· Private foundation
Phyllis C Wattis Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k10 grants · $67k
- $10k–50k32 grants · $418k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Circuit Network | $15,000 |
| SOMArts | $15,000 |
| Kulintang Arts Inc | $15,000 |
| CounterPulse | $15,000 |
| Anne Bluethenthal | $15,000 |
| FACTSF | $15,000 |
| Del Sol Performing Arts Organizatio | $15,000 |
| Canyon Cinema Foundation | $15,000 |
| Dancers' Group | $15,000 |
| San Francisco Contemporary Music Pl | $15,000 |
| Magic Theatre Inc | $15,000 |
| Left Coast Chamber Ensemble | $15,000 |
| San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Comp | $15,000 |
| The Playwrights Foundation Inc | $15,000 |
| Shotgun Players Inc | $13,500 |
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.
Your human-services grants (FY20–20, $3k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% of those 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.
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.
72 repeat relationships — 35 still active in FY2024, 37 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $50k 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
- DGDANCERS GROUP7× · 2017–2024 · $317k · revenue +77%
- IFIntersection for the Arts8× · 2017–2024 · $205k · revenue +48%
- SSOMArts6× · 2019–2024 · $156k · revenue +51%
Funded once
- SFSAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $40k · revenue +221%
- CCCHINESE CULTURE FOUNDATION OF SAN FRANCISCOgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $35k · revenue +241%
- DFDance Film SF Incgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $35k · revenue +213%
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.
On the Boards' mission is to invest in leading contemporary performing artists near and far and connect them to a diverse range of communities interested in forward-thinking art and ideas.
As creative producers, we are devoted to the production and presentation of groundbreaking experiences in contemporary performance that use innovative approaches to collaboration, technology, and social engagement. As a service…
Dandelion is situated at the crossroads of dance, theater, music, community activism, healing, and new performance forms. The company is committed to the individual and intersecting artistic visions of Kimiko Guthrie and Eric Kupers. Our…
Nava Dance Theatre uses the south Indian dance form as a medium for artistic reflection and discovery.
Oakland Ballet Company's mission is to inspire the community by keeping the tradition of ballet exciting, vibrant and accessible.
Occidental Center for the Arts exists to provide a welcoming and accessible venue for the performing and visual arts in Sonoma County California for local regional national and international artists. our mission is to enrich our community…
Promote the expressive arts of the historic silk road region of Eurasia
Studio Theatre produces exceptional contemporary theatre in deliberately intimate spaces, fostering a more thoughtful, more empathetic, and more connected community, in Washington DC and beyond.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is San Francisco Performances Inc and the most unlike its peers is Art 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 28 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.8% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
117 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. 117 of the 136 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 DANCERS GROUP ↗
- Who funds Intersection for the Arts ↗
- Who funds SOMArts ↗
- Who funds Shotgun Players ↗
- Who funds CounterPulse ↗
- Who funds Womens Audio Mission ↗
- Who funds Brava for Women in the Arts dba Brava Theater Center ↗
- Who funds FRESH MEAT PRODUCTIONS ↗
- Who funds InterMusic SF ↗
- Who funds ZACCHO SF ↗
- Who funds The Z Space Studio ↗
- Who funds BAYVIEW OPERA HOUSE ↗
- Who funds Kala Art Institute ↗
- Who funds Root Division ↗
- Who funds Northern California Grantmakers ↗
- Who funds ARTCOUNCIL INC DBA ARTADIA ↗
- Who funds AXIS Dance Company ↗
- Who funds Project Bandaloop ↗
- Who funds Center for Cultural Innovation ↗
- Who funds THE LAB SF ↗
- Who funds Southern Exposure ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds The Aurora Theatre Company ↗
- Who funds THE LIVING EARTH SHOW ↗
- Who funds HEADLANDS CENTER FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds New Performance Traditions ↗
- Who funds Cutting Ball Theater ↗
- Who funds Joe Goode Performance Group ↗
- Who funds PLAYGROUND ↗
- Who funds AFRICAN-AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds Theatre Bay Area ↗
- Who funds Destiny Arts Center ↗
- Who funds JESS CURTISGRAVITY INC ↗
- Who funds Bridge Live Arts Prev Hope Mohr Dance ↗
- Who funds OAKLAND THEATER PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Opera Parallle ↗
- Who funds Circuit Network ↗
- Who funds Frameline 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 Zellerbach Family Foundation · Kenneth Rainin Foundation · Fleishhacker Foundation · The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation · Walter and Elise Haas Fund · The Sam Mazza Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · Center for Cultural Innovation · East Bay Community Foundation · The Bernard Osher Foundation · The Map Fund Inc · Gerbode 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 Phyllis C Wattis 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.
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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Phyllis C Wattis Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Phyllis C Wattis 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.