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Plinth

· Public charity

Big Medium

BIG MEDIUM supports artists through equitable and inclusive platforms to explore their practice and advance their careers.

$178k
Granted FY2020
3
Grants FY2020
1
States reached
$15k
Largest
01What you fund
01100% classified

What you funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY20172020.

Arts & Culture$233kHuman Services$11kReligion$8kCrime & Legal$6k
02FY2020 · 3 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

The 3 grants below total $29,802 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $178,043 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $148,241 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 · FY2020

  • Under $10k2 grants · $15k
  • $10k–50k1 grant · $15k
$7,529
Median grant
1
States reached
$123k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
SHINY OBJECT$15,032
NORTHERN-SOUTHERN$7,529
PRINT AUSTIN COLLECTIVE$7,241
02The need
03

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.

show:

Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–20) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 4% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

area typical 10%ATTENDANCE RECORDS: $32k → 10%REFUGEE SERVICES OF TEXAS: $6k → 14%THE PREEMPTIVE LOVE COALITION: $6k → 16%ATTENDANCE RECORDS: $5k → 10%AUSTIN MAKER GROUP: $21k → 10%AUSTIN MAKER GROUP: $15k → 10%AUSTIN MAKER GROUP: $12k → 10%SHINY OBJECT: $15k → 10%SHINY OBJECT: $8k → 10%SHINY OBJECT: $8k → 10%SHINY OBJECT: $5k → 10%PRINTAUSTIN COLLECTIVE: $19k → 10%MUSEUM OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT: $17k → 10%MUSEUM OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT: $17k → 10%PRINTAUSTIN COLLECTIVE: $14k → 10%DIMENSION GALLERY: $9k → 10%NORTHERN-SOUTHERN: $8k → 10%NORTHERN-SOUTHERN: $8k → 10%NORTHERN-SOUTHERN: $8k → 10%ICOSA COLLECTIVE: $7k → 10%PRINT AUSTIN COLLECTIVE: $7k → 10%CASA MARIANELLA: $6k → 10%AMERICAN GATEWAYS: $6k → 10%DIMENSION GALLERY: $200 → 10%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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.

03Your edge
repeat funding

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.

88%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$228k · 7 repeat orgs$30k to everyone else

And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +1098% since the first grant, against +55% for the ones you funded once.

7 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2020, 4 since wound down.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

7
5

Total granted

$228k
$30k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+1098%
+55%

Still filing today

29%
60%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2020, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’17’18’19’20
Arts & CultureCrime & LegalHealthOther

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

  • AM
    AUSTIN MAKER GROUP
    3× · 2017–2019 · $48k
  • PC
    PRINTAUSTIN COLLECTIVE
    3× · 2017–2020 · $40k · revenue +31% · 27% of their budget
  • SO
    SHINY OBJECT
    4× · 2017–2020 · $37k

Funded once

  • IC
    ICOSA COLLECTIVE
    one grant, 2019 · $7k · revenue +55%
  • RS
    REFUGEE SERVICES OF TEXAS INC
    one grant, 2017 · $6k · revenue +10%
  • CM
    CASA MARIANELLA INCgraduated
    one grant, 2017 · $6k · revenue +127%

Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Your field
04the grantee network

7 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2024.

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 20172024, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 7 of the 12 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.

2
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
4
Early backer (in before they grew)
5/7
Grantees still filing
6/7
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

AUSTIN MAKER GROUP — $47,912 · OtherAUSTIN MAKER GROUPSHINY OBJECT — $36,830 · OtherSHINY OBJECTATTENDANCE RECORDS — $36,584 · OtherATTENDANCE RECORDSNORTHERN-SOUTHERN LLC — $23,706 · OtherNORTHERN-SOUTHERN LLCDIMENSION GALLERY DBA SPRINGDALE STATION — $9,200 · OtherICOSA COLLECTIVE — $7,346 · Other+2 more — $11,378 · Other+2 morePRINTAUSTIN COLLECTIVE — $40,052 · Arts & CulturePRINTAUSTIN COLLECTIVEMUSEUM OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT — $33,977 · Arts & CultureMUSEUM OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENTAmerican Gateways — $5,689 · Crime & LegalTHE PREEMPTIVE LOVE COALITION — $5,689 · Health
Other$172,956Arts & Culture$74,029Crime & Legal$5,689Health$5,689

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$100k$1.0M$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetPRINTAUSTIN COLLECTIVE — $40,052 over 3y, 27% of budgetMUSEUM OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT — $33,977 over 2y, 30% of budgetREFUGEE SERVICES OF TEXAS INC — $5,689 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetCASA MARIANELLA INC — $5,689 over 1y, 0.4% of budgetAmerican Gateways — $5,689 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetTHE PREEMPTIVE LOVE COALITION — $5,689 over 1y, 0.1% of budget
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 PRINTAUSTIN COLLECTIVE
  • Who funds MUSEUM OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT
  • Who funds ICOSA COLLECTIVE
  • Who funds REFUGEE SERVICES OF TEXAS INC
  • Who funds CASA MARIANELLA INC
  • Who funds American Gateways
  • Who funds THE PREEMPTIVE LOVE COALITION

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.

United Way for Greater AustinTX13.6× affinity4 shared granteesties to 2 of 2Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: United Way for Greater Austin · Better Business Bureau · 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 Big Medium 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.

2021
2021222324
no gov · 00%1%5%11%20%your share of their income ↑0%23%45%68%90%share of the org’s income from government
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    2report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–90%
    typical government reliance, FY2024

    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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 12 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears. How we build these →

    Generated from your IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2020, released 2020. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2024) is on record and reports $6k of grant expense, but none of it to a named recipient. On a Form 990 that can mean grants abroad, filed by region only (Schedule F), grants under $5,000, which are not itemized, or a schedule referenced as an attachment the e-file does not carry. The figures above are therefore from FY2020, the most recent year this funder named its grantees.

    Source object · view filing

    More from the funding graph