· Public charity
Rhode Island Council for the Humanities
RHODE ISLAND COUNCIL FOR THE HUMANITIES seeds, supports, and strengthens public history, cultural heritage, civic education, and community engagement by and for all rhode islanders.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 12 grants below total $134,795 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $272,881 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $138,086 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 · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $17k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $118k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| QUEERARCHIVEWORK INC | $12,000 |
| PROVIDENCE PUBLIC LIBRARY | $12,000 |
| DIRT PALACE PUBLIC PROJECTS | $12,000 |
| ARMENIAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION OF RHODE ISLAND | $12,000 |
| NEWPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $12,000 |
| LITTLE COMPTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $12,000 |
| WEST BROADWAY NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION | $12,000 |
| FRACTURED ATLAS | $12,000 |
| TIKKUN OLAM PRODUCTIONS | $12,000 |
| SCHOOL ONE | $10,150 |
| PRESERVE RHODE ISLAND | $8,845 |
| WANDERGROUND LESBIAN ARCHIVELIBRARY INC | $7,800 |
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 (FY20–23, $69k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 6% of Rhode Island Council for the Humanities’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 98% of the giving stays in RI; read by stated purpose it is 91% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +26% since the first grant, against +4% for the ones you funded once.
38 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2024, 32 since wound down; 6 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, 50% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $68k 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
- NFNEWPORT FILM INC6× · 2017–2023 · $69k · revenue +86%
- TMTHE MANTON AVENUE PROJECT6× · 2017–2023 · $68k · revenue +25%
- LCLittle Compton Historical Society Inc6× · 2017–2024 · $68k · revenue +118%
Funded once
- ITINTERNATIONAL TENNIS HALL OF FAME INCORPORATEDgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $19k · revenue +101%
- TMTOMAQUAG MUSEUMone grant, 2020 · $15k
SOUTH COUNTY MUSEUM INCone grant, 2021 · $13k · revenue -25%
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 collect, preserve, and maintain historical data in a museum setting; memorializing the ri state police as an educational resource for the public
The mission of the society is to promote the arts through art exhibits, awards, art classes, and demonstrations.
To celabrate the day of portugal in the state of rhode island
Stimulating public interest in and support of the rhode island school of design museum
To collect, preserve and share the heritage of jamestown ri
Founded in 1747 on the enlightenment ideals of intellectual pursuit and civic engagement, the redwood library and athenaeum generates knowledge in the humanities for the benefit of the widest possible audience with nothing in view but the…
Discover memorialize & preserve the history and architecture of pawtucket ri by charitable & educational means through community service and preservation and maintenance of histroical buildings in the city.
New Bedford Art Museum is dedicated to engaging a diverse audience in relevant exhibitions, exemplary education, and creative experiences as a vital innovative center for the arts.
To connect people, communities, and cultures through experience of art. collect the most significant works of art available in an effort to shape the quality/scope of the permanent collection while adhering to the institution's…
To obtain private and public support to perpetuate the efforts of the museum of work and culture, and to teach the history of the blackstone valley.
None
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Newport Historical Society and the most unlike its peers is Wanderground Lesbian Archive Library Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 28 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
93 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. 93 of the 107 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 NEWPORT FILM INC ↗
- Who funds THE MANTON AVENUE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Little Compton Historical Society Inc ↗
- Who funds GENERATION CITIZEN INC ↗
- Who funds FIRSTWORKS ↗
- Who funds Stages of Freedom ↗
- Who funds RHODE ISLAND LATINO ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds New Urban Arts ↗
- Who funds LitArts RI ↗
- Who funds THE RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Dirt Palace Public Projects ↗
- Who funds The Wilbury Theatre Group ↗
- Who funds PROVIDENCE PUBLIC LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds PRESERVE RHODE ISLAND ↗
- Who funds PROVIDENCE CHILDREN'S MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds SCHOOL ONE ↗
- Who funds EDUCATIONAL CENTER OF ARTS AND SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds OPERATION STAND DOWN RHODE ISLAND ↗
- Who funds SOUTH COUNTY HISTORY CENTER ↗
- Who funds PROVIDENCE PRESERVATION SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY INC ↗
- Who funds RHODE ISLAND BLACK HERITAGE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds WATERFIRE PROVIDENCE ↗
- Who funds RHODE ISLAND BLACK STORYTELLERS ↗
- Who funds CACD CAPEVERDEAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL TENNIS HALL OF FAME INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds OASIS INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds Trinity Restoration Inc ↗
- Who funds Providence Children's Film Festival Inc ↗
- Who funds EMPOWERMENT FACTORY ↗
- Who funds Aurea ↗
- Who funds Riverzedge Arts Project ↗
- Who funds OLD SLATER MILL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds OCEAN STATE MEDIA GROUP ↗
- Who funds SOUTH COUNTY MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds RHODE ISLAND URBAN DEBATE LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds RHODE ISLAND STATEHOUSE RESTORATION COMMITTEE ↗
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 Champlin Foundation · The Rhode Island Community Foundation · Ralph R Papitto & Barbara a Papitto Private Family Foundation · United Way of Rhode Island Inc · June Rockwell Levy Foundation Incorporated · Amica Companies Foundation · Washington Trust Co Charitable Fdn · The Nordson Corporation Foundation · Heritage Harbor Foundation · Ida Ballou Littlefield Memorial Trust · Textron Charitable Trust Dtd 122353 · Citizens Charitable 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 Rhode Island Council for the Humanities 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.
- The Center for Independent Documentary Inc — 6% 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.