· Private foundation
The Irene Ryan Foundation Barbara McLean Managing Director
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k6 grants · $30k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $40k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Rare Bird Theatre | $10,000 |
| Theatre For All | $10,000 |
| Raleigh Little Theatre | $10,000 |
| Perkins Academy for the Blind | $10,000 |
| Art Access Inc | $5,000 |
| Special Need Art Program | $5,000 |
| Positive Action Community Theatre | $5,000 |
| Cape Symphony Cape Arts & Entertainment | $5,000 |
| Special Stars Performing Arts | $5,000 |
| Rehabilitation Thru Arts | $5,000 |
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 (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 99% 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
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.
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.
Art For All provides inclusive arts theater wellness and community programs for people with disabilities We support artistic expression community participation skill-building and belonging through classes performances exhibitions art sales…
Arts Access, we provide free community art classes for senior adults and adults with disabilities. We provide free accessible live theatre productions for our local community. We are building a resource of information to help other…
SPARC profoundly influences the lives of young people through exceptional performing arts education. It is SPARC's vision to inspire the confidence, creativity, and character of every young person in the country.
The River Performing and Arts Center (the River) provides accessible, affordable fine arts education for children and youth between the ages of 2-19 who have disabilities, chronic illnesses, or economic disadvantages.
Vocational Programs centered around the arts for people on the autism spectrum ASD
Production of original theater at its Brooklyn, NY space.
The center provides to young people. including those with disabilities, instructions in dance, drama, jazz, voice, and other theater arts. the instruction includes a classroom setting and the production and participation in staged…
Open Door Theater of Acton is a non-profit, accessible community theater company that has been creating learning experiences through theater for adults and children with and without disabilities since it was founded in 1980. The Open Door…
We are a performing arts based group offering live theater opportunities to our local communities.
Charitable and Educational. Non-Profit Theatre Company inculcating in the general public a greater appreciation of the dramatic and performing arts.
Harmony Theater was established to established to provide production services for developmentally, emotionally disabled adults so that they may participate in performing arts activities as an avenue for social interaction and self…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Theatre for All Inc and the most unlike its peers is Rare Bird. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
10 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. 10 of the 45 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 RALEIGH LITTLE THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds SUNDOG THEATER INC ↗
- Who funds Theatre For All Inc ↗
- Who funds RARE BIRD ↗
- Who funds KIDZNOTES INC ↗
- Who funds Positive Action Community Theatre (PACT) ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL NEEDS ARTS PROGRAMS INC ↗
- Who funds ARTS ACCESS INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds REHABILITATION THROUGH THE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds COTUIT CENTER FOR THE ARTS 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: Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 The Irene Ryan Foundation Barbara McLean Managing Director 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Special Needs Arts Programs Inc — 4% of income from government
- Cotuit Center for the Arts 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.
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Find your warmest path to The Irene Ryan Foundation Barbara McLean Managing Director 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.