the technology industry gives the foundation’s education strategy a particular shape. STEM education for underrepresented youth is a clear priority, built on the premise that science, technology, engineering, and math careers represent some of the highest-paying and fastest-growing opportunities in today’s economy.
Grantees have included Lincoln University, the Washington University School of Medicine, and the University of Missouri–St. Louis. In 2018, the Stewards gave $1.3 million to UMSL to create the David and Thelma Steward Institute for Jazz Studies — an investment that sits at the intersection of education and cultural preservation. The Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation, which works with youth in East St. Louis, has also received support. David Steward also co-founded STEM City USA, an immersive metaverse platform designed to bring STEM concepts to underrepresented youth through digital experiences.
Supporting the Arts in St. Louis and Beyond
The foundation’s arts funding goes well beyond writing checks to mainstream cultural institutions. It includes organizations like ARRAY Alliance, the nonprofit founded by filmmaker Ava DuVernay that uses storytelling as a vehicle for social justice. Film Independent, the Lower Depth Theatre Ensemble in California, and the Kranzberg Arts Foundation in St. Louis have all received support.
Locally, the Stewards have been significant backers of the St. Louis Symphony and the St. Louis Art Museum. Jazz holds a special place in their giving — David Steward has spoken publicly about jazz as one of the original American art forms, pioneered by people of color, and worth preserving. Jazz at Lincoln Center is among the foundation’s grantees. The foundation also supports Step Afrika!, a dance company that connects African diasporic dance traditions with community programming.
Faith-Based Grantmaking
Christian faith isn’t a background detail for this foundation — it’s central. The Steward Family Foundation counts a notable number of faith-based organizations among its grantees, including Potter’s House International Pastoral Alliance and Ezra Vision Ministries. This is a deliberate reflection of the founders’ worldview.
The foundation uses the phrase “eternal return on investment” to describe what it’s aiming for, a framing that frames charitable giving not as charity in the transactional sense, but as something with meaning beyond the immediate outcome. It doesn’t make every grant explicitly religious, but the framework it operates within is grounded in that perspective.
Multi-Generational Philanthropy
One of the more distinctive features of the Steward Family Foundation is its three-generational structure. The Stewards’ adult children are actively involved, and their own professional paths have informed the foundation’s giving directions. David Steward II, an Academy Award-winning producer, founded Polarity, a company with holdings in comics, graphic novels, animation, and streaming. His profile in the entertainment world has connected the foundation more deeply to film and media arts.
Kimberly Steward founded K Period Media, a film production company. In 2023, the K Period Media Foundation launched the Screamwriters Fellowship in partnership with Blumhouse and Sundance, specifically supporting underrepresented writers working in the horror genre. That initiative extends the family’s commitment to arts access into a niche creative space that often lacks diversity at the writing level.
The Role of United Way of Greater St. Louis
The United Way of Greater St. Louis has served as a key conduit for the foundation’s human services giving. Most of the foundation’s recent large-scale grantmaking has been administered through this partnership. This isn’t unusual for a family foundation that wants regional impact without building the infrastructure to manage dozens of direct relationships with smaller nonprofits.
It also means that organizations hoping to connect with the Steward Family Foundation’s funding are often better served by building relationships with the United Way of Greater St. Louis, since the foundation itself doesn’t accept unsolicited applications and doesn’t publish contact information for direct outreach.
Civic Recognition and Awards
The Steward family was named as the 2023 Leadership Award honorees by FOCUS St. Louis, recognized for their role as civic leaders across generations. This recognition reflected not just the foundation’s financial contributions but the family’s broader involvement in regional boards and community institutions.
David Steward has served on the boards of Washington University in St. Louis, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Horatio Alger Association — an organization that honors American leaders who have overcome adversity to achieve success. These institutional ties have helped the foundation maintain credibility and access within St. Louis civic life.
Connection to World Wide Technology Raceway
The foundation’s work doesn’t exist in a vacuum separate from the Steward family’s business activities. In 2019, World Wide Technology made a naming rights investment in the World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, Illinois, just across the river from St. Louis. That partnership wasn’t purely commercial — it was framed as a commitment to STEM education and diversity in motorsports, connecting the business world’s marketing interest with the foundation’s stated priorities.
