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Foundation DossiersMostly funded, not a grantmaker — see who funds it →
Plinth

· Public charity

Michigan Theater Foundation Inc

To joyfully bring diverse people together to build community, enhance understanding, advance public storytelling and the arts, and protect our historic buildings.

$782k
Granted FY2020
103
Grants FY2020
35
States reached
$200k
Largest
01What you fundRead
02The needRead
03Your fieldRead
01What you fund
01FY2020 · 103 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

The 103 grants below total $739,172 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $782,259 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $43,087 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.

By grant size · FY2020

  • Under $10k102 grants · $539k
  • $50k–250k1 grant · $200k
$5,286
Median grant
35
States reached
$12M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
Individual grant recipient$200,000
KENTWORTHY PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE$5,286
TRYLON CINEMA TAKE-UP$5,286
FARGO THEATRE MANAGEMENT CO$5,286
OLD TOWN MUSIC HALL INC$5,286
THE NIGHTLIGHT CINEMA$5,286
THE NEON$5,286
ENZIAN THEATER$5,286
FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER INC$5,286
PICKFORD FILM CENTER$5,286
BYRD THEATRE FOUNDATION$5,286
OSIO THEATER FOUNDATION$5,286
THE ROXY THEATER$5,286
MONTCLAIR FILM FESTIVAL INC$5,286
SALT LAKE FILM SOCIETY$5,286
02The need
02

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.

show:

Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–20) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 79% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 11%THE LOFT CINEMA: $5k → 15%PROVINCETOWN FILM SOCIETY: $5k → 8%BRATTLE THEATRE FOUNDATION: $5k → 8%MARTHAS VINEYARD FILM SOCIETY: $5k → 8%AMHERST CINEMA: $5k → 12%IMAGES CINEMA: $5k → 12%EMERSON COLLEGE: $5k → 16%FILM STREAMS: $5k → 12%WORLD THEATRE FOUNDATION: $5k → 13%KENTWORTHY PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE: $5k → 16%TRYLON CINEMA TAKE-UP: $5k → 11%ZINEMA 2: $5k → 15%THE ROXY THEATER: $5k → 9%ASSOCIATION FOR THE COLONIAL THEATR: $5k → 6%BRYN MAWR FILM INSTITUTE: $5k → 10%ARTSQUEST: $5k → 11%THE TULL FAMILY THEATER: $5k → 11%CIVIC THEATRE OF ALLENTOWN: $5k → 11%THE CAMPUS THEATRE: $5k → 11%DIETRICH THEATER WYOMING: $5k → 12%THE FRIDA CINEMA: $5k → 10%MEDIA ARTS CENTER SAN DIEGO: $5k → 11%OSIO THEATER FOUNDATION: $5k → 12%ECHO PARK FILM CENTER: $5k → 14%THE STATE THEATRE: $5k → 15%ARENA THEATRE ASSOCIATION: $5k → 18%PLAZAMAC INC: $5k → 7%UPSTATE FILMS LIMITED: $5k → 9%JACOB BURNS FILM CENTER INC: $5k → 9%NORTH PARK THEATRE OF BUFFALO INC: $5k → 13%THE LITTLE THEATRE: $5k → 14%CAPITOL CIVIC CENTER: $5k → 16%CINEMAPOLIS SEVENTH ART CORPORATION: $5k → 16%ROSENDALE THEATRE: $5k → 16%MAYSLES INSTITUTE: $5k → 17%LIGHT INDUSTRY CINEMA PROJECTS LTD: $5k → 20%AUSTIN FILM SOCIETY: $5k → 10%14 PEWS: $5k → 16%CIRCLE CINEMA FOUNDATION INC: $5k → 15%AVALON THEATER PROJECT INC: $5k → 14%CINEMATIQUE OF DAYTONA INC: $5k → 12%ENZIAN THEATER: $5k → 13%TAMPA THEATRE: $5k → 13%TROPIC CINEMA: $5k → 13%CORAL GABLES CINEMATIQUE INC: $5k → 15%THE WINTERSET IOWA THEATER: $5k → 7%FILMSCENE: $5k → 15%JANUS FILMS: $200k → 17%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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

ME
WA
ID
MT
ND
MN
IL
WI
MI
NY
MA
OR
IA
IN
OH
PA
NJ
CT
CA
UT
CO
NE
MO
KY
VA
MD
AZ
NC
DC
OK
LA
AL
GA
TX
FL

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.

03Your field

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.

