· Public charity
Fund for the Arts Inc
At the Fund for the Arts, we believe that art is a right, not a privilege because art is a fundamental expression of the human condition.
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 43 grants below total $2,955,820 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $3,468,968 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $513,148 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 · FY2025
- Under $10k8 grants · $49k
- $10k–50k19 grants · $445k
- $50k–250k14 grants · $1.9M
- $250k+2 grants · $551k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| The Louisville Orchestra | $278,997 |
| Louisville Metro Parks Community Centers | $272,300 |
| Speed Art Museum | $249,951 |
| Louisville Ballet | $249,557 |
| Actors Theatre of Louisville | $213,065 |
| Asphalt Art Project | $161,927 |
| Kentucky Shakespeare | $154,667 |
| Jefferson County Public Schools | $148,995 |
| StageOne Family Theatre | $127,916 |
| KMAC Museum | $121,544 |
| Kentucky Opera | $110,561 |
| Kidsview Inc | $93,850 |
| Louisville Visual Art | $74,113 |
| Academy of Music Production | $72,399 |
| IDEAS xLab | $69,978 |
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 (FY17–23, $274k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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 +40% since the first grant, against +7% for the ones you funded once.
75 repeat relationships — 39 still active in FY2025, 36 since wound down; 3 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $124k 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
- TLTHE LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA INC9× · 2017–2025 · $5.3M · revenue +179%
- KDKENTUCKY DANCE COUNCIL INC DBA LOUISVILLE BALLET9× · 2017–2025 · $3.4M · revenue +78%
- SFSTAGEONE FAMILY THEATRE INC9× · 2017–2025 · $2.7M · revenue +19% · 33% of their budget
Funded once
- UIUSPIRITUS INC (BELLEWOOD & BROOKLAWN)one grant, 2023 · $43k · revenue -27%
- KCKENTUCKY CENTER FOR THE ARTS CORPORATIONone grant, 2018 · $40k
- TFTHE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY INCone grant, 2021 · $31k · revenue -42%
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.
Know Theatre is a small professional theatre showcasing voices, new works, & plays that embrace the inherent theatricality of the live experience. Know Theatre seeks to be a place where artists and audiences feel welcome to take artistic…
To provide professional theatre experiences for young audiences. to provide quality theatre education for young people annually. lct provides quality theatre experiences and theatre arts education for as many as 150,000 children throughout…
At the Fund for the Arts, we believe that art is a right, not a privilege because art is a fundamental expression of the human condition. We envision a healthy and vibrant community where everyone embraces the art that exists in our lives…
The mission of the lawrence arts center is to create meaningful arts experiences with and for the community through education, exhibitions, and performances.
To create community driven public art and launch careers for youth and artists.
The organization promotes the visual arts in the central kentucky area through sponsorshps of exhibits, offering classes, art fairs, and similar endeavors.
The louisville preservation fund,inc. revitalizes historic places through direct real estate action and partnerships to enhance community and promote economic development.
The CAC is a lab for understanding ourselves, others, and the world around us through the experience and creation of all contemporary art forms.
Local history museum for lexington and fayette county, kentucky
To provide, in cooperation with public and private schools, equitable access to the highest quality musical opportunities and to foster a life- long love of music for dedicated young musicians. ckyo enriches the lives of its student…
Louisville collegiate school inspires academic excellence, extraordinary character and global citizenship.
Arts for learning indiana brings the arts to your school community to champion creative learning, innovate education, and transform lives.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Louisville Orchestra Inc and the most unlike its peers is Riverside the Farnsley-Moremen Landing 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 33 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
102 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. 102 of the 152 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 ACTORS THEATRE OF LOUISVILLE INC ↗
- Who funds THE LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds KENTUCKY DANCE COUNCIL INC DBA LOUISVILLE BALLET ↗
- Who funds STAGEONE FAMILY THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds PARKS ALLIANCE OF LOUISVILLE INC ↗
- Who funds KENTUCKY SHAKESPEARE INC ↗
- Who funds KMAC MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds SPEED ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds Louisville Visual Art Inc ↗
- Who funds KENTUCKY OPERA ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds LOUISVILLE-JEFFERSON COUNTY YOUTH ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds WEST LOUISVILLE PERFORMING ARTS ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds FFTA PROPERTIES INC ↗
- Who funds LOUISVILLE THEATRICAL ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds KENTUCKY CENTER FOR THE ARTS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LOUISVILLE YOUTH CHOIR INC ↗
- Who funds CREATIVE AGENTS OF CHANGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PANDORA PRODUCTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG AUTHORS GREENHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds LOUISVILLE STORY PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds LOOKING FOR LILITH ↗
- Who funds LOUISVILLE ACADEMY OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds ADVENTUROUS MINDS PRODUCE EXTRAORDINARY DREAMS INC ↗
- Who funds RIVER CITY DRUM CORP CULTURAL ARTS INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds THE KENTUCKY SCIENCE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICANA COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds ARTS COUNCIL OF SOUTHERN INDIANA ↗
- Who funds LOUISVILLE ZOO FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SQUALLIS PUPPETEERS INC ↗
- Who funds PORTLAND MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds THE HOME OF THE INNOCENTS INC ↗
- Who funds LOUISVILLE CENTRAL COMMUNITY CENTERINC ↗
- Who funds LOU TATE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE EDITH & HENRY HEUSER HEARING INSTITUTE INC ↗
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 Community Foundation of Louisville Inc · The Community Foundation of Louisville Corporate Depository Inc · The Gheens Foundation Inc · Snowy Owl Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of Louisville Depository Inc · Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels Inc · LG&E and Ku Foundation Inc · Metro United Way Inc · The Whas Crusade for Children Inc · Kosair Charities Committee Inc · The Norton Foundation Inc · Cralle 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 Fund for the Arts Inc 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.