· Private foundation
The Viola Fund
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 $10k7 grants · $17k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $155k
- $250k+1 grant · $2.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND | $2,000,000 |
| METROPOLITAN OPERA | $25,000 |
| WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| CORNELL-WEILL HOSPITAL | $20,000 |
| OPEN STAGE PROJECT | $15,000 |
| THE FEMINIST INSTITUTE TGI DIGITAL | $10,000 |
| WE ACT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE | $10,000 |
| MAGAZZINO ITALIAN ART FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| HOSPITAL FOR SPECIAL SURGERY FUND INC | $10,000 |
| COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| DIEU DONNE PAPERMILL | $6,000 |
| RISING TREETOPS AT OAKHURST | $5,000 |
| ARTOLUTION INC | $1,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,500 |
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 (FY22–22, $11k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 9% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +91% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
20 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2024, 7 since wound down; 4 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $23k 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
ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED6× · 2017–2024 · $5.1M · revenue +202%- WMWHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART4× · 2020–2024 · $141k · revenue +69%
Feeding America3× · 2020–2023 · $63k · revenue +40%
Funded once
- YUYALE UNIVERSITYone grant, 2020 · $1.0M
- YUYALE UNIVERSITYone grant, 2022 · $1.0M
- IOInstitute of Fine artsone grant, 2017 · $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.
CITY REPORT, INC. serves the people of New York through independent journalism that answers their information needs and holds the powerful to account.
Established in 1971, the mission of the new york foundation for the arts (nyfa) is to empower artists in all disciplines, as well as cultural workers, to achieve success on their own terms by providing critical support, resources, and…
The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
(see schedule o)
New york restoration project ("nyrp") believes that nature is a fundamental right of every new yorker. nyrp works collaboratively with residents in communities across the five boroughs to renovate gardens, restore parks, plant trees,…
The new york botanical garden is a museum of plants and a scientific research center devoted to the study of plants and their uses. it is the garden's mission to improve public understanding of the natural world, horticulture, and the…
The mission of the brooklyn institute of arts and sciences, d/b/a brooklyn museum (the "museum") is to bring people together through art and experiences that inspire celebration, compassion, courage, and the will to act. (see schedule o).
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
Apex Art Curatorial Program is a resolutely noncommercial visual art exhibition space which provides curators and artists with a venue dedicated to ideas that are often too provocative or too small in scope for display elsewhere. Apex Art…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City Inc and the most unlike its peers is Magazzino Italian Art Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 35 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
38 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. 38 of the 66 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 ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
- Who funds OPEN STAGE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds PLAN A HEALTH INC ↗
- Who funds DIEU DONNE PAPER MILL INC ↗
- Who funds THE BROOKLYN RAIL INC ↗
- Who funds HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF NEW YORK CITY INC ↗
- Who funds RISING TREETOPS AT OAKHURST ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds CITY HARVEST INC ↗
- Who funds West Harlem Environmental Action Inc ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds The Hospital for Special Surgery Fund Inc ↗
- Who funds MAGAZZINO ITALIAN ART FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC HEALTH SOLUTIONS ↗
- Who funds SUNFLOWER OF PEACE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE REGENERATION PROJECT ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PARKS OF NEW YORK HARBOR CONSERVANCY DBA FEDERAL HALL CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL PARK CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds TFI DIGITAL ARCHIVE ↗
- Who funds FREE ALAS ↗
- Who funds THE HUNTER COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCATES NY 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: Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Jewish Communal Fund · Foundation for Louisiana · The Greater New Orleans Foundation · The New York Community Trust · New Venture Fund · The Ford Foundation · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Inc · Impactassetsinc · Tides Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust
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 Viola Fund 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.
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 Viola Fund?
Find your warmest path to The Viola Fund 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.