· Private foundation
Les Paul 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 $10k56 grants · $158k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $135k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $125k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DISCOVERY WORLD | $75,000 |
| HEARING HEALTH FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| NOTES FOR NOTES INC | $35,000 |
| SOULSVILLE FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| MUSICIANS ON CALL | $25,000 |
| WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE | $24,900 |
| ROWAN UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| MAHWAH MUSEUM SOCIETY INC | $8,000 |
| ROCK & SOUL FOREVER FOUNDATION | $7,500 |
| FIRST STAGE MILWAUKEE INC | $7,500 |
| COUNTRY MUSIC FOUNDATION | $7,500 |
| DYNAMO STUDIOS | $5,000 |
| NEW ORLEANS JAZZ & HERITAGE FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| LIVECONNECTIONSORG | $5,000 |
| JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY | $5,000 |
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 (FY18–24, $114k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 61% 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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +31% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
56 repeat relationships — 28 still active in FY2024, 28 since wound down; 35 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, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $75k 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
DISCOVERY WORLD LTD7× · 2018–2024 · $600k · revenue +144%- HHHEARING HEALTH FOUNDATION7× · 2017–2024 · $450k · revenue +37%
- MWMUSIC WILL INC6× · 2017–2022 · $429k · revenue +4%
Funded once
- BWBONNAROO WORKS FUNDone grant, 2018 · $75k
- BWBONNAROO WORKS FUND FOR NOTES FOR NOTESone grant, 2017 · $75k
- STSAVE THE MUSIC FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $35k · revenue +94%
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.
Intonation kids explore their limitless potential by learning to play instruments and forming their own rock bands. Our year-round classes make music accessible to children in low-income neighborhoods by providing them with instruments,…
MUSE seeks to develop the full potential of every child as lifelong learners, expressive artists, and active citizens in his or her community. Music, movement, and performance are central to the MUSE Academy educational experience and…
Merit School of Music is dedicated to helping young people transform their lives by removing barriers to high-quality music education, with the majority of students benefitting from need-based financial aid, scholarship support, or…
Where Students come to receive a world class education with music at its core.
Make music nola is an intensive music-for-social-change program. themission of make music nola is to promote academic achievement,cultivate artistic expression, and promote the healthy growth anddevelopment of children in new orleans…
Girls write nashville empowers expression through songwriting, production, mentorship and creative community for teen artists. we are an artist and educator-led 501(c)(3) creative youth development program in nashville, tn allied with…
Play on philly provides underserved children in philadelphia, a transformative music education experience that develops and inspires the behaviors and personal skills needed for a successful life.
Manhattan school of music is deeply committed to excellence in education, performance, and creative activity; to the humanity of the school's environment; and to the cultural enrichment of the larger community. a premiere international…
The Charleston Academy of Music is committed to providing access to exceptional music education, performance and community outreach to all, regardless of age, skill, gender, ethnicity or income.
To offer accessible, high-quality performing arts education that sparks personal growth and builds inclusive communities. its vision is to transform performing arts education in an inclusive community accessible to all.
Armstrong community music school offers exciting opportunities to learn the joys of music for students of all ages and skill levels, from early childhood to adult.
The harmony program believes that music should be an integral part of every child's education and that great expectations lead to even greater achievement. harmony was founded to provide students in under-served communities with free…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is First Stage Milwaukee and the most unlike its peers is Futurenomic Resources Incorporated. 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 26 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.7% 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.
150 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 150 of the 195 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 DISCOVERY WORLD LTD ↗
- Who funds HEARING HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MUSIC WILL INC ↗
- Who funds Notes For Notes Inc ↗
- Who funds WAUKESHA COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY & MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds SOULSVILLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds ROWAN UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MUSICIANS ON CALL INC ↗
- Who funds MAHWAH MUSEUM SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds Guitars For Vets Inc ↗
- Who funds THE COLLEGE OF SAINT ROSE ↗
- Who funds FIRST STAGE MILWAUKEE ↗
- Who funds NAMM Foundation A Not-For-Profit Corporation ↗
- Who funds SAVE THE MUSIC FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Rockit Live Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds LITCHFIELD PERFORMING ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD PANTRY OF WAUKESHA COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR FOOD ACTION IN NEW JERSEY ↗
- Who funds Womens Audio Mission ↗
- Who funds YOUNG AUDIENCES OF OREGON INC ↗
- Who funds RAMAPO COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SHELL LAKE ARTS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds UCLA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BUILDING FOR THE ARTS NY INC ↗
- Who funds New Orleans Airlift ↗
- Who funds BookGive Inc ↗
- Who funds COUNTRY MUSIC FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE SHELDON ARTS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HEAR YOUR SONG INC ↗
- Who funds KEEP MUSIC ALIVE ↗
- Who funds DYNAMO STUDIOS ↗
- Who funds ROCK AND SOUL FOREVER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BANGTOWN STUDIO ON THE GO ↗
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: D'Addario Foundation Inc · Gibson Gives Foundation Dba Gibson Gives · The Cma Foundation · The Lewis Prize Foundation Inc · Acm Lifting Lives · The Presser Foundation · Nora Roberts Foundation · Mid Atlantic Arts Inc · Martin Guitar Charitable Foundation · Find Your Light Foundation · Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc · Cornelia T Bailey Charitable Trust
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 Les Paul 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.
- Christina Cultural Arts Center Inc — 100% of income from government
- Cab Calloway School Fund — 56% of income from government
- Jazz House Kids Inc — 29% of income from government
- Young Audiences of Oregon Inc — 23% of income from government
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Vibe of Portland — 9% of income from government
- Worcester Polytechnic Institute — 8% of income from government
- Amelia Park Childrens Museum Inc — 7% of income from government
- Litchfield Performing Arts Inc — 4% of income from government
- Boston Lyric Opera Company — 3% of income from government
- Trillium Family Services — 2% of income from government
- Intempo Organization Inc — 2% of income from government
- The Institute of Music for Children Inc — 1% of income from government
- Nantucket Community Music Center — 1% of income from government
- Ramapo College Foundation — 1% of income from government
- The Clubhouse Network Inc — 1% of income from government
- Rowan University Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Suzuki Music School of Westport Inc — 0% of income from government
- Center for Food Action in New Jersey — 0% of income from government
- Delaware Academy of Vocal Arts Inc — 0% 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 Les Paul Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Les Paul 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.