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· Private foundation
NORMAN AND CAROL NIE FOUNDATION
This foundation does not accept unsolicited requests — it funds preselected organizations.
$5k
Granted FY2021
3
Grants
2
Communities
$3k
Largest
01What you fund
0186% classified
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2021.
Arts & Culture$54kHuman Services$18kEducation$10kPhilanthropy$5kHealth$3kOther$15k
02beneath the categories
Past the labels — and the year it shifted
Beneath the NTEE codes, this is what the grant descriptions actually say.
…and in their own words, year by year
2018
—
2020
sun valley
2021
—
Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.
03FY2021 · 3 grants
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
$2,500
Median grant
2
States reached
$0
Total assets
Largest grants
- SPUR COMMUNITY FDN$2,736
- OPERA IDAHO$2,500
- PEDAL THE CAUSE$250
02The need
04
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:
Your human-services grants (FY20–21, $18k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7% — the area typically sits at 10%. 1% of those dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Your grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.
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 line in 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, United Way ALICE — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
03Your edge
repeat funding
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.
76%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$80k · 4 repeat orgs$25k to everyone else
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +30% since the first grant, against +9% for the ones you funded once.
4 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2021, 2 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Re-uppedFunded once
Organizations
4
6
Total granted
$80k
$25k
Median revenue growth · since first grant
+30%
+9%
Still filing today
100%
50%
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2021, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $250 went to new ones.
RenewedFirst-time
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
Arts & CultureHuman ServicesEducationPhilanthropyHealthOther
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
- SVSUN VALLEY SUMMER SYMPHONY2× · 2017–2018 · $47k · revenue +30%
- SCSPUR COMMUNITY FOUNDATION2× · 2020–2021 · $18k · revenue +2114%
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO2× · 2017–2018 · $10k · revenue +26%
Funded once
- SVSUN VALLEY MUSIC FESTIVALone grant, 2020 · $13k
SPURgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +55%- SVSUN VALLEY PERFORMING ARTS INCone grant, 2020 · $3k · revenue -27%
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
04Your 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
Chicago Opera Theater
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.
Arts & Culture
2
Utah Symphony & Opera
Connect the community through great live music. To perform. To engage. To inspire. We do this by serving the people of our state and beyond as the region's premier provider of orchestral and operatic music. Our orchestral performances span…
Arts & Culture
3
Socal Symphony Society
Presentation of symphony orchestra concerts in Culver City, Marina del Rey and the Los Angeles area
Arts & Culture
4
Syracuse Opera Company Inc
Production of professional opera performances
Arts & Culture
5
Opera Philadelphia
Opera philadelphia is committed to embracing innovation and developing opera for the 21st century.
Arts & Culture
6
Seattle Opera
To thrill, inspire and educate through the shared experience of opera
Arts & Culture
7
Opera Southwest
Professional production of opera for the public, and education about opera and the performing arts for audiences of all ages.
Arts & Culture
8
Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra
Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra's mission as a professional orchestra is to utilize the universal expression of music to create profound, inspiring, and personal connections between the people and communities of Chicagos Southland.
Arts & Culture
9
Skagit Symphony
Skagit Symphony's mission is to present professional-level orchestral experiences to a growing and inclusive audience; to enrich, entertain, educate, and inspire our community through music.
Arts & Culture
10
Lyric Opera of Chicago
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 development of the art form of opera.
Arts & Culture
11
St Petersburg Opera Co Inc
The mission of the st. petersburg opera company is to enrich the cultural lives of the residents of, and visitors to, the tampa bay area by presenting fully staged professional opera productions of the highest quality, and to make opera…
Arts & Culture
12
San Francisco Classical Voice
SFCV's mission is to engage audiences, artists, and arts organizations, and forge meaningful connections through music journalism.
Arts & Culture
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Sun Valley Summer Symphony Inc and the most unlike its peers is University of Chicago. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
05the grantee network
8 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2024.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.
0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
2
Early backer (in before they grew)
8/8
Grantees still filing
7/8
Grew since you first funded
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Arts & Culture$54,460Human Services$17,986Other$14,500Education$10,000Philanthropy$5,000Health$2,500
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.
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.
Idaho Community Foundation IncID13.7× affinity4 shared granteesties to 6 of 6Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →
Open a dossier: Idaho Community Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · American Endowment Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 organisation NORMAN AND CAROL NIE 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.
2024
’20’21’22’23’24
- Spur Inc — 1% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
0get no government money at all
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–15%
typical government reliance, FY20–24
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. 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.
05Through Plinth
Through Plinth
Your grantmaking, live and operational
This dossier was generated cold from public filings. In Plinth it’s a working system — every applicant assessed and every grant monitored. Here’s a taste, run on one of your grantees: SUN VALLEY SUMMER SYMPHONY.
Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk
Financial management
high risk
~1 months of operating runway; revenue grew over 7 filed years.
Track record & reputation
low risk
7 years of Form 990 filings, still active.
Legal standing
low risk
US 501(c)(3); EIN 820397940 on file with current IRS Form 990 filings.
Governance
Live in Plinth
Board composition & governance documents — verified live in Plinth from the applicant.
Compliance & sanctions
Live in Plinth
OFAC / UN sanctions screening — run live in Plinth at assessment.
Program capacity
Live in Plinth
Staffing, M&E and activity alignment — assessed live in Plinth from submitted proposals.
Live · Plinth’s real DD engine
Run the actual assessment on SUN VALLEY SUMMER SYMPHONY, cold from public data.
Generated live from public IRS filings + open web sources by Plinth’s agentic engine. Shown as an illustration of the product, not a formal assessment.
Post-award monitoring · continuous checks
- FlagFinancial stability— Roughly 1 months of cash on hand.
- On trackSustained operations— Filing through 2024; revenue grew over the period.
- On trackReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 1% of their budget — diversified.
- Awaiting reportEvidence of delivery— Plinth collects the grantee's own monitoring reports post-award.
What you see here is static and public. In Plinth it’s operational — the full six-pillar framework on every applicant (with their own documents + live registry and sanctions checks), monitoring dashboards on every award, custom board reports, and eligibility routing for intake.
Agentic due diligenceMonitoring dashboardsCustom board reportsEligibility routing
Preview generated from this grantee’s public IRS filings and independent reporting. Pillars marked “live in Plinth” require the applicant’s submitted documents. Shown as illustration, not a formal assessment.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPro
How do I get to Norman and Carol Nie Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Norman and Carol Nie Foundation through people who sit on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the introduction across shared trustees and officers.
Every link is a documented governance overlap in public IRS 990 filings — not a personal network — and each hop carries its own confidence tier. Low-confidence or distant paths are held back rather than guessed.
More from the funding graph
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars pass through an intermediary
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
Strange bedfellows
the named clusters of US funding
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