· Private foundation
Kulas Foundation
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 $10k12 grants · $57k
- $10k–50k25 grants · $577k
- $50k–250k9 grants · $975k
- $250k+1 grant · $325k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF MUSIC | $325,000 |
| THE MUSICAL ARTS ASSOCIATION | $235,000 |
| CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY | $154,500 |
| PLAYHOUSE SQUARE FOUNDATION | $150,000 |
| UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS HEALTH SYSTEM | $102,500 |
| UNIVERSITY OF AKRON FOUNDATION | $84,000 |
| KENT STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $79,500 |
| GREAT LAKES THEATER FESTIVAL | $60,000 |
| THE SALVATION ARMY | $57,000 |
| CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $52,500 |
| BALDWIN WALLACE UNIVERSITY | $49,500 |
| CLEVELAND BALLET | $45,000 |
| APOLLO'S FIRE CLEVELAND BAROQUE ORCHESTRA | $40,000 |
| THE CITY CLUB OF CLEVELAND | $35,000 |
| ROOTS OF AMERICAN MUSIC | $35,000 |
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 (FY24–24, $3k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
81 repeat relationships — 46 still active in FY2024, 35 since wound down; 1 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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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
- TMThe Musical Arts Association8× · 2017–2024 · $2.0M · revenue +45%
- CICLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF MUSIC8× · 2017–2024 · $1.4M · revenue +8%
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY8× · 2017–2024 · $1.2M · revenue +50%
Funded once
- CMCLEVELAND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORYgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $50k · revenue +31%
- SJST JOHN CANTIUS CHURCHone grant, 2021 · $25k
- TCTrinity Cathedralone grant, 2019 · $25k
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.
The mission of the cleveland museum of art (cma) is to fulfill its dual roles as one of the world's most distinguished comprehensive art museums and as one of northeastern ohio's principal civic and cultural institutions. the museum,…
The cleveland arts prize identifies, rewards, publicly honors and promotes those creative artists whose original work and accomplishments have set a standard of excellence to which other artists can aspire. additionally, the cleveland arts…
Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra (CCO) creates intimate, transformative experiences that connect the musically curious.
Balletmet will celebrate dance by engaging the community through quality performances, instruction, education programs, and creation of new work.
Music Performance - Performing free concerts of new symphonic music
Opera columbus enriches central ohio by educating, enlightening, and entertaining people of all ages and backgrounds through the live music theatre experience by employing a diverse and far-flung supply of creative talent, ideas and…
Non-profit organization dedicated to presenting frees concert of Classical Music
Mission: to champion and elevate the arts and cultural expression of greater columbus.vision: power of art realized. people engaged. city energized.
Cleveland arts education consortiums mission is to promote and strengthen arts education in northeast ohio and advocate on behalf of arts learning for people of all ages and circumstances.
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
Cleveland classical guitar society's mission: teach, inspire, connect.teach- ccgs creates life-changing experiences for cleveland's kids. inspire-ccgs presents the world's greatest performers. connect-ccgs provides meaninful connections…
Cincinnati museum center inspires people of all ages to learn more about our world through science, regional history, and educational, engaging and meaningful experiences.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Assembly for the Arts and the most unlike its peers is International Partners in Mission. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 57 years old; the field is 22. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
78 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. 78 of the 107 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 The Musical Arts Association ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds Baldwin Wallace University ↗
- Who funds GREAT LAKES THEATER FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND BALLET ↗
- Who funds KENT STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF AKRON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BECK CENTER FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds Playhouse Square Foundation ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds APOLLO'S FIRE BAROQUE ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF BREAKTHROUGH SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF ART ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND PLAY HOUSE ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREATER CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds GROUP PLAN COMMISSION ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND FILM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND PUBLIC THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND MUSIC SCHOOL SETTLEMENT ↗
- Who funds KARAMU HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds CUYAHOGA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Oberlin College ↗
- Who funds PIANO INTERNATIONAL ASSOC OF NORTHERN OH ↗
- Who funds THE MUSICAL THEATER PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL MEDICAL CENTER OF AKRON ↗
- Who funds ASSEMBLY FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds GROUNDWORKS DANCE THEATER ↗
- Who funds PHILANTHROPY OHIO ↗
- Who funds NEAR WEST THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND POPS ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds IDEASTREAM ↗
- Who funds BLUEWATER CHAMBER ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds THE CITY CLUB OF CLEVELAND ↗
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: John P Murphy Foundation · The George Gund Foundation · The Cleveland Foundation · The Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation · Martha Holden Jennings Foundation · Jewish Federation of Cleveland · The Louise H & David S Ingalls Fdn · The Albert B & Audrey G Ratner Family Foundation · The Reinberger Foundation · Emma R Fox Char Trust Mut Fds · George Codrington Fdnhirtlena · The Kelvin & Eleanor Smith 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 Kulas 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 Kulas Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Kulas 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.