1
Cinema Detroit

Motion picture exhibition

Arts & Culture
2
Art Film Foundation

None

—
3
Centre Film Festival
Arts & Culture
4
Philadelphia Film Society

The philadelphia film society (pfs) is the region's home for classic and contemporary film presentation, education, entertainment, and community building. a nonprofit, community-supported organization, pfs produces the acclaimed…

Arts & Culture
5
Red River Theatres Inc

To present film and discussion of film as a way to entertain, broaden horizons and deepen appreciation of life for new hampshire audiences of all ages.

Arts & Culture
6
Chicago International Film Festival Inc Cinema-Chicago

Cinema/Chicago, the non-profit 501(c)(3) presenting organization of the Chicago International Film Festival, enriches the community through year-round programming devoted to international and independent cinema. We strengthen communication…

Arts & Culture
7
Film Forever Northwest dba Hollywood Theatre

Film forever northwest entertains, inspires, educates and connects our community through the art of film, while preserving the historic hollywood theatre and the world-class movie madness video collection. we offer a diverse array of film…

Philanthropy
8
Green Valley Film & Art Center
—
9
Film Forum Inc

Film forum's mission is two-fold: 1) to serve the general public by presenting the highest caliber of work to the widest possible audience - encouraging the appreciation of new, challenging films (both american and foreign films), and…

Arts & Culture
10
Maine Film Center

To enrich, educate, and entertain the community through film and art.

—
11
Triplex Cinema Inc

The organization partners with local schools and other nonprofits to organize programming that speaks directly to the needs of our community. we are a part of a diverse community, and we aim to be a place where people of all ages and…

Arts & Culture
12
The Stanford Theatre Foundation
—

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Friends of Greenbelt Theatre Inc and the most unlike its peers is Echo Park Film Center. 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 24 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.

THE FIELDby orgYOUR GRANTEESby number22%2%<5yr14%7%5–10yr19%21%10–20yr16%47%20–35yr13%18%35–55yr16%6%55yr+
THE FIELDby orgYOUR MONEYby value22%2%<5yr14%8%5–10yr19%20%10–20yr16%47%20–35yr13%17%35–55yr16%5%55yr+

The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 13% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund
1%1/99
the rest of the field
13%
240,395/1,819,466

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.

03the grantee network

94 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. 94 of the 100 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.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
48
Early backer (in before they grew)
92/94
Grantees still filing
78/94
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

+82 more — $449,310 · Arts & Culture+82 moreIndividual grant recipient — $200,000 · OtherIndividual grant recipient+13 more — $68,718 · Other+13 moreEMERSON COLLEGE — $5,286 · EducationANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES — $5,286 · EducationSIFF — $5,286 · Youth DevelopmentTHE PRODUCERS CLUB OF MD INC — $5,286 · Community Improvement
Arts & Culture$449,310Other$268,718Education$10,572Youth Development$5,286Community Improvement$5,286

