· Public charity
Artsbuild
ARTSBUILD provides general operating and project support grants to local arts organizations, community groups and individual artists; arts education programs; and arts leadership programs all towards the goal of increasing access to the arts with more arts in more places.
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 24 grants below total $601,400 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,517,674 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $916,274 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 $10k9 grants · $73k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $178k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $351k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HUNTER MUSEUM OF ART | $94,000 |
| CHATTANOOGA SYMPHONY & OPERA | $93,820 |
| CREATIVE DISCOVERY MUSEUM | $83,000 |
| CHATTANOOGA THEATRE CENTRE | $80,000 |
| CHATTANOOGA BALLET | $40,000 |
| CHATTANOOGA BOYS CHOIR | $19,000 |
| SONG BIRDS FOUNDATION INC | $15,700 |
| SPLASH | $15,150 |
| THE POP-UP PROJECT | $15,000 |
| SCENIC CITY CLAY ARTS | $14,000 |
| EAST LAKE EXPRESSION ENGINE | $13,000 |
| BE THE CHANGE YOUTH INITIATIVE | $12,880 |
| ASSOCIATION FOR VISUAL ARTS | $12,000 |
| SOUNDCORP | $11,000 |
| STOVE WORKS | $10,000 |
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 (FY18–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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 +21% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
28 repeat relationships — 24 still active in FY2025, 4 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
- HMHunter Museum of American Art8× · 2018–2025 · $1.8M · revenue +127%
- CSCHATTANOOGA SYMPHONY & OPERA ASSOCIATION8× · 2018–2025 · $1.7M · revenue +21%
- CTCHATTANOOGA THEATRE CENTRE INC8× · 2018–2025 · $632k · revenue +67%
Funded once
- CSChattanooga Symphony & Opera Associationone grant, 2017 · $200k
- HMHunter Museum of Artone grant, 2017 · $200k
- HMHunter Museum of Art - Endowment2× · 2017–2018 · $150k
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.
Cultural enrichment through arts programs
Dedicated to the creation, presentation and advancement of contemporary art through its exhibitions, educational programming and studio art program.
To make savannah a destination for art and culture in the southeast by supporting established and emerging artists, engaging a diverse community with creative programming, and developing awareness and appreciation of the arts.
JazzArts Charlotte's (JazzArts) mission is connecting the cultural community and developing an audience for jazz through quality education, performance and musician support. JazzArts' vision is to be a catalyst for cultural enrichment and…
The mission of RISE Chattanooga is to provide an array of cultural arts programming to create new opportunities for creative experimentation and community empowerment in Chattanooga.
Improve quality of life for seniors by stimulating their minds, creativity, and sense of self through arts programs that engage, educate, and entertain.
The mission of the arts association in newton county is to encourage youth and adults in the community to participate in the arts both as audience and as artists and to present world-class artists to all the citizens of the metro atlanta…
Tri-Star Arts serves Tennessee by cultivating and spotlighting the contemporary visual art scenes in each region while fostering a unified state-wide art scene. Tri-Star Arts programs promote art dialogue between the different cities in…
Street Theatre Company is a professional non-profit arts organization dedicated to pioneering innovative modern theater in Nashville. Our aim is to engage our audience with universal stories that speak to the human experience and challenge…
art education
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Bessie Smith Cultural Center and the most unlike its peers is Mngk Garvey Program. 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 14 years old; the field is 15. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 5% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 54 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 Hunter Museum of American Art ↗
- Who funds CHATTANOOGA SYMPHONY & OPERA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Creative Discovery Museum ↗
- Who funds CHATTANOOGA THEATRE CENTRE INC ↗
- Who funds THE CHATTANOOGA BALLET ↗
- Who funds CHATTANOOGA BOYS CHOIR ↗
- Who funds THE POP-UP PROJECT ↗
- Who funds SCENIC CITY CLAY ARTS ↗
- Who funds SPLASH ↗
- Who funds ART120 ↗
- Who funds BALLET TENNESSEE INC ↗
- Who funds EAST LAKE EXPRESSION ENGINE ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN LIT ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds SOUNDCORPS INC ↗
- Who funds THE BESSIE SMITH CULTURAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds CONTEMPORARY PERFORMING ARTS OF CHATTANOOGA INC ↗
- Who funds SONGBIRDS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ASSOCIATION FOR VISUAL ARTISTS ↗
- Who funds STOVE WORKS ↗
- Who funds HART GALLERY TN ↗
- Who funds Be The Change Youth Initiative ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON MUSEUM OF DECORATIVE ARTS ↗
- Who funds DYNAMO STUDIOS ↗
- Who funds CHATTANOOGA GIRLS CHOIR ↗
- Who funds THE CHATTERY ↗
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: Lyndhurst Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga Inc · Robert F Stone Foundation AKA Bobby Stone Foundation · Benwood Foundation Inc · Footprint Foundation Inc · Chattanooga Christian Community Foundation · The Chattanooga Tourism Foundation · Humanities Tennessee · The Hacker and Kitty Caldwell Family Foundation Inc · George R Johnson Family Foundation · Schillhahn-Huskey Foundation · McKenzie Foundation D/B/A the McKenzie 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 Artsbuild 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.