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California · Public charity

The American Film Institute

THE AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE ("afi") is a national institute providing leadership in screen education and the recognition and celebration of excellence in the art of film, television and digital media.

$1.6M
Granted FY2018
4
Itemized grants FY2018
4
Organizations funded FY2018
75%
First-time grantees FY2018
Read the full brief
Itemized, FY2018
$75k
The rest is grants the schedule does not break out
Median grant, FY2018
$15,000
Largest grant, FY2018
$40,000
Organizations funded a year
4 to 6
FY2017 to FY2018
States reached, FY2018
3
Total assets, FY2018
$65M

How open it is to new grantees

In FY2018, 75% of the organizations The American Film Institute funded were first-time grantees, receiving 87% of its grant dollars.

The numbers by year
Fiscal yearOrganizations fundedTo those organizationsFirst-time grantees
FY20184$75k75%
FY20176$75kn/a
100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2018.

Arts & Culture$140kHuman Services$10k

Top grantees

Largest recipients by total granted, FY2017 to FY2018, and the share of each one’s budget the grants supplied at peak.

GranteeTotal grantedYearsShare of their budget
Last Resort Doc LLC$40,0001n/a
Kartemquin Educational Films$20,00020%
Mind's Eye Productions$17,5001n/a
Ksmc LLC$17,5001n/a
Openhood Inc$15,000110%
bmp films inc$10,0001n/a
marco pictures llc$10,0001n/a
Joyful Heart Foundation$10,00010%
Veterans Trek Productions LLC$10,0001n/a

Compare The American Film Institute with peer funders

About The American Film Institute

How much does The American Film Institute give?
The American Film Institute reported 4 itemized grants totaling $75,000, out of $1,618,789 in total grant expense reported on the return in its FY2018 IRS filing. It funded between 4 and 6 organizations a year over FY2017 to FY2018.
What does The American Film Institute fund?
By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2018, its largest causes are Arts & Culture (93%), Human Services (7%).
Who are The American Film Institute's largest grantees?
By total granted over FY2017 to FY2018: Last Resort Doc LLC ($40k), Kartemquin Educational Films ($20k), Mind's Eye Productions ($18k).
Does The American Film Institute fund new organizations?
In FY2018, 75% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.
Where is The American Film Institute based?
The American Film Institute is based in CA.

On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 9 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

How this is measured
Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

Generated from the IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2018, released 2018. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2025) is on record and reports $2.3M of grant expense, but none of it to a named recipient. On a Form 990 that can mean grants abroad, filed by region only (Schedule F), grants under $5,000, which are not itemized, or a schedule referenced as an attachment the e-file does not carry. The figures above are therefore from FY2018, the most recent year this funder named its grantees.

Source object · view filing

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More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions
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$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
The endowment market
who holds foundation money, and what just moved
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home