· Private foundation
The Shen Family 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 $10k8 grants · $25k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $235k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $621k
- $250k+1 grant · $350k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NEW YORK CITY BALLET | $350,000 |
| BROOKLYN INSTITUTE OF ARTS | $186,250 |
| PRINCETON BALLET SOCIETY | $100,000 |
| BALLET SOCIETY INC | $100,000 |
| BALLET THEATRE FOUNDATION INC | $70,000 |
| MASTERS SCHOOL | $65,000 |
| MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING | $50,000 |
| TRANSPORT GROUP | $50,000 |
| GREEN-WOOD HISTORIC FUND | $35,000 |
| ALABAMA SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL | $25,000 |
| PACKER COLLEGIATE INSTITUTE | $25,000 |
| YALE UNIVERSITY | $25,000 |
| PROSPECT THEATER COMPANY | $25,000 |
| OUT OF THE BOX THEATRICS | $20,000 |
| MASTERVOICES | $20,000 |
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 (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 96% of your 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.
40 repeat relationships — 19 still active in FY2024, 21 since wound down; 9 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, 63% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $451k 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
- NYNEW YORK CITY BALLET INC8× · 2017–2024 · $2.0M · revenue +21%
- TWTHE WASHINGTON BALLET4× · 2017–2021 · $325k · revenue +46%
- PCPACKER COLLEGIATE INSTITUTE8× · 2017–2024 · $320k · revenue +42%
Funded once
- YUYALE UNIVERSITYone grant, 2018 · $210k
- JCJFK CENTER FOR PERFORMING ARTSone grant, 2017 · $100k
- WTWILLIAMSON THEATREone grant, 2018 · $75k
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.
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…
As the nation's foremost producer of shakespeare and new work, the public theater is dedicated to achieving artistic excellence while developing an american theater that is accessible and relevant to all people through productions of…
Please see schedule o for the complete mission statement.berkeley repertory theatre creates ambitious theatre that entertains and challenges its audiences, provokes civic engagement, and inspires people to experience the world in new and…
The museum of the city of new york fosters understanding of the distinctive nature of urban life in the world's most influential metropolis. it engages visitors by celebrating, documenting, and interpreting the city's past, present, and…
The new group is an artist-driven company with a commitment to developing and producing powerful, contemporary theater. while constantly evolving, we maintain an ensemble approach to all our work and an articulated style of emotional…
Mtc's work includes producing and developing new work on and off-broadway, nurturing artists throughout their careers, and positively impacting the lives of many through innovative education programs. we are committed to equity, diversity…
Titan theatre company is committed to breathing new life and clarity into classical works of theatre, exploring new and contemporary language plays, and delivering adventurous and visceral theatrical experiences for our audiences and…
We believe opera is a uniquely compelling, entertaining and emotionally thrilling art form. our mission is to bring together growing audiences to experience opera's transformative power.
Presenting, commissioning, performing, recording and teaching contemporary music. bang on a can believes in exposing exciting new music as broadly and accessibly as possible. through it's summer institute, bang on a can hopes to bring this…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is York Theatre Company Inc and the most unlike its peers is Penumbra Foundation. 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 45 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
52 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 52 of the 75 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 YORK CITY BALLET INC ↗
- Who funds BALLET THEATRE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE WASHINGTON BALLET ↗
- Who funds PACKER COLLEGIATE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds THE BROOKLYN INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds PRINCETON BALLET SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK CITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds ROUNDABOUT THEATRE COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds THE GREEN-WOOD HISTORIC FUND INC ↗
- Who funds THE HOPE PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds CSC REPERTORY LTD D/B/A CLASSIC STAGE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds MASTERS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds PREMIERA INC ↗
- Who funds URBANARIAS INC ↗
- Who funds OLD GLOBE THEATRE ↗
- Who funds The New York Public Library Astor Lenox and Tilden Foundations ↗
- Who funds FRANKLIN FURNACE ARCHIVE INC ↗
- Who funds EVERYMAN THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds THE PHILHARMONIC SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NY INC ↗
- Who funds City Squash Inc ↗
- Who funds TRANSPORT GROUP INC DBA TRANSPORT GROUP THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds THE CHASE BROCK EXPERIENCE INC ↗
- Who funds FRACTURED ATLAS INC ↗
- Who funds ALABAMA SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds THE PERFORMANCE ZONE 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 Shubert Foundation Inc · The Howard Gilman Foundation Inc · Jewish Communal Fund · The Lucille Lortel Foundation Inc · The Hyde and Watson Foundation · Jerome Robbins Foundation · Axe-Houghton Foundation · Ibm International Foundation · Michael Tuch Foundation Inc · The Macmillan Family Foundation Inc · Cornelia T Bailey Charitable Trust · The Ford 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 Shen Family 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.
- Everyman Theatre Inc — 15% of income from government
- The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum Inc — 9% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Berkshire Theatre Group Inc — 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.