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetTHE DAIRY CENTER FOR THE ARTS — $10,572 over 1y, 0.7% of budgetJACOB BURNS FILM CENTER INC — $10,572 over 1y, 0.3% of budgetCHELSEA ART THEATER INC — $10,572 over 1y, 2.8% of budgetBRATTLE FILM FOUNDATION INC — $5,286 over 1y, 0.5% of budgetSIFF — $5,286 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetFILM AT LINCOLN CENTER INC — $5,286 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetNORTHEAST HISTORIC FILM — $5,286 over 1y, 0.9% of budgetWYOMING COUNTY CULTURAL CENTER — $5,286 over 1y, 0.7% of budgetFargo Theatre Management Corporation — $5,286 over 1y, 0.9% of budgetAVALON THEATRE PROJECT INC — $5,286 over 1y, 0.5% of budgetECHO PARK FILM CENTER — $5,286 over 1y, 1.7% of budgetCAPRI COMMUNITY FILM SOCIETY INC — $5,286 over 1y, 1.6% of budgetFRANKLIN HERITAGE INC — $5,286 over 1y, 0.6% of budgetTHE TAMPA THEATRE INC A/K/A TAMPA THEATRE FOUNDATION — $5,286 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetTHE WINTERSET IOWA THEATER — $5,286 over 1y, 4.2% of budgetTHE PICTURE HOUSE REGIONAL FILM CENTER INC — $5,286 over 1y, 0.7% of budgetZEITGEIST CENTER FOR ARTS AND COMMUNITY — $5,286 over 1y, 0.3% of budgetMONTCLAIR FILM FESTIVAL INC — $5,286 over 1y, 0.4% of budgetMEDIA ARTS CENTER SAN DIEGO — $5,286 over 1y, 0.5% of budgetFORT WAYNE CINEMA CENTER INC — $5,286 over 1y, 2.3% of budgetLOFT CINEMA INC FKA TUCSON CINEMA FOUNDATION INC — $5,286 over 1y, 0.3% of budgetFilm Society of Austin Inc — $5,286 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetGATEWAY FILM FOUNDATION — $5,286 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetAMHERST CINEMA ARTS CENTER INC — $5,286 over 1y, 0.5% of budgetBENDFILM INC — $5,286 over 1y, 1.0% of budgetHISTORIC VOGUE THEATRE OF MANISTEE — $5,286 over 1y, 1.6% of budgetOld Town Music Hall Inc — $5,286 over 1y, 3.8% of budgetOsio Theater Foundation — $5,286 over 1y, 2.4% of budgetFILM STREAMS INC — $5,286 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetMILWAUKEE FILM INC — $5,286 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetWORLD THEATRE FOUNDATION — $5,286 over 1y, 1.0% of budgetTRAVERSE CITY FILM FESTIVAL — $5,286 over 1y, 0.6% of budgetCAPITOL CIVIC CENTER INC — $5,286 over 1y, 1.4% of budgetNew Community Cinema Club Inc DBA Cinema Arts Centre — $5,286 over 1y, 0.3% of budgetSTATE THEATRE OF MODESTO INC — $5,286 over 1y, 0.3% of budgetBEDFORD PLAYHOUSE INC — $5,286 over 1y, 0.5% of budgetCINEMATIQUE OF DAYTONA INC — $5,286 over 1y, 3.4% of budgetMARTHA'S VINEYARD FILM SOCIETY INC — $5,286 over 1y, 0.9% of budgetROSENDALE THEATRE COLLECTIVE INC — $5,286 over 1y, 2.6% of budgetGRAND TACOMA CINE CLUB DBA THE GRAND CINEMA — $5,286 over 1y, 0.5% of budgetPICKFORD FILM CENTER — $5,286 over 1y, 0.5% of budgetGRANDIN THEATRE FOUNDATION INC — $5,286 over 1y, 0.7% of budgetCinestudio Inc — $5,286 over 1y, 2.0% of budgetAthens Film Arts Institute Inc DBA Cine — $5,286 over 1y, 1.3% of budgetRed River Film Society Inc — $5,286 over 1y, 0.5% of budget14 Pews — $5,286 over 1y, 2.8% of budgetKenworthy Performing Arts Centre Inc — $5,286 over 1y, 2.6% of budgetEMERSON COLLEGE — $5,286 over 1y, 0.0% of budget
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.

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.

Coolidge Corner Theat…Academy FoundationArtsfundM J Murdock Charitabl…The Ford FoundationPpl FoundationThe Bessemer Giving F…The New York Communit…The Goldman Sachs Cha…The Robert Wood Johns…Amalgamated Charitabl…Mightycause Charitabl…
Coolidge Corner Theatre Foundation IncMA88.4× affinity40 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Coolidge Corner Theatre Foundation Inc · Academy Foundation · Artsfund · M J Murdock Charitable Trust · The Ford Foundation · Ppl Foundation · The Bessemer Giving Fund · The New York Community Trust · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Mightycause Charitable 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 Michigan Theater 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.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 10%1%3%6%10%your share of their income ↑0%19%38%56%75%share of the org’s income from government →median 1%
  • The Producers Club of Md Inc — 7% of income from government
  • Provincetown Film Societyinc — 6% of income from government
  • Bendfilm Inc — 3% of income from government
  • Montclair Film Festival Inc — 2% of income from government
  • Martha's Vineyard Film Society Inc — 2% of income from government
  • Brattle Film Foundation Inc — 1% of income from government
  • Amherst Cinema Arts Center Inc — 1% of income from government
  • Community Images Inc — 1% of income from government
  • Enzian Theater Inc — 1% of income from government
  • Emerson College — 0% of income from government
  • Cinematique of Daytona Inc — 0% of income from government
  • Coral Gables Cinemateque Inc — 0% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
1get no government money at all
39report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–75%
typical government reliance, FY20–25

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.

On method. Every financial figure here is read directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 100 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your 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. How we build these →

Generated from your IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2020, released 2020. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2025) is on record and reports no grant expense, so the figures above are from FY2020, the most recent year this funder made grants.

Source object · view filing

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 camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home
State money flows
the interactive map of money crossing state lines