The Stewards have also expressed interest in the Wendell Scott Foundation, which honors one of the first African American drivers in NASCAR and the first to win a Cup Series race. That support reflects a broader interest in documenting and preserving Black history in spaces where that history has been systematically overlooked.
Geographic Focus and Community Roots
St. Louis is where most of the Steward Family Foundation’s energy lands. This isn’t incidental — the Stewards built their wealth there, raised their family there, and remain rooted in the city’s civic fabric. The foundation’s human services giving stays mostly local, and even its arts and education grants tend to favor Missouri-based institutions alongside national organizations.
Grants have also reached into Virginia and Washington, D.C., particularly for organizations connected to national advocacy work in education and human services. But the geographic heart of the foundation’s work is the Greater St. Louis area.
Grantmaking Scale and Financial Profile
The Steward Family Foundation is a private foundation, meaning it doesn’t raise money from the public — it distributes from its own endowment and family contributions. Grant awards have ranged from around $1,500 to over $11 million in a single year, with most grants falling well below $500,000. The wide range reflects the flexibility the foundation values — it can write a meaningful check to a small community theater and a transformative grant to a major educational institution in the same year.
According to IRS filings and grant databases, the foundation gave out $11.5 million in 2023 and approximately $9.6 million in 2024. The number of active grants in any given year has been relatively small, suggesting larger individual commitments rather than a high-volume, lower-dollar approach.
What Sets This Foundation Apart
Not every wealthy family that establishes a foundation makes it a genuinely active force in its community. The Steward Family Foundation stands out for several reasons. It involves three generations, integrating the family’s professional experience in technology, entertainment, and media into its giving strategy. It maintains a consistent geographic commitment to St. Louis rather than drifting toward national prestige projects. And it’s transparent about the values — faith, family, community service — that drive decisions.
The foundation also avoids the trap of spreading itself too thin. Its three core areas are clear, and within each one, there’s a coherent logic connecting individual grants to a broader goal. That’s not as common as it should be in family philanthropy.
Future Directions
STEM education appears to be an expanding area. David Steward’s co-founding of STEM City USA signals where his personal attention is focused, and foundations tend to reflect their founders’ current interests. The platform’s focus on underrepresented youth in immersive digital learning environments represents a new angle on education access.
The family’s media and entertainment connections — through both David II and Kimberly — suggest that arts funding tied to storytelling and film will remain strong. The Screamwriters Fellowship is a small but pointed example of how the next generation is finding its own expression within the foundation’s broader mission.
Why the Steward Family Foundation Matters
What the Steward Family Foundation ultimately represents is a specific argument about what wealth should do when it returns to the community. David Steward grew up without significant advantages, built something extraordinarily large, and has spent the years since directing resources back toward people and places that don’t always attract major philanthropic attention. The emphasis on underrepresented communities isn’t a talking point — it shows up in who actually receives the money.
For St. Louis in particular, a city that has struggled with deep structural inequalities and uneven development, a foundation of this scale with this level of local commitment matters. It’s not the only answer to those challenges, but it’s a real one.
FAQ
What is the Steward Family Foundation?
The Steward Family Foundation is a St. Louis-based private family foundation founded in 2013 by David and Thelma Steward. It directs grants toward the arts, education, and human services, with a focus on underrepresented communities in the St. Louis region and beyond.
Who founded the Steward Family Foundation and why?
David Steward, founder of World Wide Technology — the largest Black-owned company in the United States — and his wife Thelma established the foundation in 2013. Their motivation was rooted in their Christian faith and a desire to create opportunities for under-resourced individuals and communities.
How can organizations apply for a grant from the Steward Family Foundation?
The Steward Family Foundation doesn’t accept unsolicited applications and doesn’t publish contact information for direct outreach. Organizations interested in funding are often encouraged to connect through the United Way of Greater St. Louis, which administers many of the foundation’s grants.
What types of organizations does the Steward Family Foundation fund?
The foundation funds organizations working in arts, STEM education, human services, housing, and faith-based programming. Grantees range from community-level nonprofits to larger institutions like Lincoln University and Jazz at Lincoln Center, with a strong geographic preference for St. Louis.
How much does the Steward Family Foundation give each year?
Grant totals have varied year to year. In 2023, the foundation distributed over $11.5 million, and in 2024, approximately $9.6 million went out. Individual grants have ranged from under $2,000 to over $11 million, depending on the initiative.
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