· Private foundation
Robert Swanson and Cynthia Shevlin Charitable
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DAYSTAR US | $30,000 |
| PROJECT ZAWADI INC | $30,000 |
| THE PHOENIX SYMPHONY | $25,000 |
| MUSICAL INSTRUMENT MUSEUM | $25,000 |
| ARIZONA MUSICFEST | $25,000 |
| THE MARVELWOOD SCHOOL | $15,000 |
| ARIZONA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| SCOTTSDALE ARTS | $10,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA MUSEUM OF ART | $10,000 |
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 (FY24–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 100% 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.
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.
13 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2025, 6 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k 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
- PZPROJECT ZAWADI INC2× · 2024–2025 · $60k · revenue +2%
- AMARIZONA MUSICFEST INC2× · 2024–2025 · $50k · revenue +46%
- PSPHOENIX SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION2× · 2024–2025 · $50k · revenue +18%
Funded once
- WWWOOFS WIGGLES N WAGS RESCUEone grant, 2021 · $50k
- RPRENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTEone grant, 2023 · $20k
- ACARIZONA COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $10k
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.
Professional production of opera for the public, and education about opera and the performing arts for audiences of all ages.
Arizona school for the arts inspires creative thinkers and leaders through providing an innovative concentration in college preparation informed by the performing arts.
To provide quality memorable instrumental music to audiences at an affordable price.
Arizona opera elevates the transformative power of storytelling through music - cultivating community and strengthening a state and people as adventurous and diverse as the place they call home.
Nurture and amplify the strength and resonance of arizonas choral artistry through live concert experiences performed by professional singers living in arizona, and via recordings and other media for those outside the state to know and…
Arts+ teaches music and art to students of all socioeconomic backgrounds, offering financial assistance, scholarship and free outreach programs to honor its founding mission to make high-quality arts instruction available to all.
The mission of the silicon schools fund is to improve education through supporting the launch of excellent new schools, improving academic instruction in existing schools, and by funding some of the boldest innovations in education…
To create great people through great performances
Guided by artists, rooted in new mexico, site santa fe celebrates contemporary creative expression.
To perform the functions of, or to carry out the purposes of the arizona community foundation, an az nonprofit corporation, so long as the arizona community foundation, inc. remains a qualified organization.
The museum school celebrates, nurtures and enhances the ability of all participants through experimental, project-based learning. infusing the arts and utilizing resources available at local museums.
The mission of valley christian schools is to equip students to be culture changers for christ by delivering academic excellence, facilitating spiritual growth, and building lifelong community.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Phoenix Symphony Association and the most unlike its peers is Imprints of Honor. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
9 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. 9 of the 20 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.
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: Arizona Community Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 Robert Swanson and Cynthia Shevlin Charitable 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.