How much does The Good Works Foundation give?

The Good Works Foundation reported 34 grants totaling $433,700 in its FY2024 IRS filing. It funded between 30 and 50 organizations a year over FY2017 to FY2023.

What does The Good Works Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2024, its largest causes are Arts & Culture (68%), Education (19%), Civil Rights (3%).

Who are The Good Works Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2024: Ica La ($1.4M), Art Matters Inc ($1.1M), Sarah Lawrence College ($870k).

Does The Good Works Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2023, 8% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does The Good Works Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it accepts unsolicited grant applications.

Which funders back the same organizations as The Good Works Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, California Community Foundation, The J Paul Getty Trust.

Where is The Good Works Foundation based?

The Good Works Foundation is based in CO.

The Good Works Foundation

The Good Works Foundation at a glance Also receives grants: funding profile →

· Private foundation

The Good Works Foundation

Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$434k

Granted FY2024still arriving

Grants FY2024still arriving

States reached

$150k

Largest

01What it funds

0195% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2024.

Arts & Culture$3.7MEducation$1.0MCivil Rights$181kEnvironment$171kHealth$44kInternational$43kPublic Safety & Disaster$38kScience & Tech$33kOther$0

02FY2024 · 34 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2024

Under $10k24 grants · $88k
$10k–50k9 grants · $196k
$50k–250k1 grant · $150k

$5,000

Median grant

States reached

$1.2M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
ICA LA	$150,000
HAMMER MUSEUM	$30,000
PORTLAND ART MUSEUM	$25,000
SARAH LAWRENCE COLLEGE	$25,000
PERFORMANCE ART MUSEUM	$25,000
Individual grant recipient	$25,000
TACAW	$20,700
ASPEN MUSIC FESTIVAL AND SCHOOL	$20,000
LOS ANGELES OPERA	$15,000
CENTER FOR ART AND ADVOCACY	$10,000
JAPANCRAFT21	$7,500
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART	$5,000
LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART	$5,000
BETH MORRISON PROJECTS	$5,000
DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS	$5,000

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its human-services grants (FY17–17, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

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

How this is measured

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.

Which US states its grants reach

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

97%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$5.3M · 67 repeat orgs$190k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +41% since the first grant, against 0% for those funded once.

67 repeat relationships: 31 still active in FY2024, 36 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$5.3M

$133k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+41%

Still filing today

66%

62%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $58k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

Arts & CultureEducationEnvironmentInternationalHealthCivil RightsOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

IL
ICA LA
8× · 2017–2024 · $1.4M · revenue +236% · 25% of their budget
AM
ART MATTERS INC
4× · 2017–2020 · $1.1M · revenue +39% · 92% of their budget
SARAH LAWRENCE COLLEGE
6× · 2017–2024 · $870k · revenue +14%

Funded once

CF
Coalition for Engaged Education
one grant, 2017 · $30k · revenue -8%
TA
THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
one grant, 2022 · $15k · revenue +12%
WC
Watershed Collaborative Inc
one grant, 2018 · $10k · revenue -59%

How this is measured

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

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

California Institute of Contemporary Art

—

Museum of Arts and Design

To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.

Arts & Culture

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

The museum of contemporary art san diego invites all audiences to experience our world, our region, and ourselves through the prism of contemporary art.

Arts & Culture

Asian Art Museum Foundation of San Francisco

The asian art museum celebrates, preserves, and promotes asian and asian american art and cultures for local and global audiences. we provide a dynamic forum for exchanging ideas, inviting collaboration, and fueling imagination to deepen…

Arts & Culture

Los Angeles Conservancy

The los angeles conservancy is a nonprofit membership organization that works through education and advocacy to recognize, preserve, and revitalize the historic architectural and cultural resources of los angeles county.

Arts & Culture

Arts for La

Arts for la leads communities, artists and organizations to advocate for an equitable, healthy, and creative los angeles region through the arts.

Arts & Culture

Boston Architectural College

The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.

—

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)

Arts & Culture

Academy of Television Arts and Sciences

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 Sculpture Center Inc

See schedule osculpturecenter leads the conversation on contemporary art by supporting artistic innovation and independent thought highlighting sculpture's specific potential to change the way we engage with the world. positioning artists'…

Arts & Culture

Los Angeles Opera Company

To serve the public by producing world-class opera that preserves, promotes and advances the art form while embodying the diversity, spirit and artistic sensibility unique to los angeles. we envision an engaged and enlightened community in…

Arts & Culture

Museum of Latin American Art

The specific purpose of this corporation is to: expand knowledge and appreciation of modern and contemporary latin american tine art that has been created since world war ii; to operate a museum; to collect and display latin american…

Arts & Culture

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Aspen Art Museum; the most unlike its peers is Art Matters Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

66 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2026, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 66 of the 100 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

65/66

Grantees still filing

47/66

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Arts & Culture$2,215,600Other$2,023,925Education$984,000Environment$95,500International$80,500Science & Tech$35,000Health$31,500

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley FoundationIL21.6× affinity8 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation · California Community Foundation · The J Paul Getty Trust · The Andrew W Mellon Foundation · Pasadena Art Alliance · The Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts · Audrey & Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation · The Wilhelm Family Foundation Co Cascade Wilhelm · Perenchio Foundation · Robert Rauschenberg Foundation · The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc · Liberty Hill Foundation

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization The Good Works Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from The Good Works Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

2get no government money at all

18report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to The Good Works Foundation?

Find your warmest path to The Good Works Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.

Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.

Play a game based on Good Works’ filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$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