· Private foundation
The Poetry Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k54 grants · $213k
- $10k–50k112 grants · $2.7M
- $50k–250k12 grants · $785k
- $250k+1 grant · $500k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MID ATLANTIC ARTS | $500,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $114,204 |
| UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA FOUNDATION | $106,122 |
| Individual grant recipient | $100,000 |
| COMMUNITY OF LITERARY MAGAZINES AND PRESSES | $60,000 |
| CAVE CANEM | $55,000 |
| WOODLAND PATTERN INC | $50,000 |
| BOARD OF TRUSTEES AT ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY | $50,000 |
| POETS HOUSE INC | $50,000 |
| POETRY CENTER OF CHICAGO | $50,000 |
| COMMUNITY LITERATURE INITIATIVE | $50,000 |
| IDEAS XLAB | $50,000 |
| THIRD WORLD PRESS FOUNDATION INC | $50,000 |
| YOUNG CHICAGO AUTHORS | $45,000 |
| WOODLAND PATTERN INC | $45,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $603k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 93% 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 +23% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
268 repeat relationships — 80 still active in FY2024, 188 since wound down; 87 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 69% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.3M 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
- MAMID ATLANTIC ARTS INC2× · 2018–2024 · $502k · revenue +218%
- GWGREATER WASHINGTON EDUCATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION INC2× · 2017–2018 · $400k · revenue +56%
- VVVERSE VIDEO EDUCATION5× · 2017–2021 · $360k · revenue +249%
Funded once
- IAILLINOIS ARTS ALLIANCE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $254k
- MPMINNESOTA PUBLIC RADIO AMERICAN PUBLIC MEDIAone grant, 2021 · $225k · revenue +0%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $100k
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.
To publish and promote literature.
Literary Cleveland assists writers and readers at all stages of development, promotes new and existing literature of the highest quality, and advances Northeast Ohio as a vital center of diverse voices and visions.
Dzanc Books was hailed as the future of publishing in Publishers Weekly in December 2007. Beginning with modest goals of publishing 4-6 titles each year, the house now publishes between 10-15 books annually. Notable and award-winning…
The Organization principally exists to (a) cultivate writing that extends the literary tradition while enabling the public to confront the challenges of the present; (b) develop literature using meticulous craft and discerning curation…
Graywolf press publishes risk-taking, visionary writers who transform culture through literature. when writers are free to do their most ambitious work, their books serve as portals to new possibilities and enable deeper understanding…
The mission of the organization is to foster the development of creative individuals as writers and artists and to promote public appreciation of excellence in the literary and graphic arts by publishing a magazine containing fiction,…
Through publications, events, and active community participation, Nomadic Press collectively weaves together platforms for intentionally marginalized voices to take their rightful place within the world of the written and spoken word.…
Publish a quarterly literary journal, offer educational programs to the public related to the journal, and run a poetry competition, resulting in the publishing of a book of poetry by a West Coast poet.
The council of literary magazines and presses serves one of the most active segments of american arts and culture: the independent publishers of exceptional fiction, poetry and prose. the council of literary magazines and presses…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Shoutmousepressinc and the most unlike its peers is Motor City Sings. 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 26 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 5% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.5% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
321 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. 321 of the 1,304 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 MID ATLANTIC ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER WASHINGTON EDUCATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds VERSE VIDEO EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds United States Artists Inc ↗
- Who funds WOODLAND PATTERN INC ↗
- Who funds CAVE CANEM FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA PUBLIC RADIO AMERICAN PUBLIC MEDIA ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS INC ↗
- Who funds The Poetry Center ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL POETRY SERIES INC ↗
- Who funds O MIAMI INC ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA PRISON WRITING WORKSHOP ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY LITERATURE INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds THE JOFFREY BALLET ↗
- Who funds MASSPOETRY INC ↗
- Who funds CityLit Project Inc ↗
- Who funds POETIC JUSTICE INC ↗
- Who funds THIRD WORLD PRESS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN WRITERS MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds NEAR SOUTH PLANNING BOARD ↗
- Who funds STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds KUUMBA LYNX ↗
- Who funds WRITERS WITHOUT MARGINS INC ↗
- Who funds INSIDEOUT LITERARY ARTS PROJECT ↗
- Who funds URBAN WORD NYC INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO THEATRE GROUP 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: The Academy of American Poets Inc · National Book Foundation Inc · Council of Literary Magazines and Presses · Hawthornden Foundation · Just Buffalo Literary Center Inc · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Andrew W Mellon Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Field Foundation of Illinois · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Illinois Humanities Council Inc · Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley 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 Poetry 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.
- Mid Atlantic Arts Inc — 66% of income from government
- Verse Video Education — 35% of income from government
- Cavankerry Press Ltd — 24% of income from government
- Community Building Art Works — 18% of income from government
- CityLit Project Inc — 15% of income from government
- Freedom Reads Inc — 12% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- Literary Arts Inc — 10% of income from government
- Cambridge Community Center Inc — 8% of income from government
- People and Stories Gente Y Cuentos — 7% of income from government
- Arts Council of Princeton — 6% of income from government
- Fusion Partnership Inc — 3% of income from government
- O Miami Inc — 2% of income from government
- Hermitage Artist Retreat 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.