· Private foundation
The Rhimes Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $285k
- $50k–250k11 grants · $789k
- $250k+5 grants · $2.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| EMMETT TILL INTERPRETIVE CENTER | $750,000 |
| THE SOUTHPORT SCHOOL INC | $500,000 |
| THE SOUTHPORT SCHOOL INC | $500,000 |
| GREENS FARMS ACADEMY INC | $250,000 |
| LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS INC | $250,000 |
| IAMA THEATRE COMPANY | $200,000 |
| FILLING IN THE BLANKS INC | $79,922 |
| FILLING IN THE BLANKS INC | $79,817 |
| FILLING IN THE BLANKS INC | $78,810 |
| TRUSTEES OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE | $50,000 |
| TRUSTEES OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE | $50,000 |
| TRUSTEES OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE | $50,000 |
| JOHN F KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS | $50,000 |
| DEBBIE ALLEN DANCE INC | $50,000 |
| TRUSTEES OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE | $50,000 |
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 (FY19–24, $1.9M) land where the poverty rate runs at 26%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 79% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 7% of The Rhimes Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +25% since the first grant, against +19% for the ones you funded once.
31 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2024, 16 since wound down; 7 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $130k 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
THE BARACK OBAMA FOUNDATION5× · 2018–2022 · $10M · revenue +27%- ITIAMA THEATRE COMPANY8× · 2017–2024 · $1.6M · revenue +140% · 70% of their budget
- ETEMMETT TILL INTERPRETIVE CENTER2× · 2023–2024 · $1.5M · revenue +223% · 55% of their budget
Funded once
- SNSMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTUREone grant, 2020 · $2.0M
- TPTHE PILGRIM SCHOOLone grant, 2017 · $400k
- AAARRAY ALLIANCE INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $250k · revenue +40%
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.
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 mission of new york city center is to be new york city's leading center for dance and musical theater. dedicated to making the arts accessible to the broadest possible audience, city center seeks to create a welcoming environment and…
Wp theater is the nation's oldest and largest theater company dedicated to developing, producing, and promoting the work of women+ at every stage of their careers. for over four decades we have served as leaders of a global movement…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Washington performing arts champions the arts as a unifying force. through collaborations with artists, educators, community leaders, and institutional partners, we bring wide-ranging artistic programs to stages, schools, and neighborhoods…
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
At sarah lawrence college, our mission is to graduate citizens of the world who are diverse in every definition of the word, who take intellectual and creative risks, and who are able to focus exceptional intellectual discipline (continued…
The apollo theater is a commissioner and presenter; catalyst for new artists, audiences, and creative workforce; and partner in the projection of the african american narrative and its role in the development of american and global…
Wnet is a multi-media public service non-profit that delivers lifelong learning and meaningful experiences to our communities. our content inspires curiosity, encourages action and nurtures dreams.
White columns identifies significant emerging and under-represented visual artists and encourages their creative and professional development through the presentation of group and solo exhibitions, an online curated artists registry, and…
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
Wheaton college provides a transformative liberal arts education, combining theory and practice, for intellectually curious students within a collaborative and vibrant extended community and network that values and strives to create an…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Actors' Fund of America and the most unlike its peers is The Dartmouth Inc. 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 39 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
51 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. 51 of the 64 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 THE BARACK OBAMA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds IAMA THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds EMMETT TILL INTERPRETIVE CENTER ↗
- Who funds BEYOND 12 EDUCATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE SOUTHPORT SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds MARLBOROUGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds DEBBIE ALLEN DANCE INC DEBBIE ALLEN DANCE ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds FILLING IN THE BLANKS INC ↗
- Who funds GREENS FARMS ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds THE PITTSBURGH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ARRAY ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS INC ↗
- Who funds WRITERS GUILD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PARK CENTURY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds TURNING POINT SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE ACTORS' FUND OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds JOHN F KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS ↗
- Who funds WHEN WE ALL VOTE ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds CHLOE AND MAUD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK ABORTION ACCESS FUND ↗
- Who funds Civic Nation ↗
- Who funds THE DARTMOUTH INC ↗
- Who funds A BETTER CHANCE OF WESTPORT INC ↗
- Who funds WALLIS ANNENBERG CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS ↗
- Who funds WESTPORT COUNTRY PLAYHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY SERVICE OF LOS ANGELES ↗
- Who funds THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM ↗
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 James & Mary Ellen Marpe Family Foundation · Newman's Own Foundation · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · Fairfield County's Community Foundation Inc · California Community Foundation · Howard & Katherine Aibel Foundation · Tides Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Jewish Communal Fund · National Philanthropic Trust · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · American Endowment 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 Rhimes 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Mercy Learning Center of Bridgeport Inc — 4% of income from government
- Westport Country Playhouse Inc — 2% 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 Rhimes Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Rhimes 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.