· Public charity
Museums Alaska Inc
Museums alaska supports museums and cultural centers in alaska and enhances public understanding of their value.
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.
The 20 grants below total $395,334 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $412,217 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $16,883 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 · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k18 grants · $381k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ALUTIIQ HERITAGE FOUNDATION | $45,482 |
| SITKA SOUND SCIENCE CENTER | $35,000 |
| SEALASKA HERITAGE INSTITUTE | $34,915 |
| SHELDON JACKSON MUSEUM | $25,743 |
| SITKA HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC | $21,007 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FAIRBANKS | $20,000 |
| BRISTOL BAY HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $20,000 |
| NATIVE VILLAGE OF EYAK | $20,000 |
| ALEUTIAN PRIBILOF ISLANDS ASSOC INC | $20,000 |
| AUNT CLAUDIA'S DOLL'S A MUSEUM | $19,994 |
| CITY OF WASILLA | $19,110 |
| ANCHORAGE MUSEUM ASSOCATION | $18,900 |
| MUSEUM OF THE ALEUTIANS ASSOCIATION | $17,800 |
| HOMER SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY | $16,602 |
| KODIAK HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $13,748 |
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 9%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 48% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
34 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2024, 16 since wound down; 2 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $47k 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
- AHALUTIIQ HERITAGE FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2024 · $268k · revenue +46%
- SHSEALASKA HERITAGE INSTITUTE7× · 2017–2024 · $189k · revenue +310%
- AMAnchorage Museum Association6× · 2018–2024 · $164k · revenue +12%
Funded once
- FAFIRST ALASKANS INSTITUTEgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $24k · revenue +84%
- FOFRATERNAL ORDER OF ALASKA STATE TROOPERS CHARITY CORPORATIONone grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue +2%
- EHEAGLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF ALASKAgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue +153%
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.
Katmai Conservancy supports the preservation of Katmai National Park and Preserve its unique ecosystems scenic character and associated natural and cultural resources by promoting greater public interest appreciation and support through…
The mission of the Alaska Aviation Museum Endowment is to enhance and ensure the financial security of the Alaska Aviation Museum now and for future generations.
To honor mining individuals and inform the public of historical important moments in mining
Developed by, for, and in conjunction with the community, the cashmere museum and pioneer village seeks to engage, educate, and entertain visitors both local and international. hundreds of volunteers have worked thousands of hours to make…
Preservation of moving image material
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Alaska Native Heritage Center Inc and the most unlike its peers is Clausen Memorial Museum. 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 31 years old; the field is 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
36 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. 36 of the 49 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 ALUTIIQ HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SEALASKA HERITAGE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Anchorage Museum Association ↗
- Who funds SHELDON MUSEUM & CULTURAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Alaska Native Heritage Center Inc ↗
- Who funds Kodiak Historical Society ↗
- Who funds Alaska Aviation Museum ↗
- Who funds Museum of the Aleutians ↗
- Who funds HOMER SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds Palmer Museum of History and Art ↗
- Who funds ALASKA MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND NATURE ↗
- Who funds ALEUTIAN PRIBILOF ISLANDS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds Cape Fox Cultural Foundation ↗
- Who funds SITKA SOUND SCIENCE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Bristol Bay Historical Society Inc ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ALASKA STATE LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds MORRIS THOMPSON CULTURAL AND VISITORS CENTER ↗
- Who funds Fairbanks Childrens Museum ↗
- Who funds SITKA HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Talkeetna Historical Society Inc ↗
- Who funds Interior and Arctic Alaska Aeronautical Foundation ↗
- Who funds FIRST ALASKANS INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Hammer Museum Inc ↗
- Who funds FRATERNAL ORDER OF ALASKA STATE TROOPERS CHARITY CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds EAGLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF ALASKA ↗
- Who funds VALDEZ MUSEUM & HISTORICAL ARCHIVE ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds Jilkaat Kwaan Heritage Center ↗
- Who funds ALASKA JEWISH HISTORICAL MUSEUM & CULTURAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN BALD EAGLE FOUNDATION HAINES CHAPTER INC ↗
- Who funds CLAUSEN MEMORIAL MUSEUM ↗
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: Rasmuson Foundation · Alaska Humanities Forum · The Alaska Community Foundation · The CIRI Foundation · M J Murdock Charitable Trust · Atwood Foundation Inc · Frances & David Rose Foundation · Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium · Rural Alaska Community Action Program Foundation · Juneau Community Foundation · Alaska Children's Trust · Richard L and Diane M Block 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 Museums Alaska 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.
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.