· Public charity
Farhang Foundation
To celebrate and promote iranian art and culture for the benefit of the community at large
Read this first · the figures below need context
94% of Farhang Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to University Of Southern California, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 9 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2024, the last year Farhang Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 8 organizations, $107k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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 $107,272 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $147,972 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $40,700 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 $10k2 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $94k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PACIFIC SYMPHONY | $20,000 |
| UCLA | $18,772 |
| THE UCLA FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE | $10,000 |
| GRAND PREFORMANCES | $10,000 |
| LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART | $10,000 |
| EVENSONG COLLECTION | $10,000 |
| IRANSHAHR ORCHESTRA INC | $8,000 |
| SOUTH COAST REPERTORY | $5,500 |
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 (FY17–18, $25k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +30% since the first grant, against -21% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 5 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call). Read against FY2024, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 30% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $109k 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
- TATHE AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE9× · 2017–2025 · $92k · revenue +30%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IRVINE FOUNDATION3× · 2017–2019 · $67k · revenue +51%
- GPGRAND PERFORMANCES6× · 2017–2024 · $60k · revenue +0%
Funded once
- UPUCLA PERSIAN MUSIC PROGRAMone grant, 2020 · $750k
- TJTHE J PAUL GETTY TRUSTgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $100k · revenue +107%
- GGolistanone grant, 2021 · $20k · 37% of their budget
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.
See schedule osfmoma believes the art of our time is vital and shares it with passion and purpose, and that art and the creative process can open minds and help build a better world. for that reason, we assemble unparalleled collections,…
ARTRONIKA is a collective of Los Angeles based artists that produce immersive arts programming showcasing an array of South Asian talent and culture. Through innovative and inclusive events, we reimagine traditional music, art, and…
The hammer museum at ucla believes in the promise of art and ideas to illuminate our lives and build a more just world.
We believe opera is a uniquely compelling, entertaining and emotionally thrilling art form. our mission is to bring together growing audiences to experience opera's transformative power.
The performance art museum (pam) is the first u.s. institution exclusively dedicated to the presentation and preservation of live art. our mission is to facilitate the powerful impact of live experiences that can profoundly transform our…
The academy museum of motion pictures advances the understanding, celebration, and preservation of cinema through inclusive and accessible exhibitions, screenings, programs, initiatives, and collections. welcoming visitors from los angeles…
The metropolitan museum of art collects, studies, conserves, and presents significant works of art across all times and cultures in order to connect people to creativity, knowledge, and ideas.
Organization's mission statement true to the ambitious vision of its founder and her spirit of creative risk-taking, the mission of the isabella stewart gardner museum is: - to bring to life and preserve the rich historic collection; - to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and the most unlike its peers is The J Paul Getty Trust. 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 44 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
24 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. 24 of the 30 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 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds UCLA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE J PAUL GETTY TRUST ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IRVINE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GRAND PERFORMANCES ↗
- Who funds Pacific Symphony ↗
- Who funds ROUDAKI ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds Iranian American Women Foundation ↗
- Who funds University of California Santa Barbara Alumni Association ↗
- Who funds Iranshahr Orchestra Inc ↗
- Who funds MADISON PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Golistan ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART LOS ANGELES ↗
- Who funds SOUTH COAST REPERTORY INC ↗
- Who funds THE ASIA SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds NEWPORT BEACH INDEPENDENT INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM ASSOCIATES ↗
- Who funds Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian-Americans Inc ↗
- Who funds BEAUTIFY EARTH CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds BEYOND VISION MUSIC FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SALASTINA ↗
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: California Community Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · 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 Farhang 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 Farhang Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Farhang 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.