Skip to content
Optical Society of America Inc at a glanceAlso receives grants: funding profile →

· Public charity

Optical Society of America Inc

To promote the generation application and archiving of knowledge of optics and photonics and to disseminate the knowledge worldwide.

$1.9M
Granted FY2024still arriving
4
Grants FY2024still arriving
4
States reached
$687k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its fieldRead
01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2024.

Health$13MEducation$1.1MScience & Tech$127kMembership Benefit$75kArts & Culture$10k
02FY2024 · 4 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

How this is measured
The 4 grants below total $783,634, the rows itemized in this filing. The $1,854,686 headline is the total grant expense on the return; the other $1,071,052 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 · FY2024

  • $10k–50k2 grants · $38k
  • $50k–250k1 grant · $59k
  • $250k+1 grant · $687k
$59,267
Median grant
4
States reached
$148M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
Optica Foundation$686,840
Materials Research Society$59,267
SPIE$22,527
WISTEE Connect INC$15,000
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 (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 99% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 9%The University of Arizona: $250k → 15%Massachusetts Institute of Technology: $75k → 8%Materials Research Society: $59k → 11%RIT SPIE OSA Student Chapter: $7k → 14%Optica Foundation: $3.0M → 14%University of Central Florida: $8k → 13%The American Ceramic Society: $10k → 5%SPIE: $25k → 12%WISTEE Connect INC: $15k → 14%The Optica Foundation: $2.0M → 14%SPIE: $20k → 12%University of Rochester: $800k → 14%The OSA FoundationInc: $1.8M → 14%Optica Foundation: $1.7M → 14%Optica Foundation: $1.3M → 14%The OSA Foundation Inc: $1.2M → 14%The OSA Foundation Inc: $907k → 14%Optica Foundation: $687k → 14%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
NY
MA
OH
PA
AZ
DC
FL

Grants abroad, by region: $420k on the FY2024 return

Schedule F, as filed: 9 regions, all to individuals. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.

Europe (including Iceland and Greenland)$193k · 46% · 237 people

Stated purpose: Award · Chapter Management Grant · Family Care Grant

East Asia and the Pacific$57k · 13% · 77 people

Stated purpose: Award · Chapter Management Grant · Family Care Grant

South America$55k · 13% · 88 people

Stated purpose: Chapter Management Grant · Family Care Grant · Travel Grant

South Asia$48k · 11% · 85 people

Stated purpose: Award · Chapter Management Grant · Family Care Grant

North America (Canada and Mexico)$32k · 8% · 61 people

Stated purpose: Chapter Management Grant · Family Care Grant · Meeting Registration

Sub-Saharan Africa$20k · 5% · 20 people

Stated purpose: Chapter Management Grant · Conference Support · Special Program Support

Middle East and North Africa$9k · 2% · 15 people

Stated purpose: Chapter Management Grant · Family Care Grant · Travel Grant

Russia and Neighboring States$7k · 2% · 1 person

Stated purpose: Chapter Management Grant

Central America and the Caribbean$700 · 0% · 2 people

Stated purpose: Chapter Management Grant

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. Grants abroad on Schedule F are filed by region, purpose and amount with no recipient name, so they are shown by region and cannot be placed on the country map or matched to a grantee.
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 10 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.

2
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
0
Early backer (in before they grew)
7/7
Grantees still filing
5/7
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

OSA Foundation Inc: $12,578,038 · PhilanthropyOSA Foundation IncUNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER: $800,000 · Education+1 more: $15,000 · EducationUNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA: $250,000 · OtherSOCIETY OF PHOTO OPTICAL INSTRUMENTATION ENGINEERS: $67,527 · Other+2 more: $15,000 · OtherMassachusetts Institute of Technology Welfare Benefit Plans Trust: $75,000 · Membership BenefitMATERIALS RESEARCH SOCIETY: $59,267 · Community ImprovementTHE AMERICAN CERAMIC SOCIETY INC: $10,000 · Arts & Culture
Philanthropy$12,578,038Education$815,000Other$332,527Membership Benefit$75,000Community Improvement$59,267Arts & Culture$10,000

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

25%50%75%100%$100k$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetOSA Foundation Inc: $12,578,038 over 8y, 49% of budgetUNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER: $800,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetMassachusetts Institute of Technology Welfare Benefit Plans Trust: $75,000 over 1y, 0.3% of budgetSOCIETY OF PHOTO OPTICAL INSTRUMENTATION ENGINEERS: $67,527 over 3y, 0.1% of budgetMATERIALS RESEARCH SOCIETY: $59,267 over 1y, 0.5% of budgetWISTEE CONNECT INC: $15,000 over 1y, 100% of budgetTHE AMERICAN CERAMIC SOCIETY INC: $10,000 over 1y, 0.1% 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.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Optical Society of America Inc funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Optical Society of America Inc. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 10%6%25%56%100%funder's share of their income ↑0%3%5%8%10%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    1get no government money at all
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–10%
    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.

    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 10 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 2024, released 2024. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

    Play a game based on Optical Society of America’s filings →

    More from the funding graph

    The unnamed billions
    grants reported with no recipient in the public record
    The regranting layer
    51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
    The DAF merry-go-round
    $9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
    The endowment market
    who holds foundation money, and what just moved
    The camps
    funders cluster by geography, not ideology
    By state
    where grant money is based, and what stays home