· Private foundation
Harpo Foundation Inc
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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k18 grants · $91k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $23k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $22,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $9,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $9,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $9,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $9,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $9,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $9,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $9,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $9,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $9,000 |
| THE ASPEN INSTITUTE | $3,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $850 |
| Individual grant recipient | $850 |
| Individual grant recipient | $850 |
| Individual grant recipient | $850 |
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 (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 77% 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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.
47 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 39 since wound down; 11 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, 8% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $104k 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
- VSVERMONT STUDIO CENTER INC3× · 2017–2020 · $36k · revenue +120%
- CACONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM ST LOUIS4× · 2017–2022 · $19k · revenue +36%
- TSTHE SCULPTURE CENTER INC3× · 2020–2022 · $17k · revenue +27%
Funded once
- TBTHE BRICKone grant, 2017 · $10k · revenue +19%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $10k
- TCThe Contemporary Arts Centerone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue -34%
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.
A center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists since 1977, which continues to be a place of experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas.
To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
to advance regional contemporary art and artists while fostering cultural equity through access to meaningful art experiences
The mission of the national academy of design is to promote the fine arts in america through exhibition and education.
Dedicated to the creation, presentation and advancement of contemporary art through its exhibitions, educational programming and studio art program.
The museum of contemporary art san diego invites all audiences to experience our world, our region, and ourselves through the prism of contemporary art.
The center for arts, design and social research is a private, nonprofit institution of higher education that provides instruction in and conducts research on the relationship of art and design to global societies. the center offers…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Walker Art Center and the most unlike its peers is The Research Foundation for the State University of New York. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
15 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. 15 of the 86 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 VERMONT STUDIO CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM ST LOUIS ↗
- Who funds THE SCULPTURE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE BRICK ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds Massachusetts Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds The Contemporary Arts Center ↗
- Who funds THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds SANTA FE ART 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 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc · Teiger Foundation · Via Art Fund Inc · Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Inc · Terra Foundation for American Art · The Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation Inc · Jewish Communal Fund · The Andrew W Mellon Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · The Bank of America Charitable 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 Harpo Foundation 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.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- Vermont Studio Center Inc — 2% of income from government
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 Harpo Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Harpo Foundation Inc 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.