· Public charity
Norman Arts Council
The NORMAN ARTS COUNCIL shall enrich the norman community by stimulating artistic, cultural, and economic growth through the support and promotion of the arts.
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
- $10k–50k18 grants · $402k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $133k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA | $133,385 |
| JAZZ IN JUNE | $30,000 |
| NORMAN MUSIC ALLIANCE | $30,000 |
| CENTRAL OKLAHOMA DANCE COMPANY | $29,875 |
| OKLAHOMA YOUTH SING | $26,954 |
| THE DEPOT | $26,752 |
| CIMARRON OPERA | $26,502 |
| NORMAN CULTURAL CONNECTION | $25,150 |
| PIONEER LIBRARY | $24,336 |
| A TO Z PRODUCTIONS | $23,728 |
| SOONER THEATRE | $23,307 |
| HEALTHY LIVING NORMAN | $22,480 |
| FIREHOUSE ART CENTER | $22,119 |
| CLEVELAND COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $20,700 |
| NAMRON PLAYERS THEATRE | $20,237 |
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 (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 14%. 1% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
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 +33% since the first grant, against -7% for the ones you funded once.
20 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 2 since wound down; 1 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $22k 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
- JIJAZZ IN JUNE INC9× · 2017–2025 · $252k · revenue +33% · 30% of their budget
- NMNorman Music Alliance Inc9× · 2017–2025 · $231k · revenue +107% · 48% of their budget
- NFNORMAN FIREHOUSE ART CENTER INC9× · 2017–2025 · $212k · revenue +94%
Funded once
PIONEER LIBRARY SYSTEM FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $18k · revenue -7%- NFNORMAN FILM FESTIVAL FOUNDATIONone grant, 2019 · $8k
- AFACCADEMIA FILARMONICA THE OKLAHOMA EARLY MUSIC PROJECTone grant, 2019 · $8k
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.
To bring quality live performances to the northwest region of oklahoma
Production
The Oklahoma Community Orchestra performs five to six orchestral concerts throughout the Oklahoma City area during each year at a nominal cost to the public.
To provide a wide spectrum of high quality theatrical entertainment to a broad audience in Enid and the surrounding communities, and to provide a setting for nonprofessional actors, directors, designers, and technicians to learn and…
Providing innovative works of one act and chamber operas for the public at large, and free or low cost performances for schools and nursing homes.
Enrichment of cultural environment by providing the North Atlanta area community with high quality performances and opportunities for young and gifted performers.
Promote the arts in the community
Community performing arts
To promote a high standard of dance
Live music performances.
Performing arts productions
Entertainment | Opera Performing Arts Organization.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is A to Z Productions Inc and the most unlike its peers is Pioneer Library System 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 16 years old; the field is 18. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 8% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
17 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. 17 of the 25 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 JAZZ IN JUNE INC ↗
- Who funds Norman Music Alliance Inc ↗
- Who funds NORMAN FIREHOUSE ART CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Sooner Theatre of Norman Inc ↗
- Who funds The Performing Arts Studio Inc ↗
- Who funds CIMARRON CIRCUIT OPERA COMPANY ↗
- Who funds NORMAN BALLET COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDRENS ARTS NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds A TO Z PRODUCTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL OKLAHOMA DANCE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds NORMAN CULTURAL CONNECTION INC ↗
- Who funds NAMRON PLAYERS THEATRE INCORPORATED DBA OKLAHOMA STORYWORKS ↗
- Who funds Scissortail Productions Inc ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds OWWL LIBRARY SYSTEM ↗
- Who funds PIONEER LIBRARY SYSTEM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OKLAHOMA CITY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION 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: Kirkpatrick Foundation Inc · Allied Arts of Oklahoma Inc · Communities Foundation of Oklahoma · Arvest Foundation · 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 organization Norman Arts Council 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.