Minnesota · Nonprofit
ART BUDDIES
ART BUDDIES (Minnesota) receives grants from 15 organizations whose IRS filings report $149,513 to it, the largest being THE MINNEAPOLIS FOUNDATION ($71,250). 5 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 71% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- Revenue FY2025
- $124k
- Funders on record
- 15
- Grants received
- $150k
- Net assets
- $98k
What Art Buddies does
Mission
The mission of Art Buddies is to bring the power of one-to-one creative mentoring to twin cities children from high need schools and communities. Art Buddies helps children connect the child with their self and their community, to give them agency over their artistry and ideas, to inspire creative expression and sense of personal agency, and to help the child build a strong sense of creative confidence. Art Buddies annually pairs 200 creative mentors, one-to-one with 200 twin cities public school kids (ages 8-11). Each program features 8-10 weekly workshops. Mentors also help the kids develop writing, project planning and storytelling skills by creating a special journal of their Art Buddies experience called a buddy book. At the end of each program, the kids become "stars" posing with their creations and mentors for portraits by professional photographers. The children celebrate their accomplishments with a parade and presentation for schoolmates, teachers, family and friends. The art
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990-EZ.
Program
In fiscal year 2024-2025, Art Buddies served over 200 children, ages 8-11, from high need schools and communities in minneapolis and st. Paul. Art Buddies provides its free creative mentor programming and art education to schools at which at least 75% of the student body receives free and reduced lunch program, as the metric for poverty. Any scholar at a participating school is eligible to participate in our free program. 90% of participating children were children of color. We recruited 200 creative mentors to work one-on-one with the children. We produced eight after- school Art Buddies programs, at our partner schools: whittier international elementary, lucy laney elementary, hall stem academy, and bancroft elementary. Our mentors helped the children do the following: 1. Form a positive relationship with a creative adult 2. Discover their creative potential and learn applied artistic skills 3. Boost their self-esteem by creating something ambitious and unique 4. Increase their motivation to learn by giving them an exciting reason to come to school and explore 5. Learn the creative process of conceiving, planning and producing 6. Explore creative career possibilities the…
$134,284 spent100% of program spending
The program described on its FY2024 Form 990-EZ. Program spending in total: $134,284.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2021 to 2022, from $181k to $153k (−15%).
How it's funded, over time
Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.
100% of ART BUDDIES’s revenue is contributions — more reliant on donations than three-quarters of its peers (83% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 6 of the last 8 reported years ran a deficit.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 2 funders to 3 funders, grant income rose $9k → $12k.
6 of 15 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 71% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
From the IRS filings of ART BUDDIES’s funders (the co-funder graph). Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How concentrated its funding is
ART BUDDIES leans on a few funders — its largest provides 48% of grant income and the top three 77%; half comes from just 2 funders.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 2 funders to its left
95% of the income these shares are computed over arrives through pass-through sponsors or from payers whose filings do not say what kind of payment it is. Concentration is still measured over all of it, because the money is real; what it does not support is a claim about how many institutions have chosen to fund ART BUDDIES.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 89% · 2018 64% · 2019 41% · 2020 68% · 2021 85% · 2022 75% · 2023 57% — diversifying over time.
“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How long its funders stay
30% of ART BUDDIES's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 33% give in more than one year at all.
Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.
Where its funders are
71% of ART BUDDIES's grant income arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors, whose addresses record where the money is held rather than where the donor is. Of the $43k that is directly attributable, 84% of it comes from funders outside Minnesota, across 6 states.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $106k arriving through sponsors registered in 6 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Against its field
ART BUDDIES receives grants from 15 organizations whose IRS filings report $150k to it.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 3,482 youth development nonprofits $100k–$1M, FY2025
Organizations like ART BUDDIES
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In Minnesota
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Public support
100%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 1 state
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for ART BUDDIES: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds ART BUDDIES?
- ART BUDDIES (Minnesota) receives grants from 15 organizations whose IRS filings report $149,513 to it, the largest being THE MINNEAPOLIS FOUNDATION ($71,250). 5 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 71% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- How many funders does ART BUDDIES have?
- IRS filings report 15 organizations giving $149,513 in grants to ART BUDDIES, 5 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of ART BUDDIES?
- THE MINNEAPOLIS FOUNDATION is the largest funder on record, with $71,250 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like ART BUDDIES find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Minnesota. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
Play a game about who funds Art Buddies →
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2025 (financials across 2017–2025), and the filings of 15 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 14, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing