· Private foundation
Silver Sun Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k7 grants · $8k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WFUV | $20,000 |
| SKYLIGHT | $15,000 |
| UFO | $15,000 |
| FORDHAM | $4,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,200 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,183 |
| QUEERLY | $500 |
| FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER | $500 |
| ATHENS CULTURAL CENTER | $300 |
| WOODSTOCK FILM FESTIVAL | $175 |
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 (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 78% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +47% since the first grant, against +23% for the ones you funded once.
11 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 8 since wound down; 7 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, 63% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $22k 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
- FUFordham University8× · 2017–2024 · $214k · revenue +47%
- JBJACOB BURNS FILM CENTER INC5× · 2017–2022 · $61k · revenue +15%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF VERMONT AND STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC4× · 2017–2022 · $30k · revenue +35%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $20k
OPENCOLLECTIVE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $15k · revenue -100%- JBJEWISH BOARD FAMILY CHILDREN SERVICone grant, 2019 · $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.
The mission of new york city center is to be new york city's leading center for dance and musical theater. dedicated to making the arts accessible to the broadest possible audience, city center seeks to create a welcoming environment and…
Wheaton college provides a transformative liberal arts education, combining theory and practice, for intellectually curious students within a collaborative and vibrant extended community and network that values and strives to create an…
Established in 1971, the mission of the new york foundation for the arts (nyfa) is to empower artists in all disciplines, as well as cultural workers, to achieve success on their own terms by providing critical support, resources, and…
Rockaway film festival presents cinema and other arts at the coastal edge of new york city, joining artists and audiences for unique collective experiences.
To create innovative, diverse theatre that builds community by fostering empathy and dialogue.
Theaterworks' mission is to share intimate stories that engage all audiences. it creates exceptional contemporary theater that entertains, celebrates new voices, and invites meaningful conversations. its vision is to inspire a more…
American theatre wing invests in brave work, supports creative growth, and celebrates excellence to bring inclusive stories to our national culture through theatre. the american theatre wing has spent a century using theatre to advance…
Open new york education, inc. supports public education, awareness, and engagement around housing issues to help build a movement for a more abundant and inclusive new york.
At sarah lawrence college, our mission is to graduate citizens of the world who are diverse in every definition of the word, who take intellectual and creative risks, and who are able to focus exceptional intellectual discipline (continued…
The Television Academy is dedicated to celebrating excellence, innovation and the advancement of the telecommunications arts and sciences through recognition, education and leadership, while fostering a diverse, inclusive and accessible…
The mission of theatre for a new audience is to develop and vitalize the performance and study of shakespeare and classic drama. the theatre is dedicated to the language and ideas of writers - to a dialogue over centuries between…
New york school of interior design provides the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world, demonstrating the impact of professionally designed interiors on the health, happiness, and well-being…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Woodstock Film Festival Inc and the most unlike its peers is Roundabout Theatre Company Inc. 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 36 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 13% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
22 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. 22 of the 43 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 Fordham University ↗
- Who funds JACOB BURNS FILM CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Woodstock Land Conservancy Inc ↗
- Who funds NORTH STAR FUND INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT AND STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds OPENCOLLECTIVE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ROUNDABOUT THEATRE COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds WOODSTOCK DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds MANHATTAN THEATRE CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds Center for Third World Organizing ↗
- Who funds STUTTERING ASSOCIATION FOR THE YOUNG INC ↗
- Who funds BILLION OYSTER PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds HARLEM SCHOOL OF THE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds TEATOWN LAKE RESERVATION INC ↗
- Who funds UPSTATE FILMS LTD ↗
- Who funds FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CHAPPAQUA SUMMER SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds THE ACADEMY FOR TEACHERS INC ↗
- Who funds FEEDING WESTCHESTER INC ↗
- Who funds WHITE FEATHER FARM 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: Jewish Communal Fund · Kvistad Foundation · The Thompson Family Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation 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 Silver Sun 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.