· Private foundation
The Robert Black Foundation Trust dated September 212018
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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k7 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| New Music on the Point | $3,000 |
| Bang on a Can | $3,000 |
| Moab Music Festival | $2,500 |
| Millay Arts Foundation | $2,500 |
| Network for New Music | $1,000 |
| Estate of Phil Niblock | $1,000 |
| Cuatro Puntos | $1,000 |
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 (FY20–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 51% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 18% of The Robert Black Foundation Trust dated September 212018’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. Read by recipient address, 34% of the giving stays in CT; read by stated purpose it is 16% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 +76% since the first grant, against +40% for the ones you funded once.
13 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 1 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1k went to new ones.
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
- NMNEW MUSIC ON THE POINT INC4× · 2020–2025 · $16k · revenue +201%
- ISINTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF BASSISTS3× · 2020–2024 · $12k · revenue +219%
- BOBANG ON A CAN5× · 2021–2025 · $11k · revenue +70%
Funded once
- NBNEW BRITAIN MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART INCgraduatedone grant, 2024 · $30k · revenue +40%
- AMAssociation Megave Festival Savoy Truffleone grant, 2020 · $5k
- MAMillay Artsone grant, 2022 · $3k
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 commission and perform new music
The American Chamber Ensemble is a consortium of distinguished musicians whose concerts explore the music for piano with strings, woodwinds and/or voice, presenting both great standard repertoire and living American composers.
Engage audiences of new music
New music theatre project is organized for the cultural purpose of developing new work that explores the traditional and innovative ways in which music and theatre play together. we focus on commissioning and co- producing new works of…
The purpose of CUT CIRCLE is to bring late-medieval and Renaissance music to life. Reimagining early music as a site of gritty, intense experiences, Cut Circle's performances are distinguished by their energy and emotional sensitivity.…
To present and promote contemporary classical music through innovative, interdisciplinary performances; to support living composers; and to engage diverse audiences through education, collaboration, and community-based programming.…
Present compelling chamber music performances.
Cantata Profana, Inc. (www.cantataprofana.com) is a vocal and instrumental chamber ensemble that presents concerts of classical and chamber music ranging from the Baroque to modern eras with a unique narrative style. Our purpose is to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia and the most unlike its peers is Ensemble Ipse Inc. 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 31 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 NEW BRITAIN MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART INC ↗
- Who funds NEW MUSIC ON THE POINT INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF BASSISTS ↗
- Who funds BANG ON A CAN ↗
- Who funds MOAB MUSIC FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds NETWORK FOR NEW MUSIC ↗
- Who funds ENSEMBLE IPSE INC ↗
- Who funds MENDELSSOHN CLUB OF PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds CUATRO PUNTOS INC ↗
- Who funds Greater Hartford Arts Council 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 Amphion Foundation Inc Co Alter Kendrick & Baron LLP · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Online Giving Foundation 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 Robert Black Foundation Trust dated September 212018 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.
- Greater Hartford Arts Council Inc — 24% of income from government
- New Britain Museum of American Art Inc — 7% of income from government
- Cuatro Puntos 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.