Loading…
· Public charity
THE MOCKINGBIRD FOUNDATION
The mission of THE MOCKINGBIRD FOUNDATION is to provide support to organizations promoting the education, involvement and appreciation of musical activities for children throughout the united states.this support is provided through the awarding of grants throughout the year.
$124k
Granted FY2022
9
Grants
6
Communities
$20k
Largest
01What you fund
01
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 67% of THE MOCKINGBIRD 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
elementaryrock
2019
—
2020
nashvillerockgirlsharmonyarts
2021
—
2022
—
Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.
03FY2022 · 9 grants
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2022
- Under $10k2 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $80k
$10,000
Median grant
6
States reached
$507k
Total assets
Largest grants
- MAGIC CITY ACCEPTANCE ACADEMY$20,000
- EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION$10,000
- IN THE BAND$10,000
- SAVANNAH MUSIC FESTIVAL INC$10,000
- THE FARINA FOUNDATION$10,000
- MUSICAL MENTOR COLLABORATIVE$10,000
- ARTSMART$10,000
- MENTAL HEALTH AMERICA OF DUTCHESS COUNTY$8,350
- GRAYSON COUNTY SUMMER STAGE$6,000
02The need
04
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 (FY20–22, $20k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13% — the area typically sits at 11%. 100% 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 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.
1
Massachusetts Music Educators
Advocate and promote the advancement of music educators
Arts & Culture
2
Muse Academy at the Brooklyn Music
MUSE seeks to develop the full potential of every child as lifelong learners, expressive artists, and active citizens in his or her community.
—
3
Commusication
Commusication's mission is to amplify young voices and cultivate skills for success through equitable access to music, collaboration, and opportunity.
Arts & Culture
4
Ansonia Music Outreach Organization Inc
Our mission is to establish the musical arts as a more essential and valuable experience in the lives of the general public. Our Access to Music program brings classical music to a new broad audience through free concerts events and…
Arts & Culture
5
The Music Academy
Provides Music Instruction
Arts & Culture
6
Intonation Music Workshop
Intonation kids explore their limitless potential by learning to play instruments and forming their own rock bands. Our year-round classes make music accessible to children in low-income neighborhoods by providing them with instruments,…
Arts & Culture
7
Maryland Conservatory of Music Inc
Music education
Arts & Culture
8
Harvard Musical Association
—
9
Washington Conservatory of Music
The Washington Conservatory of Music (the "Conservatory") is a District of Columbia not-for-profit corporation that is an independent nationally-accredited community music school offering lessons, classes and special events for children…
Arts & Culture
10
Music Haven Inc
Music haven empowers and connects young people through exceptional tuition-free music education, mentoring, and performance by our resident musicians in the heart of new haven, giving all kids a chance to play.
Arts & Culture
11
Notes for Notes Inc
To provide youth with free access to musical instruments, instruction, and a music-making environment so that music can become a profoundly positive influence in their lives.
Arts & Culture
12
Music Is Art
The mission of music is art is to create opportunities that fuel the unifying power of music in our region.
Arts & Culture
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Musical Empowerment Inc and the most unlike its peers is Lakota Youth Development. 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
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 24 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
Closures · last 5 years
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 11% of the field you don’t fund.
orgs you fund
2%1/42
the rest of the field
11%
206,163/1,819,523
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
38 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.
0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
17
Early backer (in before they grew)
36/38
Grantees still filing
29/38
Grew since you first funded
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Other$510,878Arts & Culture$130,910Education$40,000Health$28,350Human Services$20,000Public Benefit$14,800Youth Development$10,000Community Improvement$5,000
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.
- Who funds MAGIC CITY ACCEPTANCE ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds HARMONY PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds YOUNG TRADITION VERMONT ↗
- Who funds A PLACE CALLED HOME ↗
- Who funds JEFFERSON SCHOOL AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE CENTER ↗
- Who funds CREATE NOW ↗
- Who funds VIA REHABILITATION SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds LAKOTA YOUTH DEVELOPMENT ↗
- Who funds ARTSMART ↗
- Who funds EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MUSICAL EMPOWERMENT ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATIONS OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds BEYOND THE GRADE ↗
- Who funds LOGOS ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds ROCK TO THE FUTURE ↗
- Who funds KEYS ↗
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.
D'Addario Foundation IncNY24× affinity9 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →
Open a dossier: D'Addario Foundation Inc · The Lewis Prize Foundation Inc · Ge Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Tides Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Enterprise Holdings Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund
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 MOCKINGBIRD 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
- Miami Lighthouse for the Blind — 0% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
1get no government money at all
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–20%
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.
04Through 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: YOUNG TRADITION VERMONT.
Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk
Financial management
insufficient risk
Limited financial data in public filings.
Track record & reputation
high risk
5 years of Form 990 filings, no recent filing.
Legal standing
medium risk
US 501(c)(3); EIN 270338133 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 YOUNG TRADITION VERMONT, 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.
- FlagSustained operations— No recent filing on record.
- On trackReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 14% of their budget — diversified.
- 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 Mockingbird Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Mockingbird 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