· Private foundation
Mercedes T Bass Charitable Corporation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k5 grants · $21k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $215k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
- $250k+1 grant · $2.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FORT WORTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $2,051,500 |
| THE TEXAS CULTURAL TRUST | $50,000 |
| DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $40,000 |
| THE ASPEN INSTITUTE | $35,000 |
| CAMINOS DEL INKA | $35,000 |
| LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS INC | $35,000 |
| ROBERT B SILVERS FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| TARRANT AREA FOOD BANK | $15,000 |
| MODERN ART MUSEUM OF FORT WORTH | $10,000 |
| THE ANIMAL MEDICAL CENTER | $10,000 |
| THE METROPOLITAN OPERA | $10,000 |
| FORT WORTH YOUTH ORCHESTRA | $10,000 |
| ASCPA | $5,000 |
| HALTOM AREA BAND FRIENDS | $5,000 |
| PASLAY FOUNDATION | $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 (FY17–25, $31k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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 +51% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.
36 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2025, 24 since wound down; 5 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, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $115k 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
- FWFORT WORTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION9× · 2017–2025 · $10.0M · revenue +5%
- MAMUSIC ASSOCIATES OF ASPEN INC8× · 2017–2024 · $3.1M · revenue +141%
THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC9× · 2017–2025 · $1.5M · revenue +243%
Funded once
- KAKIMBELL ART MUSEUMone grant, 2023 · $90k
- YUYALE UNIVERSITYone grant, 2019 · $50k
- HGHouston Grand Opera Association Incone grant, 2023 · $50k · revenue +14%
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.
We believe opera is a uniquely compelling, entertaining and emotionally thrilling art form. our mission is to bring together growing audiences to experience opera's transformative power.
The Morgan Library & Museum celebrates and shares the history and process of human creativity from antiquity to the present day through the preservation, study, and interpretation of a dynamic and growing collection.
Chicago opera theater expands the tradition of opera as a living art form by engaging lovers of music and storytelling through innovative experiences, predominantly of new and rarely performed works.
The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)
We believe in the life-changing, transformational, revelatory power of great art and opera. Lyric Opera of Chicago exists to provide a broad, deep, and relevant cultural service to the Chicago region and the nation, and to advance the…
To serve the public by producing world-class opera that preserves, promotes and advances the art form while embodying the diversity, spirit and artistic sensibility unique to los angeles. we envision an engaged and enlightened community in…
The mission of florida grand opera is to enrich people's lives through an awareness and deeper appreciation of opera while supporting the operations of the greater miami opera and the opera guild, inc. by expanding its reach to diverse…
New york city opera was famously dubbed "the people's opera" by mayor fiorello laguardia at its founding in 1943. more than 80 years later, city opera continues its historic mission to inspire audiences with innovative and theatrically…
The cleveland institute of music's mission is to empower the world's most talented classical music students to fulfill their dreams and potential.
The mission of new york city center is to be new york city's leading center for dance and musical theater. dedicated to making the arts accessible to the broadest possible audience, city center seeks to create a welcoming environment and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Santa Fe Opera and the most unlike its peers is Kimbell Art Foundation. 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 46 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
65 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. 65 of the 81 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 FORT WORTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MUSIC ASSOCIATES OF ASPEN INC ↗
- Who funds THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds The Carnegie Hall Society Inc ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds THE CARNEGIE HALL CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ACADEMY IN ROME ↗
- Who funds Van Cliburn Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds THE PHILHARMONIC SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NY INC ↗
- Who funds Caminos Del Inka Inc ↗
- Who funds THE PRINCE OF WALES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Tarrant Area Food Bank ↗
- Who funds Houston Grand Opera Association Inc ↗
- Who funds Texas Cultural Trust Council ↗
- Who funds Sarasota Ballet of Florida Inc ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF COVENT GARDEN THE ROYAL BALLET INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE HIGH LINE INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF LES ARTS FLORISSANTS INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE ANIMAL MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds YOUTH ORCHESTRA OF GREATER FORT WORTH ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds THE SANTA FE OPERA ↗
- Who funds PERFORMING ARTS FORT WORTH INC ↗
- Who funds LENA POPE HOME INC ↗
- Who funds The Metropolitan Opera Guild Inc ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF KESHET EILON INC ↗
- Who funds TEXAS BALLET THEATER INC ↗
- Who funds THE BREAST CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ROBERT B SILVERS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FOUNTAIN HOUSE 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: Community Foundation of North Texas (Tax · Sid W Richardson Foundation · The Bessemer Giving Fund · Communities Foundation of Texas Inc · Wm & Catherine Bryce Memorial Fund Xxxxx3001 · California Community Foundation · The New York Community Trust · Jewish Communal Fund · National Philanthropic Trust · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust 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 Mercedes T Bass Charitable Corporation 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.
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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.