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Gesso Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

Gesso Foundation

Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

$4k
Granted FY2024still arriving
1
Grants FY2024still arriving
1
States reached
$4k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its granteesRead
04Its fieldRead
05Through PlinthRead
01What it funds
0196% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2024.

Arts & Culture$332kOther$0
02FY2024 · 1 grant

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

$3,513
Median grant
1
States reached
$0
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
VISUAL AIDS$3,513
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 9% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Its grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

area typical 11%WILLIAMS COLLEGE OF ART: $400 → 12%PALM SPRINGS MUSEUM OF ART: $8k → 11%TANG MUSEUM: $700 → 7%DAVID ZWIRNER: $4k → 17%BLANTON MUSEUM: $100k → 10%COLBY COLLEGE OF ART: $10k → 12%WILLIAMS COLLEGE OF ART: $300 → 12%PALM SPRINGS MUSEUM OF ART: $1k → 11%TANG MUSEUM: $400 → 7%VISUAL AIDS: $5k → 17%BLANTON MUSEUM: $63k → 10%COLBY COLLEGE OF ART: $5k → 12%WILLIAMS COLLEGE OF ART: $300 → 12%PALM SPRINGS MUSEUM OF ART: $300 → 11%TANG MUSEUM: $400 → 7%GREY ART GALLERY NYU: $800 → 17%BLANTON MUSEUM: $48k → 10%COLBY COLLEGE OF ART: $300 → 12%VISUAL AIDS: $4k → 17%BLANTON MUSEUM: $25k → 10%GREY ART GALLERY NYU: $575 → 17%BLANTON MUSEUM: $20k → 10%LESLIE-LOHMAN MUSEUM OF ART: $2k → 17%BLANTON MUSEUM: $20k → 10%BLANTON MUSEUM: $18k → 10%BLANTON MUSEUM: $1k → 10%BLANTON MUSEUM: $500 → 10%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

91%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$306k · 4 repeat orgs$31k to everyone else

4 repeat relationships: 1 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

4
5

Total granted

$306k
$31k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+9%
+36%

Still filing today

25%
40%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’22’23’24
RenewedFirst-time
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

  • BM
    BLANTON MUSEUM
    2× · 2018–2019 · $295k
  • VA
    VISUAL AIDS FOR THE ARTS INC
    2× · 2022–2024 · $9k · revenue +9%
  • TM
    TANG MUSEUM
    2× · 2017–2019 · $2k

Funded once

  • CC
    COLBY COLLEGE OF ART
    one grant, 2020 · $15k
  • PS
    PALM SPRINGS ART MUSEUM
    one grant, 2020 · $9k · revenue +23%
  • IG
    Individual grant recipient
    one grant, 2023 · $4k
How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field
04the grantee network

3 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 3 of the 9 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
0
Early backer (in before they grew)
3/3
Grantees still filing
3/3
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

BLANTON MUSEUM: $294,500 · OtherBLANTON MUSEUMCOLBY COLLEGE OF ART: $15,300 · Other+4 more: $8,114 · OtherPALM SPRINGS ART MUSEUM: $8,800 · Arts & CultureVISUAL AIDS FOR THE ARTS INC: $8,513 · Arts & CultureTHE LESLIE LOHMAN MUSEUM OF GAY AND LESBIAN ART: $1,500 · Arts & Culture
Other$317,914Arts & Culture$18,813

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetPALM SPRINGS ART MUSEUM: $8,800 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetVISUAL AIDS FOR THE ARTS INC: $8,513 over 2y, 0.6% of budgetTHE LESLIE LOHMAN MUSEUM OF GAY AND LESBIAN ART: $1,500 over 1y, 0.1% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

  • Who funds PALM SPRINGS ART MUSEUM ↗
  • Who funds VISUAL AIDS FOR THE ARTS INC ↗
  • Who funds THE LESLIE LOHMAN MUSEUM OF GAY AND LESBIAN ART ↗

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Gesso Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Gesso Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%funder's share of their income ↑0%3%5%8%10%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    2report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–10%
    typical government reliance, FY20–25
    How this is measured
    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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.
    05Through Plinth

    Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

    How do I get to Gesso Foundation?

    Find your warmest path to Gesso 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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 9 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2024, released 2024. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

    Play a game based on Gesso’s filings →

    More from the funding graph

    The unnamed billions
    grants reported with no recipient in the public record
    The regranting layer
    51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
    The DAF merry-go-round
    $9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
    The endowment market
    who holds foundation money, and what just moved
    The camps
    funders cluster by geography, not ideology
    By state
    where grant money is based, and what stays home