· Public charity
Sundance Institute
Sundance Institute is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the discovery and development of independent artists and audiences.
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.
The 56 grants below total $1,919,500 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $3,104,500 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $1,185,000 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 $10k7 grants · $47k
- $10k–50k27 grants · $423k
- $50k–250k22 grants · $1.4M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Redford Center | $200,000 |
| Sowing Hope LLC | $100,000 |
| Louverture Films LLC | $100,000 |
| Nightfall Productions LLC | $100,000 |
| Walker Film LLC | $100,000 |
| Backside Film LLC | $50,000 |
| Blacked Out Dreams LLC | $50,000 |
| Fire Frog Media LLC | $50,000 |
| WHILEBLACKFILM LLC | $50,000 |
| Ibis Films LLC | $50,000 |
| Complicated Rabbits LLC | $50,000 |
| The River Picture LLC | $50,000 |
| Chandi Films LLC | $50,000 |
| Seyi Adebanjo LLC | $50,000 |
| Bimshire Project LLC | $50,000 |
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 (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 82% 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.
Which US states your grants reach
Grants abroad, by region — $580k on the FY2024 return
Schedule F, as filed: 7 regions, $465k to organizations and $115k to individuals. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.
Stated purpose: Filmmaking · Filmmaking Grant
Stated purpose: Filmmaking · Filmmaking Grant
Stated purpose: Filmmaking · Filmmaking Grant
Stated purpose: Filmmaking
Stated purpose: Filmmaking Grant
Stated purpose: Filmmaking Grant
Stated purpose: Filmmaking Grant
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. 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.
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 +64% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
61 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 53 since wound down; 48 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, 9% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.7M 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
THE CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY INC4× · 2017–2022 · $151k · revenue +396%- EMECOPEACE MIDDLE EAST ENVIRONMENTAL NGO FORUM2× · 2018–2019 · $75k · revenue +44%
- WIWALKING IRIS MEDIA3× · 2018–2020 · $65k · revenue +664%
Funded once
United States Artists Incgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $250k · revenue +67%- JCJIN & CASEY LLCone grant, 2017 · $137k
- CICANARY IN A COAL MINE LLCone grant, 2017 · $100k
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 Art of Brooklyn Film Festival is an annual event that brings Brooklyns celebrated film and media makers together with their peers across the country and around the world. AoBFF is a filmmaker-focused event, platform and showcase for…
Promote gender equity in the film & television industry
Advocate for gender equality in the film industry.
A national non-profit media arts organization, american documentary strives to make essential documentaries accessible as a catalyst for public discourse. we collaborate with passionate filmmakers to amplify their voices, nuture the…
Dc dox is a major international film festival in the nation's capital dedicated to promoting documentary film as a leading art form, championing new voices and innovations in non-fiction storytelling, and using film as a catalyst to engage…
Devoted to a greater appreciation of indian cinema and culture by showcasing films, supporting emerging filmmakers, and promoting the diverse perspectives of the indian diaspora.
BraveMaker exists to elevate brave voices. Through the curation and creation of bold, meaningful films, we educate, entertain, and build community experiences that spark transformative conversations rooted in diversity, inclusion, and…
Film forum's mission is two-fold: 1) to serve the general public by presenting the highest caliber of work to the widest possible audience - encouraging the appreciation of new, challenging films (both american and foreign films), and…
SF IndieFest presents important independent narrative, documentary, and short films from around the world.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Blackstar Projects Inc and the most unlike its peers is Leeway Foundation. 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 23 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.2% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
65 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. 65 of the 417 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 United States Artists Inc ↗
- Who funds REDFORD CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY INC ↗
- Who funds YOUTHBUILD GLOBAL INC ↗
- Who funds ECOPEACE MIDDLE EAST ENVIRONMENTAL NGO FORUM ↗
- Who funds WALKING IRIS MEDIA ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK WOMEN IN FILM & TELEVISION INC ↗
- Who funds STUDIO REV ↗
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: International Documentary Foundation Inc · The Ford Foundation · Firelight Media Inc · Perspective Media Initiatives Inc · Doc Society Inc · Cinereach Ltd · Academy Foundation · Chicken & Egg Films Inc · Catapult Film Fund · Utah Film Center · Redford Center Inc · Chicago Media Project
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 Sundance Institute 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.
- Youthbuild Global Inc — 69% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- The Center for Independent Documentary Inc — 6% of income from government
- Documentary Educational Resources Inc — 1% 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.