· Public charity
Thelma Pearl Howard Foundation
Provide charitable benefits for charitable, educational, scientific, literary, and religious purposes.
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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $10k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $418k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FERNANDO PULLUM COMMUNITY ARTS CENTER | $30,000 |
| SYMPHONIC JAZZ ORCHESTRA | $30,000 |
| CITY HEARTS KIDS SAY YES TO THE ARTS | $30,000 |
| YOUNG STORYTELLERS FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| EAST WEST PLAYERS INC | $30,000 |
| ELEMENTAL MUSIC | $30,000 |
| PS ARTS | $30,000 |
| ACTORS' GANG INC | $30,000 |
| INNER CITY YOUTH ORCHESTRA OF LOS ANGELES | $30,000 |
| UNUSUAL SUSPECTS THEATRE COMPANY | $30,000 |
| GRAND VISION FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| INNER-CITY ARTS | $30,000 |
| FERNANDO PULLUM COMMUNITY ARTS CENTER | $20,000 |
| RUCKUSROOTS | $17,500 |
| THE ACTORS' GANG | $10,000 |
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 (FY23–23, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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 +45% since the first grant, against +38% for the ones you funded once.
32 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 21 since wound down; 4 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, 75% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $108k 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
- PAPS ARTS9× · 2017–2025 · $250k · revenue +35%
- SJSYMPHONIC JAZZ ORCHESTRA9× · 2017–2025 · $250k · revenue +48%
- YSYOUNG STORYTELLERS9× · 2017–2025 · $235k · revenue +85%
Funded once
- NLNO LIMITS THEATER GROUP INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $25k · revenue +38%
- CKCONGA KIDSgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $25k · revenue +248%
- LWLULA WASHINGTON CONTEMPORARY DANCE FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $10k · revenue +32%
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 orchestra pursues its mission, "to enrich and connect our community through intimate and transformative musical experiences which exemplify and foster artistic excellence, education and innovation," through the blend of traditional…
The latino theater company operates the los angeles theatre center, whose mission is to provide a world class arts center for those pursuing artistic excellence; a laboratory where both tradition and innovation are honored and honed; a…
Tk-12 charter public school focused on educational equity and success for all students with a priority on tradionally underserved populations.
To provide space for artists to work and to engage community through arts education, exhibitions of contemporary art, and cultural events.
Deeply rooted in our local beverly hills community and influenced by cultural change, the wallis annenberg center for the performing arts, a public-private partnership with the city of beverly hills, strives to be a site for the…
ARTRONIKA is a collective of Los Angeles based artists that produce immersive arts programming showcasing an array of South Asian talent and culture. Through innovative and inclusive events, we reimagine traditional music, art, and…
To serve the public by producing world-class opera that preserves, promotes and advances the art form while embodying the diversity, spirit and artistic sensibility unique to los angeles. we envision an engaged and enlightened community in…
As creative producers, we are devoted to the production and presentation of groundbreaking experiences in contemporary performance that use innovative approaches to collaboration, technology, and social engagement. As a service…
Contra-tiempo is a bold, multilingual los angeles-based activist dance theater company creating physically intense and politically astute performance work that moves audience to imagine what is possible. We create a new physical, visual…
Arts for la leads communities, artists and organizations to advocate for an equitable, healthy, and creative los angeles region through the arts.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Lula Washington Contemporary Dance Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Latino Public Radio Consortium. 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 31 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 16% 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.
46 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. 46 of the 50 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 PS ARTS ↗
- Who funds SYMPHONIC JAZZ ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds YOUNG STORYTELLERS ↗
- Who funds INNER-CITY ARTS ↗
- Who funds CITY HEARTS KIDS SAY YES TO THE ARTS LA FRINGE THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN YOUTH SYMPHONY INC ↗
- Who funds DEBBIE ALLEN DANCE INC DEBBIE ALLEN DANCE ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds INNER CITY YOUTH ORCHRSTRA OF LOS ANGELES INC ↗
- Who funds FERNANDO PULLUM COMMUNITY ARTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds FULCRUM ARTS ↗
- Who funds SANTA CECILIA OPERA AND ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ART CREATES US INC ↗
- Who funds SOUND ART INC DBA IN THE BAND ↗
- Who funds ETM-LA INC ↗
- Who funds Dramatic Results ↗
- Who funds ACTOR'S GANG INC ↗
- Who funds VENICE ARTS ↗
- Who funds WATER BUFFALO CLUB INC DBA WE BENEFIT CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds PLAZA DE LA RAZA INC ↗
- Who funds LACER AFTERSCHOOL PROGRAMS ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES MASTER CHORALE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CREATE NOW INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MUSICIANS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AUTRY MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN WEST ↗
- Who funds EAST-WEST PLAYERS INC ↗
- Who funds GRAND VISION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE UNUSUAL SUSPECTS THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds ELEMENTAL MUSIC ↗
- Who funds NO LIMITS THEATER GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds CONGA KIDS ↗
- Who funds SOUNDS LIKE LA ↗
- Who funds KALEIDOSCOPE CHAMBER ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds RUCKUSROOTS INC ↗
- Who funds Harmony Project ↗
- Who funds LULA WASHINGTON CONTEMPORARY DANCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DIY GIRLS ↗
- Who funds PERFORMING ARTS CENTER OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY ↗
- Who funds ALL PEOPLES COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
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: California Community Foundation · The Ahmanson Foundation · The Ralph M Parsons Foundation · The Annenberg Foundation · Perenchio Foundation · The Rose Hills Foundation · Elbridge Stuart Foundation Dba Stuart Foundation · The Meredith and Rosemary Willson Charit (Aka the Music Man Foundation) · Weingart Foundation · Stern Sidney Memorial Tuw · The Herb Alpert Foundation · The J Paul Getty 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 Thelma Pearl Howard 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.
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 Thelma Pearl Howard Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Thelma Pearl Howard 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.