How much did THE ANDREW W MELLON FOUNDATION grant in FY2024?

A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 43% of THE ANDREW W MELLON FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars go to organizations outside the IRS cause taxonomy (common for large international and research funders), so a chart would be mostly “unclassified” and misrepresent the portfolio.

02beneath the categories

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Beneath the NTEE codes, this is what the grant descriptions actually say.

…and in their own words, year by year

2018

space subsidiespart theaterobject studyart chicagospendable overtitles open-accessopen-access basis

2019

creation pilotpilot designeddesigned developdevelop administrativeadministrative potentialpotential humanitiesarts faculty

2020

recipient artmuseum futuresmuseum recipientenrollment stabilizationstabilization emergencystudent responseresponse covid

2021

collaborative playsplays emergingemerging establishedestablished artistsartists colorcolor multigenerationalmultigenerational audiences

2022

fiona responsebehalf broadlybroadly diverseharvey milkcollaborative scholarsscholars cultureworkers organizers

2023

gender studiesresidency additionaladditional playwrightwomens genderwomen's genderlatino studieswomen's studies

2024

call conceptsconcepts researchprogramming sponsoredactivities memorybuilding sponsoredsponsored project'sincreased participation

Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.

03FY2024 · 834 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2024

$10k–50k16 grants · $417k
$50k–250k166 grants · $25M
$250k+652 grants · $521M

$500,000

Median grant

States reached

$7.9B

Total assets

Largest grants

AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES$8,556,000
CITY OF RICHMOND$7,000,000
THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BLACKS IN DANCE INC$5,600,000
FREEDOM READS$5,000,000
WGBH EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION$5,000,000
MONTPELIER FOUNDATION$4,282,000
MONUMENT LAB$4,000,000
LOS ANGELES NOMADIC DIVISION$3,950,000
NATIONAL TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN THE UNITED STATES$3,500,000
FIDELITY CHARITABLE$3,485,813
HUNTER COLLEGE$3,468,000
THE CITY OF CHICAGO DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS AND SPECIAL EVENTS$3,400,000
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT SANTA CRUZ$3,000,000
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION$3,000,000
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY AT FRESNO$2,944,000

02The need

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY18–24, $25.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 15% — the area typically sits at 10%. 96% of those dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in 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, United Way ALICE — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.

03Your edge

repeat funding

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.

87%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.

$2.9B · 937 repeat orgs$423M to everyone else

And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +37% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.

937 repeat relationships — 443 still active in FY2024, 494 since wound down; 258 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

937

664

Total granted

$2.9B

$288M

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+37%

+22%

Still filing today

74%

63%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 75% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $134M went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

Arts & CultureEducationPhilanthropyHuman ServicesCommunity ImprovementInternationalOther

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

Tides Center
4× · 2021–2024 · $117M · revenue +74% · 32% of their budget
UO
University of Michigan
8× · 2017–2024 · $32M · revenue +126%
SS
Social Science Research Council
6× · 2017–2023 · $28M · revenue +9%

Funded once

CO
Council on Library and Information Resources
one grant, 2017 · $13M
CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION
one grant, 2020 · $10M · revenue -3%
JF
JAZZ FOUNDATION OF AMERICA INC
one grant, 2023 · $5.0M · revenue -73%

Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Your field

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 University of the Arts

Advancing human creativity by educating interdisciplinary artists, performers, makers, & writers.

Education

Columbia College Chicago

The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.

Education

McColl Center for Art Innovation

We champion contemporary artists and spark creative experiences for positive community impact.

Arts & Culture

International Contemporary Art

Arts & Culture

Museum of Contemporary Art

Please see mission statement on form 990, page 2, part iii, line 1.

Arts & Culture

Museum of Contemporary Art

Enhance appreciation of contemporary art through education, programming and exhibitions.

Arts & Culture

Berggruen Institute

Education

United States Institute for Theatre

To actively connect performing arts design and technology communities to ensure a vibrant dialog among practitioners, educators, and students.

Arts & Culture

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Inspire diverse audiences through exhibitions, education, publications & collections.

Arts & Culture

San Francisco Conservatory of Music

The conservatory offers undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate musical education.

