· Private foundation
Five Arts Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k30 grants · $47k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $155k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $150k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SAN FRANCISCO OPERA | $50,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC | $50,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO OPERA | $50,000 |
| NAPA VALLEY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $40,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC | $20,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $15,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO BAYKEEPER | $15,000 |
| THE METROPOLITAN OPERA | $15,000 |
| THE METROPOLITAN OPERA | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO PERFORMANCES | $3,000 |
| OPERAPARALLELE | $2,500 |
| SARAH LAWRENCE COLLEGE | $2,500 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 81% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 17% of Five Arts Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
27 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- SFSAN FRANCISCO CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC6× · 2018–2025 · $212k · revenue +4%
- CMCOMMUNITY MUSIC CENTER4× · 2017–2021 · $80k · revenue +27%
- MOMerola Opera Program9× · 2017–2025 · $41k · revenue +124%
Funded once
- WJWilliam Jewell Collegeone grant, 2021 · $50k · revenue -3%
- KKDFCone grant, 2021 · $5k
- NRNATIONAL RESOURCE DEFENSE COUNCILone grant, 2024 · $3k
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 0founded in 1994, opera santa barbara is the signature provider of professional opera on the california central coast. we aspire to be a cultural leader in the santa barbara region, voicing and advancing our community's spirit…
To serve the public by producing world-class opera that preserves, promotes and advances the art form while embodying the diversity, spirit and artistic sensibility unique to los angeles. we envision an engaged and enlightened community in…
Mission: the mission of san diego opera is to deliver exceptional performances and exciting, accessible programs to diverse audiences, focusing on community partnerships, and the transformative and expressive power of the human voice. as…
To present the highest-quality performances of great music, bringing national and international distinction to the orchestra and its community; to delight and educate audiences of all ages and backgrounds, and enhance the cultural vitality…
Arizona opera elevates the transformative power of storytelling through music - cultivating community and strengthening a state and people as adventurous and diverse as the place they call home.
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 san francisco bach choir brings people together to experience choral musics transformative power to touch, engage and inspire.
New york city opera was famously dubbed "the people's opera" by mayor fiorello laguardia at its founding in 1943. more than 80 years later, city opera continues its historic mission to inspire audiences with innovative and theatrically…
The florentine opera company is driven to produce the full range of operatic works reflecting the highest musical and theatrical standards, and to support community and education programs that foster the current and next generation of…
To present symphonic music of the highest quality in a distinctive way for the cultural enrichment, education, engagement and enjoyment of the people of our community.
To thrill, inspire and educate through the shared experience of opera. seattle opera is vital to the dynamic cultural and civic life of our region and to the evolution of opera across the world.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Santa Fe Opera and the most unlike its peers is Pocket Opera Inc. 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 47 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
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 48 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 SAN FRANCISCO OPERA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF THE NAPA VALLEY ↗
- Who funds THE SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY MUSIC CENTER ↗
- Who funds San Francisco Performances Inc ↗
- Who funds William Jewell College ↗
- Who funds Merola Opera Program ↗
- Who funds Baykeeper ↗
- Who funds Houston Grand Opera Association Inc ↗
- Who funds WEST EDGE OPERA ↗
- Who funds Opera Parallle ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY ↗
- Who funds CORPORATION OF THE FINE ARTS MUSEUMS ↗
- Who funds GOLDEN GATE NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds OPERA SAN JOSE INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds SARAH LAWRENCE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO BALLET ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC SINGERS & ACTORS WORKSHOP ↗
- Who funds OPERA AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds OJAI VALLEY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE CARNEGIE HALL CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE SANTA FE OPERA ↗
- Who funds PHILHARMONIA BAROQUE ORCHESTRA & CHORALE ↗
- Who funds BYRD HOFFMAN WATER MILL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds POCKET OPERA INC ↗
- Who funds GRABHORN INSTITUTE ↗
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 San Francisco Foundation · Ann & Gordon Getty Foundation · The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · The Bernard Osher Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · Carol Franc Buck Foundation · Ululani Foundation · Bob a Ross Foundation Inc · The Sam Mazza Foundation · Koret Foundation · Horizons 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 Five Arts 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.