· Private foundation
Colburn Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2021–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k22 grants · $107k
- $10k–50k64 grants · $1.3M
- $50k–250k10 grants · $853k
- $250k+6 grants · $7.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| The Colburn School | $4,390,473 |
| Los Angeles Opera Company | $982,500 |
| Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn | $772,500 |
| LA Chamber Orchestra Society | $321,000 |
| Musica Angelica | $274,500 |
| Los Angeles Master Chorale | $258,000 |
| USC Thornton School of Music | $155,000 |
| UCLA Foundation | $115,000 |
| KUSC | $107,500 |
| Long Beach Camerata Singers | $100,000 |
| Cal State University-Northridge | $92,500 |
| Neighborhood Music School Associati | $63,000 |
| Idyllwild Arts Foundation | $60,000 |
| St James Episcopal Church | $55,000 |
| Pacific Symphony | $55,000 |
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 (FY23–24, $11k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +38% since the first grant, against -5% for the ones you funded once.
102 repeat relationships — 80 still active in FY2024, 22 since wound down; 17 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $156k 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
- TCTHE COLBURN SCHOOL4× · 2021–2024 · $17M · revenue +17%
- LALOS ANGELES OPERA COMPANY4× · 2021–2024 · $3.9M · revenue +50%
- LALOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC ASSOCIATION4× · 2021–2024 · $3.4M · revenue +46%
Funded once
- OFOJAI FESTIVALS LTDone grant, 2023 · $50k · revenue +1%
- MAMUSEUM ASSOCIATES CO LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUMone grant, 2021 · $40k
- STSAVE THE MUSIC FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $40k · revenue -5%
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.
Choral Music Performances: California Bach Society is a 30-voice chamber choir known for finely wrought interpretations of Renaissance and Baroque music, often accompanied by leading period instrumentalists. Each season, the choir performs…
The Culver City Symphony Orchestra strives to enlighten and inspire the diverse citizenry of Culver City and the Los Angeles area through the presentation of orchestral music concerts, to present works of American composers, and to…
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…
To seek and nurture exceptional young string musicians, foster and further their performance and professional skills development, and provide them with performance opportunities and monetary support.
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…
Founded in 1996, The South Coast Symphony, the unstuffy symphony, is a resident orchestra for South Orange County. The seventy member Symphony services South Orange County's fifteen diverse communities with a professional, accessible and…
To bring high quality classical musicians from around the globe to the santa barbara area to perform orchestral, vocal, solo instrumental, and chamber concerts.
The main function of los angeles symphony is to operate educational organization which provides the quality music to local community comprised of various ethnic groups.
The Performance Division is designed to provide residents of the greater Orange County area with world-class chamber music performances presented by rising stars and established veterans in the classical music world. The Education Division…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Long Beach Symphony Association and the most unlike its peers is Jacaranda. 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 41 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
86 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. 86 of the 138 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 THE COLBURN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES OPERA COMPANY ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES MASTER CHORALE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MUSICA ANGELICA ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds THE LOS ANGELES CHAMBER ORCHESTRA SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds UCLA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds IDYLLWILD ARTS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORHOOD MUSIC SCHOOL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY OF ORANGE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds Pacific Symphony ↗
- Who funds MUSIC ACADEMY OF THE WEST ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds Marlboro School of Music Inc ↗
- Who funds RENAISSANCE ARTS ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds Pasadena Conservatory of Music ↗
- Who funds Segerstrom Center for the Arts ↗
- Who funds YOUNG CONCERT ARTISTS INC ↗
- Who funds DELIRIUM MUSICUM ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES CHILDREN'S CHORUS ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC OPERA PROJECT ↗
- Who funds HEART OF LOS ANGELES YOUTH INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN YOUTH SYMPHONY INC ↗
- Who funds Long Beach Symphony Association ↗
- Who funds The New School ↗
- Who funds NEW WEST SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE MUSIC GUILD ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC CHORALE ↗
- Who funds LONG BEACH OPERA ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES MUSIC AND ART SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds MONDAY EVENING CONCERTS ↗
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: The Ralph M Parsons Foundation · California Community Foundation · The Ahmanson Foundation · The Meredith and Rosemary Willson Charit (Aka the Music Man Foundation) · Ann & Gordon Getty Foundation · Perenchio Foundation · Pasadena Showcase House For The Arts · The Annenberg Foundation · Clarence E Heller Charitable Foundation · Stern Sidney Memorial Tuw · The Rose Hills Foundation · D'Addario Foundation Inc
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 Colburn Foundation 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Colburn Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Colburn Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.