· Private foundation
The Jim Henson Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k46 grants · $187k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $40k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HERE ARTS CENTER | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| NEW VICTORY THEATER | $10,000 |
| DIXON PLACE | $10,000 |
| FRACTURED ATLAS | $7,000 |
| HERE ARTS CENTER | $7,000 |
| AUTOMATA | $7,000 |
| FRACTURED ATLAS | $7,000 |
| SKYSAVER PRODUCTIONS | $7,000 |
| PUPPETEERS OF AMERICA INC | $7,000 |
| CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL PUPPET THEATER FESTIVAL | $7,000 |
| GREAT SMALL WORKS | $7,000 |
| THE BRICK THEATER | $7,000 |
| THE CENTER AT WEST PARK | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $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.
Your human-services grants (FY24–24, $4k) land where the poverty rate runs at 20%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% of those 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.
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 +28% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
42 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 24 since wound down; 10 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 81% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $43k 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
- CFCENTER FOR PUPPETRY ARTSINC5× · 2020–2024 · $213k · revenue +50%
- HFHome for Contemporary Theatre and Art Ltd dba HERE Art Center6× · 2020–2025 · $145k · revenue +63%
FRACTURED ATLAS INC6× · 2020–2025 · $55k · revenue +63%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $7k
- COCabinet of Curiosity Inc NFPone grant, 2021 · $7k · revenue -6%
- BMBETH MORRISON PROJECTS INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $7k · revenue +117%
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.
Develop recognition of international theater
Dpc uses awe-inspiring puppetry as a vehicle for a better tomorrow. dpc collaborates with the local commmunity to create inclusive spaces that bring together detroit and hamtramck residents with artists from around the country. the works…
The Ghost Road Company develops original performance pieces employing Ensemble-Devising and collaborative creation techniques creating experimental theatrical works that are highly physical visceral and visual The companys work emphasizes…
Studio Theatre produces exceptional contemporary theatre in deliberately intimate spaces, fostering a more thoughtful, more empathetic, and more connected community, in Washington DC and beyond.
Cultural and educational performances
The Story Theatre will pose questions, rather than provide answers. We develop and produce new work that is whimsical, melancholic, mythic in vision, and intimate in scale. We are run by a governing artistic ensemble, who ensures our work…
Noveltease Theatre pays homage to literary burlesque of the late 19th century by combining theatrical adaptations of classic texts with contemporary striptease. Our intention is not to mock, but to productively muddle the "highbrow" art of…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is 1ST Stage Inc and the most unlike its peers is Museum of the City of New York. 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 28 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
75 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. 75 of the 102 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 CENTER FOR PUPPETRY ARTSINC ↗
- Who funds Home for Contemporary Theatre and Art Ltd dba HERE Art Center ↗
- Who funds FRACTURED ATLAS INC ↗
- Who funds The Puppeteers of America Inc ↗
- Who funds PUPPET SHOWPLACE INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER AT WEST PARK INC ↗
- Who funds EUGENE O'NEILL MEMORIAL THEATER CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Shake on the Lake Inc ↗
- Who funds JAPAN SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival ↗
- Who funds LOC07 DANCE PUPPET THEATRE COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds Yara Arts Group ↗
- Who funds SKYSAVER PRODUCTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds Shadowlight Productions ↗
- Who funds Open Eye Theatre ↗
- Who funds ST ANN'S WAREHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds THE BATTERY CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds THE PERFORMANCE ZONE INC ↗
- Who funds CONCRETE TEMPLE THEATRE ↗
- Who funds BLACK CHERRY INC ↗
- Who funds ASHEVILLE CREATIVE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds ROGUE ARTISTS ENSEMBLE ↗
- Who funds GREAT SMALL WORKS INC ↗
- Who funds THE TANK LTD ↗
- Who funds FLOCK THEATRE ↗
- Who funds MONKEYBEARS HARMOLODIC WORKSHOP ↗
- Who funds Fiji Theater Company Inc dba Ping Chong and Company ↗
- Who funds Great Arizona Puppet Theater 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: Mid Atlantic Arts Inc · The Jane Henson Foundation · The Howard Gilman Foundation Inc · New England Foundation for the Arts Incorporated · The Shubert Foundation Inc · The Map Fund Inc · The Andrew W Mellon Foundation · Barbara Bell Cumming Foundation Co Kelley Drye & Warren LLP · The Marc Dunworth Foundation for the Performing Arts · Virginia B Toulmin Charitable Foundation III · The Ford Foundation · Alliance of Resident Theatres New York Inc
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 Jim Henson 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.
- Puppet Showplace Inc — 4% of income from government
- Flock Theatre — 1% of income from government
- Eugene O'neill Memorial Theater Center 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Jim Henson Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Jim Henson 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.