· Public charity
Opera America Inc
Opera america, inc.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2022.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 21 grants below total $374,600 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $605,469 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $230,869 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 · FY2022
- Under $10k8 grants · $64k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $311k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PENSACOLA OPERA | $45,000 |
| OPERA BIRMINGHAM | $34,000 |
| VIRGINIA OPERA | $27,500 |
| HOUSTON GRAND OPERA | $27,500 |
| LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO | $27,500 |
| BETH MORRISON PROJECTS | $27,500 |
| AMERICAN LYRIC THEATER | $27,500 |
| OPERA THEATRE SAINT LOUIS | $27,500 |
| BETH MORRISON PROJECT | $17,000 |
| MASSOPERA | $15,000 |
| LONG BEACH OPERA | $12,500 |
| OPERA SAN JOSE | $12,000 |
| HOUSTON GRAND OPERA | $10,000 |
| AMERICAN OPERA PROJECT | $9,500 |
| AMERICAN OPERA PROJECTS | $9,000 |
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 (FY17–22) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 76% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-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.
Which US states your grants reach
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.
41 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2022, 29 since wound down; 5 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (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 FY2022, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $68k went to new ones.
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
- TSTHE SANTA FE OPERA4× · 2017–2024 · $430k · revenue +53%
- HGHouston Grand Opera Association Inc7× · 2017–2025 · $321k · revenue +28%
- TDThe Dallas Opera2× · 2017–2018 · $300k · revenue +11%
Funded once
- CCCENTRAL CITY OPERA HOUSE ASSOCIATIONgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $122k · revenue +64%
FLORENTINE OPERA COMPANY INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $91k · revenue +38%- NONEW ORLEANS OPERA ASSOCIATION2× · 2018–2023 · $84k · revenue -9%
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.
Providing paid opportunities for Houston based singers.
Hopera's mission is to produce live musical performances in unique Houston Area spaces that focus on and empower Houston Area artists. Our Pint-Sized Performance concert series empowers local musicians to create original programs that are…
Washington concert opera presents less often performed operatic masterpieces in concert format that feature experienced and emerging artists, often in their role or local debuts.
Produce Opera for Children and to introduce the arts to young adults
Greensboro opera is a community-based company dedicated to fostering the growth of opera and to presenting professional productions of the highest artistic caliber for the enjoyment, education, and enrichment of the triad region of north…
The Hudson Lyric Opera is an organization dedicated to providing culturalopportunities for talented singers and musicians in the Hudson Valleyregion that have been classically or formally trained who, otherwise, wouldnot be able to devote…
Utopia Opera is a NYC-based non-profit opera company that endeavors to produce three to four staged productions a year in Manhattan involving singers, orchestra, and crew members. These works encompass all genres, languages, and styles of…
Pocket Opera exists to present and promote opera in an engaging way in English settings with minimal props and chamber orchestrations.
To educate the general public of new york on all aspects of opera through opera productions, lectures, classes, camps, social media, newsletters, etc. while emphasizing the need to make opera accessible and affordable to all people, no…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Opera Omaha Inc and the most unlike its peers is Bard College. 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 48 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% 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.
97 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.
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 San Diego Opera Association ↗
- Who funds THE SANTA FE OPERA ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO OPERA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds GLIMMERGLASS OPERA THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds DETROIT OPERA ↗
- Who funds SEATTLE OPERA ↗
- Who funds Houston Grand Opera Association Inc ↗
- Who funds OPERA OMAHA INC ↗
- Who funds The Dallas Opera ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA OPERA COMPANY ↗
- Who funds The Minnesota Opera ↗
- Who funds AUSTIN LYRIC OPERA ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES OPERA COMPANY ↗
- Who funds OPERA PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds Opera Theatre of Saint Louis ↗
- Who funds PITTSBURGH OPERA INC ↗
- Who funds BETH MORRISON PROJECTS INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN OPERA PROJECTS INC ↗
- Who funds PORTLAND OPERA ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds LAKE GEORGE OPERA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL CITY OPERA HOUSE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Cincinnati Opera Association Inc ↗
- Who funds OPERA MEMPHIS INC ↗
- Who funds FLORENTINE OPERA COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds Opera Parallle ↗
- Who funds NEW ORLEANS OPERA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ANCHORAGE OPERA COMPANY ↗
- Who funds WOLF TRAP FOUNDATION FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE OPERA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN LYRIC THEATER CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds OPERA ON TAP ↗
- Who funds PENSACOLA OPERA INC ↗
- Who funds THE OPERA ASSOCIATION OF CENTRAL OHIO ↗
- Who funds LONG BEACH OPERA ↗
- Who funds IN SERIES INC ↗
- Who funds OPERA BIRMINGHAM INC ↗
- Who funds ON SITE OPERA INC ↗
- Who funds TULSA OPERA INC ↗
- Who funds SPOLETO FESTIVAL USA 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: The Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc Co Alter Kendrick & Baron LLP · The Amphion Foundation Inc Co Alter Kendrick & Baron LLP · New Music USA Inc · Ibm International Foundation · The Andrew W Mellon Foundation · Wender Foundation · Seniel & Dorothy Ostrow Foundation · The Howard and Sarah D Solomon Foundation · The Map Fund Inc · The Howard Gilman Foundation Inc · Claytor Family Charitable Foundation · Firestone Family Foundation Inc
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 Opera America 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.
- White Snake Projects Inc — 8% of income from government
- Guerilla Opera Inc — 7% of income from government
- Boston Lyric Opera Company — 3% of income from government
- Portland Opera Association Inc — 2% of income from government
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.