· Private foundation
Wender 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BOSTON LYRIC OPERA | $3,000 |
| BAY PATH UNIVERSITY | $2,500 |
| LONGY SCHOOL OF MUSIC | $2,000 |
| BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $1,500 |
| OPERA THEATRE OF ST LOUIS | $1,350 |
| CELEBRITY SERIES OF BOSTON | $1,250 |
| WGBH | $1,000 |
| METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE | $850 |
| ST ANTHONY EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION | $500 |
| MIT MUSIC LIBRARY | $400 |
| MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS | $300 |
| ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM | $275 |
| OPERA PHILADELPHIA | $100 |
| TRUSTEES OF RESERVATIONS | $70 |
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 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 74% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +38% since the first grant, against -2% for the ones you funded once.
29 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2024, 16 since wound down; 1 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, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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
BOSTON LYRIC OPERA COMPANY7× · 2017–2024 · $14k · revenue +94%- BSBOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC7× · 2017–2024 · $12k · revenue +38%
- TSTHE SANTA FE OPERA7× · 2017–2023 · $11k · revenue +53%
Funded once
- MMITone grant, 2019 · $1k
- BFBRIGHT FUNDSone grant, 2017 · $1k
Metropolitan Opera Association Incone grant, 2017 · $850 · revenue -2%
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.
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.
Arizona opera elevates the transformative power of storytelling through music - cultivating community and strengthening a state and people as adventurous and diverse as the place they call home.
The mission of HGO is to enrich our diverse community through the art of opera. We will do so by creating, curating, exploring, and producing outstanding experiences centered around the human voice.(Continued on Schedule O)
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…
To be a sustainable musical institution that brings the intimate experience of a world-class chamber orchestra performance to the greater philadelphia area,enriching the musical life of the city and region by the integrity and excellence…
New york city opera was famously dubbed "the people's opera" by mayor fiorello laguardia at its founding in 1943. more than 80 years later, city opera continues its historic mission to inspire audiences with innovative and theatrically…
The minnesota orchestra mission is to enrich, inspire and serve our community as an enduring symphony orchestra internationally recognized for its artistic excellence.
Music of the baroque is a professional orchestra and chorus excelling in the performance of works from the 18th century and before. the organization also educates 2,900 chicago public school students each year through its 'strong voices'…
The mission of madison opera is to produce operas of the highest artistic standards.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Santa Fe Opera and the most unlike its peers is Terezin Music Foundation Inc. 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 48 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
30 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. 30 of the 44 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 BOSTON LYRIC OPERA COMPANY ↗
- Who funds THE CELEBRITY SERIES OF BOSTON INC ↗
- Who funds BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds THE SANTA FE OPERA ↗
- Who funds Opera Theatre of Saint Louis ↗
- Who funds OPERA PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds OPERA AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds Bay Path University ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATRE CO INC ↗
- Who funds HUNTINGTON THEATRE CO INC ↗
- Who funds EMMANUEL MUSIC INC ↗
- Who funds ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds WHITE SNAKE PROJECTS INC ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds BOSTON BAROQUE INC ↗
- Who funds ST ANTHONY EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATIONINC ↗
- Who funds PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds Sarasota Opera Association Inc ↗
- Who funds Metropolitan Opera Association Inc ↗
- Who funds DISCALCED INC ↗
- Who funds THE GARDNER MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Terezin Music Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF RESERVATIONS ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds DETROIT OPERA ↗
- Who funds BOSTON MODERN ORCHESTRA PROJECT 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 Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc Co Alter Kendrick & Baron LLP · The Andrew W Mellon Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc · The Charles and Cerise Jacobs Charitable Foundation · Opera America Inc · The Amphion Foundation Inc Co Alter Kendrick & Baron LLP · Ibm International Foundation · Harris a Berman & Ruth E Nemzoff Family Foundation C/O Mason Rich · Robert and Iris Fanger Family Foundation · The Howard and Sarah D Solomon Foundation · Mattina R Proctor Foundation · New Music USA Inc
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 Wender 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- White Snake Projects Inc — 8% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Emmanuel Music Inc — 5% of income from government
- Huntington Theatre Co Inc — 4% of income from government
- Boston Modern Orchestra Project Inc — 4% of income from government
- The Celebrity Series of Boston Inc — 3% of income from government
- Boston Lyric Opera Company — 3% of income from government
- Peabody Essex Museum Inc — 3% of income from government
- Bay Path University — 3% of income from government
- Boston Baroque Inc — 2% of income from government
- The Trustees of Reservations — 2% of income from government
- Boston Symphony Orchestra Inc — 0% of income from government
- American Repertory Theatre Co Inc — 0% of income from government
- Museum of Fine Arts — 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.