· Private foundation
Trust for Mutual Understanding
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k7 grants · $45k
- $10k–50k55 grants · $1.4M
- $50k–250k10 grants · $884k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE YOUNG VISUAL ARTISTS AWARD PROGRAM IN 2024 | $173,000 |
| RESIDENCY UNLIMITED INC | $144,000 |
| CEC ARTSLINK INC | $115,000 |
| CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL THEATRE DEVELOPMENT INC | $90,000 |
| EARTH ISLAND INSTITUTE INC | $80,000 |
| CEC ARTSLINK INC | $63,800 |
| CEC ARTSLINK INC | $62,500 |
| THE OCEAN FOUNDATION | $55,555 |
| EARTHCORPS | $50,000 |
| ENVIRONMENTAL LAW ALLIANCE WORLDWIDE | $50,000 |
| EARTH ISLAND INSTITUTE INC | $45,000 |
| MONGOL ECOLOGY CENTER | $45,000 |
| EARTH ISLAND INSTITUTE INC | $45,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL THEATRE DEVELOPMENT INC | $40,000 |
| WILD SALMON CENTER | $40,000 |
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 11%. 94% 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.
25 repeat relationships — 25 still active in FY2024, 0 since wound down; 25 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, 67% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $771k 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
- RURESIDENCY UNLIMITED INC2× · 2023–2024 · $518k · revenue +5% · 38% of their budget
- MRMOVEMENT RESEARCH INC2× · 2023–2024 · $321k · revenue +9%
Earth Island Institute Inc2× · 2023–2024 · $257k · revenue +19%
Funded once
- CACEC Artslink Inc. (1687)one grant, 2022 · $391k
- TOThe Ocean Foundation (C7116)one grant, 2022 · $242k
- MRMovement Research Inc. (MOVEMENT)one grant, 2022 · $165k
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.
On the Boards' mission is to invest in leading contemporary performing artists near and far and connect them to a diverse range of communities interested in forward-thinking art and ideas.
To produce bold theatre experiences that reach across artistic, physical and social boundries. We aim to increase empathy and open-mindedness by illuminating nuanced perspectives and unspoken truths behind the salient issues of our time.…
See schedule operformance space new york is committed to promoting the arts (including performance, visual and all other contemporary arts), fostering artistic development (including through direct grants), advancing diversity in the field…
Red eye collaboration is a multi-disciplinary creative laboratory that supports the development and production of boundary-breaking performance work.
Pangea World Theater strives to build a just world by creating multi-disciplinary theater that embodies decolonizing practices of solidarity, sustainability and equity.
Stages makes plays and tells stories that invite everyone to live more deeply and love more boldly.
To create rousing, visceral, enlightening theatre experiences that galvanize diverse artists and audiences to engage with our world in unexpected and often challenging ways.
Nature and culture international conserves biologically diverse landscapes in latin america, in concert with local cultures, for the well-being of the planet.
The Living Earth Show's mission is to commission, collaborate, and amplify vital musical creators from a truly diverse range of communities - including crucial artists from those that are often marginalized and overlooked by traditional…
Guided by artists, rooted in new mexico, site santa fe celebrates contemporary creative expression.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Mid Atlantic Arts Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Center for International Theatre Development. 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 27 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 2% 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.
64 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. 64 of the 126 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 CEC ARTSLINK INC ↗
- Who funds RESIDENCY UNLIMITED INC ↗
- Who funds The Ocean Foundation ↗
- Who funds MOVEMENT RESEARCH INC ↗
- Who funds Earth Island Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL THEATRE DEVELOPMENT ↗
- Who funds MONGOL ECOLOGY CENTER ↗
- Who funds LIVING DESERT THE ↗
- Who funds CULTURAL SURVIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds DOUBLE EDGE THEATRE PRODUCTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds Earthcorps ↗
- Who funds Waxfactory Inc ↗
- Who funds PARTNERSHIPS FOR NATURE ↗
- Who funds THE DRAMA LEAGUE OF NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds MID ATLANTIC ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL THEATRE DEVELOPMENT INC ↗
- Who funds CLOCKSHOP ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL LAW ALLIANCE WORLDWIDE ↗
- Who funds CLIMATE CONSERVATION DBA CENTER FOR LARGE LANDSCAPE CONSERVATION ↗
- Who funds Wildlife Conservation Society ↗
- Who funds Knights of Indulgence Theatre United Sta ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS 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: Mid Atlantic Arts Inc · The Andrew W Mellon Foundation · The Howard Gilman Foundation Inc · The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc · The Ford Foundation · Foundation to Promote Open Society · The Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc Co Alter Kendrick & Baron LLP · Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc · New England Foundation for the Arts Incorporated · Rsf Social Finance Inc · Gordon E and Betty I Moore Foundation · The Amphion Foundation Inc Co Alter Kendrick & Baron LLP
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 Trust for Mutual Understanding 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.
- Mid Atlantic Arts Inc — 66% of income from government
- Wild Salmon Center — 49% of income from government
- Northeast Document Conservation Center Inc — 13% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Commonwealth Zoological Corporation D/B/a Zoo New England — 2% of income from government
- Double Edge Theatre Productions Inc — 2% of income from government
- Emerson College — 0% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Trust for Mutual Understanding?
Find your warmest path to Trust for Mutual Understanding 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.