· Public charity
Cincinnati Institute of Fine Arts
With funding, services and advocacy, ArtsWave fuels a more vibrant economy and connected community through the arts.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 82 grants below total $9,644,330 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $9,948,858 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $304,528 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 · FY2024
- Under $10k7 grants · $48k
- $10k–50k52 grants · $1.0M
- $50k–250k14 grants · $1.3M
- $250k+9 grants · $7.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra | $2,331,720 |
| Cincinnati Museum Association | $1,267,000 |
| Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park | $1,055,000 |
| Cincinnati Ballet | $820,684 |
| Cincinnati Opera Association | $683,850 |
| Taft Museum of Art | $322,919 |
| Contemporary Arts Center | $290,600 |
| Art Opportunities Inc | $273,000 |
| The Children's Theatre of Cincinnati | $266,910 |
| Cincinnati Music Festival Assoc | $217,900 |
| Cincinnati Shakespeare Company | $198,700 |
| Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati | $156,900 |
| Cincinnati Landmark Productions | $101,440 |
| Fitton Center for Creative Arts | $84,000 |
| The Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center | $78,000 |
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 (FY21–24, $93k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, 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.
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.
87 repeat relationships — 64 still active in FY2024, 23 since wound down; 18 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $901k 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
- CSCINCINNATI SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA5× · 2020–2024 · $13M · revenue +59%
- TCThe Children's Theatre of Cincinnati5× · 2020–2024 · $1.5M · revenue +182%
- CUCINCINNATI USA REGIONAL CHAMBER FOUNDATION2× · 2022–2023 · $1.4M · revenue +11%
Funded once
- TCThe Center for Holocaust and Humanity Educationgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $100k · revenue +937%
- KCKALIHI-PALAMA CULTURE & ARTS SOCIETY INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $61k · revenue +188% · 26% of their budget
- MCMELODIC CONNECTIONSone grant, 2020 · $54k · revenue -68%
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.
Music Performance - Performing free concerts of new symphonic music
Citymusic cleveland is a professional chamber orchestra, which performs free concerts throughout n.e. ohio, accompanied by art shows of local artists. our mission is to develop audiences & build communities through the arts by presenting…
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,…
Non-profit organization dedicated to presenting frees concert of Classical Music
Fine Arts, Non Professional community theater-Cincinnati Music Theatre's mission is to serve as a non-profit civic enterprise dedicated to the encouragement & production of outstanding non-professional musical theater and providing…
To provide musical experiences for audiences throughout cincinnati and around the country.
Our mission is to build vibrant communities in Cincinnati through chamber music, empowering young people, their families, and professional musicians, through performance,education and mentoring. The groups activities balance accessible,…
Educational opportunities in the performing arts and fine arts through private and group lessons. Among others, classes include acting, dance, voice, piano, and guitar. Cincinnati Academy of Performing Arts has 465 students in its classes…
Choristers' mission is to provide the highest quality choral music education and performance opportunities to the culturally and economically diverse children and youth of northeast Ohio.
he Gahanna area arts council connects and enriches our community through participation in and engagement with the arts.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Cincinnati Ballet Company Inc and the most unlike its peers is Queen City Chamber Opera Dba Queen City Opera. 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 23 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.7% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
122 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. 122 of the 154 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 CINCINNATI SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds CINCINNATI MUSEUM ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park ↗
- Who funds The Cincinnati Ballet Company Inc ↗
- Who funds TAFT MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds The Contemporary Arts Center ↗
- Who funds The Children's Theatre of Cincinnati ↗
- Who funds CINCINNATI MUSICAL FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CINCINNATI USA REGIONAL CHAMBER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CINCINNATI SHAKESPEARE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds ART OPPORTUNITIES INC ↗
- Who funds ENSEMBLE THEATRE OF CINCINNATI ↗
- Who funds CINCINNATI ARTS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CINCINNATI LANDMARK PRODUCTIONS ↗
- Who funds Cincinnati Opera Association Inc ↗
- Who funds FITTON CENTER FOR CREATIVE ARTS ↗
- Who funds THE CARNEGIE VISUAL & PERFORMING ARTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds Know Theatre of Cincinnati ↗
- Who funds Elementz ↗
- Who funds Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra ↗
- Who funds Cincinnati Children's Choir ↗
- Who funds Visionaries and Voices ↗
- Who funds PRICE HILL WILL ↗
- Who funds Kennedy Heights Arts Center ↗
- Who funds CINCINNATI BOYCHOIR INC ↗
- Who funds CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER ↗
- Who funds LEARNING THROUGH ART ↗
- Who funds Bi-Okoto Drum & Dance Theatre ↗
- Who funds PYRAMID HILL SCULPTURE PARK &MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN KENTUCKY SYMPHONY ↗
- Who funds Clifton Cultural Arts Center ↗
- Who funds THE WYOMING FINE ARTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds BEHRINGER CRAWFORD MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL UNDERGROUND RAILROAD FREEDOM CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Wave Pool Corp ↗
- Who funds Mutual Dance Theatre and Arts Centers ↗
- Who funds VOCAL ARTS ENSEMBLE ↗
- Who funds Wordplay Cincy ↗
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: Carol Ann and Ralph V Haile Jr Foundation · The Greater Cincinnati Foundation · Louise Taft Semple Foundation · Nlt Foundation Inc · John a Schroth Family Char Tr · Charles H Dater Foundation Inc · Andrew Jergens Foundation · Elsa M Heisel Sule Charitable Trust 2005 · United Way of Greater Cincinnati · The Thomas J Emery Memorial · The Frances R Luther Charitable Trust · Josephine S Russell Charitable
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 Cincinnati Institute of Fine Arts 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.