Education

Museum of Latin American Art

The museum of latin american arts expands knowledge and appreciation of modern and contemporary latin american and latino art through its collection, ground-breaking exhibitions, stimulating educational programs, and engaging cultural…

Arts & Culture

Museum of Arts and Design

The mission of the museum of arts and design (mad) is to collect, display, and interpret objects that document contemporary and historic innovation in craft, art, and design. in its exhibitions and educational programs, the museum…

Arts & Culture

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is New York Foundation for the Arts Inc and the most unlike its peers is Science for Monks. 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.

the sector your giving your giving is ahead of the sector the sector’s ahead of you· dot size = how much the theme matters to each side

Ordered by the change in your giving — leaning in on top, pulling back at the bottom. The bar between the two dots is how out of step you are with the sector. Hover any row for detail.

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 34 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.5% lost their exemption, against 11% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund

0.5%7/1,350

the rest of the field

11%

206,158/1,818,215

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.

05the grantee network

1322 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.

419

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

435

Early backer (in before they grew)

1300/1322

Grantees still filing

959/1322

Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

Other$1,511,567,939Arts & Culture$1,028,121,289Education$421,640,634Human Services$154,931,750Philanthropy$69,050,500Community Improvement$64,457,500Environment$47,435,000

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.

The Howard Gilman Foundation IncNY118.4× affinity113 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: The Howard Gilman Foundation Inc · Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Inc · The Shubert Foundation Inc · New England Foundation for the Arts · The Andy Warhol Foundation for The · Mid Atlantic Arts Inc · Jerome Foundation Inc · The Map Fund Inc · The Ford Foundation · Arison Arts Foundation · Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc · Booth Ferris Foundation Xxxxx4008

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 organisation THE ANDREW W MELLON 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.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

4get no government money at all

0rely on government for over half their income

typical government reliance, FY20–24

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. 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.

05Through Plinth

Through Plinth

Your grantmaking, live and operational

This dossier was generated cold from public filings. In Plinth it’s a working system — every applicant assessed and every grant monitored. Here’s a taste, run on one of your grantees: CULTURE PUSH INC.

Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk

Financial management

insufficient risk

Limited financial data in public filings.

Track record & reputation

low risk

8 years of Form 990 filings, still active; revenue up 4.4× since.

Legal standing

low risk

US 501(c)(3); EIN 263250931 on file with current IRS Form 990 filings.

Governance

Live in Plinth

Board composition & governance documents — verified live in Plinth from the applicant.

Compliance & sanctions

Live in Plinth

OFAC / UN sanctions screening — run live in Plinth at assessment.

Program capacity

Live in Plinth

Staffing, M&E and activity alignment — assessed live in Plinth from submitted proposals.

Live · Plinth’s real DD engine

Run the actual assessment on CULTURE PUSH INC, cold from public data.

Generated live from public IRS filings + open web sources by Plinth’s agentic engine. Shown as an illustration of the product, not a formal assessment.

Post-award monitoring · continuous checks

Awaiting reportFinancial stability— Runway not derivable from filings.
On trackSustained operations— Filing through 2025; revenue grew over the period.
WatchReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 100% of their budget — load-bearing; a dependency Plinth would track.
Awaiting reportEvidence of delivery— Plinth collects the grantee's own monitoring reports post-award.

What you see here is static and public. In Plinth it’s operational — the full six-pillar framework on every applicant (with their own documents + live registry and sanctions checks), monitoring dashboards on every award, custom board reports, and eligibility routing for intake.

Agentic due diligenceMonitoring dashboardsCustom board reportsEligibility routing

Preview generated from this grantee’s public IRS filings and independent reporting. Pillars marked “live in Plinth” require the applicant’s submitted documents. Shown as illustration, not a formal assessment.

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPro

How do I get to The Andrew W Mellon Foundation?

Find your warmest path to The Andrew W Mellon Foundation through people who sit on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the introduction across shared trustees and officers.

Every link is a documented governance overlap in public IRS 990 filings — not a personal network — and each hop carries its own confidence tier. Low-confidence or distant paths are held back rather than guessed.

More from the funding graph

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars pass through an intermediary

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

Strange bedfellows

the named clusters of US funding

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home

State money flows

the interactive map of money crossing state lines