· Public charity
Arts Council Santa Cruz County
The organization's mission is to generate creativity, vibrancy, and connection within santa cruz county; to fund and support artists in the community, arts education and effective community collaborations in the arts.
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.
The 9 grants below total $72,050 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $248,692 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $176,642 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 · FY2025
- Under $10k8 grants · $57k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $15k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE 418 PROJECT | $14,750 |
| FRACTURED ATLAS | $8,500 |
| EL SISTEMA | $7,800 |
| WATSONVILLE FILM FESTIVAL | $7,000 |
| WATSONVILLE TAIKO GROUP | $7,000 |
| SENDEROS | $7,000 |
| TANNERY WORLD DANCE | $7,000 |
| CABRILLO FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC | $7,000 |
| ARTE DEL CORAZON | $6,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% of your 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.
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 +39% since the first grant, against -6% for the ones you funded once.
29 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 21 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 FY2025, 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
- CFCABRILLO FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC9× · 2017–2025 · $106k · revenue +82%
- KJKuumbwa Jazz Society6× · 2017–2022 · $76k · revenue +14%
- SCSANTA CRUZ COUNTY SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION6× · 2017–2022 · $64k · revenue +41%
Funded once
- MNMISCELLANEOUS NOT MORE THAN 5000one grant, 2017 · $98k
- ROREGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIAone grant, 2018 · $11k
- RERoyal Eagle Bear Productionsone grant, 2024 · $7k
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 mission of the San Jose Chamber Orchestra (SJCO) is to share exciting, though-provoking, and vibrant Music by contemporary and time-honored composers reflecting the cultural diversity of our everchanging community, and to support and…
To champion the performing arts in Santa Rosa for all. To connect people with one another and with art that can enrich their lives. To embrace people from all backgrounds. To provide exceptional service to our resident companies and to…
Stimulate and promote interest in ballet, provide high quality ballet performances at a reasonable cost to general public, while providing opportunities to local dancers, and enhancing cultural awareness and diversity in the South…
To present chamber music concerts in San Jose performed by top ensembles from the Bay Area, across America, and around the world. To enrich our audience experience through post-concert Q&As, program notes, and meet-the-composer…
Maintain chamber orchestra and operatic company for the presentation of symphonic music and opera
Occidental Center for the Arts exists to provide a welcoming and accessible venue for the performing and visual arts in Sonoma County California for local regional national and international artists. our mission is to enrich our community…
The presentation of symphonic and chamber music
Constella Arts produces performances, educational presentations and digital content, along the way changing how people perceive classical music and the performing arts.
The orchestra's mission is to provide cultural enrichment, education and entertainment to the community through presenting professional quality orchestral, chamber and solo performances at an affordable price; provide opportunities for…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Motion Pacific Dance Inc and the most unlike its peers is Activities 4 All. 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 28 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 8% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
28 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 28 of the 35 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 CABRILLO FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC ↗
- Who funds Kuumbwa Jazz Society ↗
- Who funds SANTA CRUZ COUNTY SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds SHAKESPEARE PLAY ON SANTA CRUZ SHAKESPEARE ↗
- Who funds SANTA CRUZ ART LEAGUE INC ↗
- Who funds EL SISTEMA SANTA CRUZ ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF ART AND HISTORY AT THE MCPHERSON CENTER ↗
- Who funds WATSONVILLE FILM FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds TANNERY WORLD DANCE & CULTURAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds PAJARO VALLEY ARTS COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds Esperanza Del Valle Inc ↗
- Who funds ACTIVITIES 4 ALL ↗
- Who funds SENDEROS ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF OLYMPIA STATION INC DBA TANDY BEAL & COMPANY ↗
- Who funds JEWEL THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds THE 418 PROJECT ↗
- Who funds WILLIAM JAMES ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Watsonville Taiko Group A Nonprofit Corp ↗
- Who funds SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAIN ART CENTER ↗
- Who funds INDEXICAL INC ↗
- Who funds Santa Cruz County Youth Symphony ↗
- Who funds MOTION PACIFIC DANCE INC ↗
- Who funds Santa Cruz Chamber Players ↗
- Who funds Santa Cruz County Actors Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds SANTA CRUZ BAROQUE FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds SANTA CRUZ BALLET THEATRE ↗
- Who funds COASTAL WATERSHED COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds MUSEO EDUARDO CARRILLO ↗
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: Community Foundation Santa Cruz County · Monterey Peninsula Foundation · The David and Lucile Packard Foundation · The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation · Volunteer Centers of Santa Cruz County · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Network for Good · 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 Arts Council Santa Cruz County 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.
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.