· Public charity
Theatre Bay Area
(cont from page 1) democratic society, and invaluable as a source of personal enrichment and growth.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 2 grants below total $32,520 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $143,500 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $110,980 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Playground | $17,520 |
| Bindlestiff Studio | $15,000 |
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 (FY24–24, $12k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 100% 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.
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 +48% since the first grant, against +7% for the ones you funded once.
6 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- PPLAYGROUND6× · 2019–2025 · $80k · revenue +66%
- SFSan Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company2× · 2021–2023 · $34k · revenue +19%
- IFIntersection for the Arts2× · 2017–2018 · $23k · revenue +48%
Funded once
- CFCrowded Fire Theater Companyone grant, 2022 · $40k · revenue -57%
- SASHAKESPEARE'S ASSOCIATES INCone grant, 2021 · $22k · revenue -17%
- CBCutting Ball Theaterone grant, 2021 · $22k · revenue -48%
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.
Know Theatre is a small professional theatre showcasing voices, new works, & plays that embrace the inherent theatricality of the live experience. Know Theatre seeks to be a place where artists and audiences feel welcome to take artistic…
Studio Theatre produces exceptional contemporary theatre in deliberately intimate spaces, fostering a more thoughtful, more empathetic, and more connected community, in Washington DC and beyond.
Rogue Machine Theatre was founded in 2008 as a performing arts organization to serve the greater Los Angeles community in developing and nurturing emerging playwrights, introducing important contemporary works to Southern California and…
Artists repertory theatre's mission is to produce intimate, provacative theatre and provide a home for a diverse community of artists and audiences to take creative risks.
We are a theatre company. We provide opportunities for local theatre artists and high quality productions for the public.
Second Thought Theatre provides an intimate and unique theatrical experience by empowering top local artists to take risks and by showcasing writers who boldly tackle the difficult and demanding questions of our rapidly changing world.
Develop recognition of international theater
Our mission is to enliven our community by transforming found spaces with bold, theatrical endeavors. We place an emphasis on partnering with local businesses all over PDX to serve as venues for our productions
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Cutting Ball Theater and the most unlike its peers is Crescent Moon Theater Productions. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
18 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.
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 PLAYGROUND ↗
- Who funds Crowded Fire Theater Company ↗
- Who funds San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company ↗
- Who funds BINDLESTIFF STUDIO ↗
- Who funds Intersection for the Arts ↗
- Who funds ALTERNATIVE THEATER ENSEMBLE ↗
- Who funds Shotgun Players ↗
- Who funds SHAKESPEARE'S ASSOCIATES INC ↗
- Who funds Cutting Ball Theater ↗
- Who funds Golden Thread Productions ↗
- Who funds OAKLAND THEATER PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Theatre Rhinoceros Inc ↗
- Who funds MAGIC THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds SEW PRODUCTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL WORKS ↗
- Who funds CounterPulse ↗
- Who funds Crescent Moon Theater Productions ↗
- Who funds The Z Space Studio ↗
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: Phyllis C Wattis Foundation · Fleishhacker Foundation · The Zellerbach Family Foundation · Kenneth Rainin Foundation · The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation · Gerbode Foundation · The Shubert Foundation Inc · The Sam Mazza Foundation · The Rock Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · East Bay Community Foundation · The Bernard Osher 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 Theatre Bay Area 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.