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· Public charity

National Independent Venue Foundation

The mission of the NATIONAL INDEPENDENT VENUE FOUNDATION (nivf) is to preserve and nurture the ecosystem of independent live performance venues and promoters throughout the united states by supporting a transparent, competitive marketplace serving a diverse and inclusive community of artists, fans, and industry workers.

$242k
Granted FY2025still arriving
9
Grants FY2025still arriving
6
States reached
$43k
Largest
01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2021 to 2025.

Public Safety & Disaster$2.3MArts & Culture$550kCommunity Improvement$43kHuman Services$43k
02FY2025 · 9 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

How this is measured
The 9 grants below total $161,788, the rows itemized in this filing. The $241,821 headline is the total grant expense on the return; the other $80,033 is giving the schedule does not break out (grants under the $5,000 itemization floor, grants to individuals, grants on other schedules). Every figure below describes the itemized rows only.

By grant size · FY2025

  • Under $10k1 grant · $7k
  • $10k–50k8 grants · $155k
$15,000
Median grant
6
States reached
$1.0M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
National Independent Venue Association$42,788
Happy Dog$25,000
Clocktower Entertainment LLC$20,000
The House of Songs$15,000
Lulu's Downstairs LLC$15,000
EWRB LLC dba No Class$15,000
The Orange Peel Social Aid and Pleasure Club LLC$12,500
For The Funk Of It Productions$10,000
Montford Park Players Inc$6,500
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY21–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 87% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 10%GRANADA THEATER LLC: $24k → 11%CLUB CAFE PARTNERS INC: $17k → 11%RUMBA ROOM LIVE ANAHEIM LLC: $25k → 10%998 Valencia LLC: $25k → 10%MIKE AND MARCIE INC: $43k → 14%For The Funk Of It Productions: $10k → 18%Play Enterprise LLC: $15k → 9%National Independent Venue Association: $43k → 17%THE PARISH AUSTIN LLC: $25k → 10%The House of Songs: $15k → 8%NICE GUYS PINTS & PIES LLC: $25k → 11%The Orange Peel Social Aid and Pleasure Club LLC: $13k → 12%Lulu's Downstairs LLC: $15k → 9%Clocktower Entertainment LLC: $20k → 12%Happy Dog: $25k → 17%MA Wells Enterprises LLC: $25k → 9%THE ROXEY BALLET COMPANY INC: $25k → 4%THE HOLLAND PROJECT: $15k → 10%Fuzz Box Productions LLC: $15k → 9%ISSUE PROJECT ROOM INC: $15k → 17%Montford Park Players Inc: $7k → 12%Club Q LLC: $25k → 9%HQ Live Denver Inc: $25k → 12%EWRB LLC dba No Class: $15k → 17%NATIONAL INDEPENDENT VENUE ASSOCIATION: $525k → 17%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

WA
MN
NY
NV
OH
PA
NJ
CA
CO
AR
NC
HI
TX
FL
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its field
04the grantee network

7 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 7 of the 25 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
1
Early backer (in before they grew)
7/7
Grantees still filing
4/7
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

THE GIVING BACK FUND: $1,923,000 · PhilanthropyTHE GIVING BACK FUNDNATIONAL INDEPENDENT VENUE ASSOCIATION: $567,788 · Community ImprovementNATIONAL INDEPENDENT …MIKE AND MARCIE INC: $42,500 · OtherMIKE AND MARCIE…NICE GUYS PINTS & PIES: $25,000 · OtherNICE GUYS PINTS…MA Wells Enterprises LLC: $25,000 · OtherMA Wells Enterp…THE PARISH AUSTIN: $25,000 · OtherTHE PARISH AUST…Happy Dog: $25,000 · OtherHappy DogRUMBA ROOM LIVE ANAHEIM LLC: $25,000 · OtherRUMBA ROOM LIVE…Club Q LLC: $25,000 · OtherClub Q LLC998 Valencia LLC: $25,000 · Other998 Valencia LL…NE CO BOARD OF COOP EDUC SVS: $25,000 · OtherNE CO BOARD OF …GRANADA THEATER LLC: $23,500 · OtherGRANADA THEATER…Clocktower Entertainment LLC: $20,000 · OtherCLUB CAFE PARTNERS INC: $16,500 · OtherEWRB LLC dba No Class: $15,000 · OtherPlay Enterprise LLC: $15,000 · OtherLulu's Downstairs LLC: $15,000 · OtherFUZZ BOX PRODUCTIONS LLC: $15,000 · Other+3 more: $29,000 · Other+3 moreTHE ROXEY BALLET COMPANY: $25,000 · Arts & CultureTHE HOLLAND PROJECT: $15,000 · Arts & CultureISSUE PROJECT ROOM INC: $15,000 · Arts & CultureThe House of Songs: $15,000 · Arts & Culture
Philanthropy$1,923,000Community Improvement$567,788Other$391,500Arts & Culture$70,000

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetTHE GIVING BACK FUND: $1,923,000 over 1y, 12% of budgetNATIONAL INDEPENDENT VENUE ASSOCIATION: $567,788 over 2y, 14% of budgetTHE ROXEY BALLET COMPANY: $25,000 over 1y, 4.0% of budgetTHE HOLLAND PROJECT: $15,000 over 1y, 3.5% of budgetISSUE PROJECT ROOM INC: $15,000 over 1y, 1.5% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

  • Who funds THE GIVING BACK FUND ↗
  • Who funds NATIONAL INDEPENDENT VENUE ASSOCIATION ↗
  • Who funds THE ROXEY BALLET COMPANY ↗
  • Who funds THE HOLLAND PROJECT ↗
  • Who funds ISSUE PROJECT ROOM INC ↗
  • Who funds The House of Songs ↗
  • Who funds MONTFORD PARK PLAYERS ↗

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a set of overlaps that mostly run through this funder rather than between each other.

Amazonsmile FoundationWA0.7× affinity4 shared granteesties to 0 of 0Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Amazonsmile Foundation

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization National Independent Venue Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from National Independent Venue Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 10%1%4%8%15%funder's share of their income ↑0%8%15%22%30%share of the org’s income from government →median 11%
  • The Roxey Ballet Company: 11% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
1get no government money at all
2report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–30%
typical government reliance, FY20–25
How this is measured
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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.
04Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to National Independent Venue Foundation?

Find your warmest path to National Independent Venue 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.

On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 25 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

How this is measured
Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its 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.

Generated from the IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Source object · view filing

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