Minnesota · Nonprofit
Children's Theatre Company and School
Children's Theatre Company and School (Minnesota) receives grants from 100 organizations whose IRS filings report $13,108,849 to it, the largest being WEM FOUNDATION ($3,000,000). 66 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2025
- $14M
- Funders on record
- 100
- Grants received
- $13M
- Net assets
- $31M
What Children's Theatre Company and School does
Mission
Children's Theatre Company exists to create extraordinary theater experiences that educate, challenge, and inspire young people and their communities.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Programs
The 2024-25 season included two world premieres, two presentations of theatre from world renowned companies, a favorite title from CTC's canon of original productions and a beloved musical enjoyed by all ages. The season opened with MOYA by Zip Zap Circus, a South African professional circus based in Cape Town. The production featured ten dynamic young artists using acrobatic performances, jugglers, and dancing to explore the spirit and vitality of township life. The world premiere of 'Drawing Lessons' by Michi Barall, a co-commission with Ma-Yi Theater Company, was an ambitious, groundbreaking first premiere from our Generation Now initiative. 'Drawing Lessons' told the story of a Korean American girl's discovery of her own artistry. CTC's holiday favorite, 'Dr.Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas' returned for the holiday season. Manual Cinema of Chicago's 'Leonardo! A Wonderful Show About a Terrible Monster' was praised by audiences for its creative use of puppetry, music, and cinematic elements. 'Milo Imagines the World' told the story of a boy's creative journey to visit his incarcerated mother, and how drawing helps him navigate his experience. This world premiere was a…
$10,083,901 spent$7,238,731 earned by the program86% of program spendingCTC's Theatre Arts Training program (TAT) provides instruction in storytelling, acting, dance, voice, directing, and playwriting for young people ages 2-18. In addition to sequenced classes during the school year, Theatre Arts Training also offers summer and other school vacation camps for students at all skill levels and programming for homeschool groups designed to meet their educational goals. TAT also includes the Pre-Professional Institute, which provides high school students with an intensive, four-year, conservatory-style learning experience. The Senior Company program provides students with demanding material that seeks to challenge them as artists, educate them in a professional setting, and inspire them to be active voices in their community. FY25 marked year four of a year-round, all-grade residency at Bethune Arts Elementary in north Minneapolis. Between family engagement around three CTC productions, Creative Play for Pre-K and K, critical literacy for 1st-4th-grade, and Art as Activism for 5th grade, every student had a theatre experience by the end of the year. A total of 2,356 people participated in shorter school-based residencies or took off-site workshops,…
$1,043,418 spent$932,276 earned by the program9% of program spendingNew Work: Through our ongoing cycle of commissioning, developing, and premiering new work, CTC is expanding the national canon of theatre for youth and their communities. Generation Now, a partnership between Penumbra (St. Paul, Minn.), Ma-Yi Theater Company (New York City), Latino Theater Company and Native Voices at the Autry (Los Angeles), and CTC will commission and develop 16 new plays by Black, Indigenous, Latine, and Asian American Pacific Islander writers over a period of 5 years. The output of Generation Now promises to radically expand the inclusiveness of each theatre, expand the canon of work produced for multigenerational audiences, and create a model of transformative partnership. As a cohort, we strongly believe that if we are to have an extraordinary theatre culture in this country, we must start young, and it must be intergenerational, inclusive, inspiring, transformative, and lifelong. A grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funds the project called Generation Now. Generation Now's inaugural Reading Series (October 17-18, 2024), featured public readings of three works in development: 'Level Up' by Gabriel Rivas Gmez (co-commissioned with Latino Theater…
$560,670 spent$358,182 earned by the program5% of program spendingCTC continued its fellowship program in 2024-25, consisting of formal leadership development pipelines that aim to reflect the larger community. The fellowship programs create opportunities for early career theatre artists and administrators with priority on those whose lived experience is frequently missing from the organizational structure of theatres. This season-long, full-time, paid fellowship program strives to address economic and institutional barriers to careers in theatre. They occupy positions in stage management, production management, and performance.
The 4 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $11,687,989.
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 2023 to 2024, from $33M to $37M (+13%).
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.
Government-grant reliance: 2017 6% · 2018 3% · 2019 4% · 2020 5% · 2021 21% · 2022 36% · 2023 5% · 2024 4% · 2025 4%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
30% of Children's Theatre Company and School’s revenue is contributions — more earned-revenue than three-quarters of its peers (58% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 5 of the last 9 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Board chair
Mary Loeffelholz
Chair
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 26 funders to 51 funders, grant income rose $383k → $4.5M.
12 of 100 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 18% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
Left out of every figure on this page: $1.8M from 7 payers (the payer shares this organization's board, largest The Minneapolis Foundation). These are real filings, and they are not money Children's Theatre Company and School raised.
From the IRS filings of Children's Theatre Company and School’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 100 funders by total. 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
Children's Theatre Company and School has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 23% of grant income, and it takes 6 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 6 funders to its left
26% 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 Children's Theatre Company and School.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 26% · 2018 27% · 2019 34% · 2020 22% · 2021 31% · 2022 32% · 2023 67% — growing more concentrated.
“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
55% of Children's Theatre Company and School's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 66% 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
62% of Children's Theatre Company and School's grant income comes from Minnesota funders.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $2.4M arriving through sponsors registered in 10 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
Children's Theatre Company and School's funding base is broadening — from 26 funders to 51 as grant income climbed.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 570 arts & culture nonprofits $10M–$100M, FY2025
Government funding Children's Theatre Company and School receives
Grants and contracts to this organization from federal (USASpending) and state checkbooks, reconciled to its EIN. $687k on record.
- National Endowment for the Arts$680k
- Department of State$7k
Federal grants vs contracts are distinguished; state line items keep their reported category. Matched by name + geography (the BMF), so coverage is partial and precision-first.
Organizations like Children's Theatre Company and School
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.
Where the money goes
73% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
91%
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 Children's Theatre Company and School: 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 Children's Theatre Company and School?
- Children's Theatre Company and School (Minnesota) receives grants from 100 organizations whose IRS filings report $13,108,849 to it, the largest being WEM FOUNDATION ($3,000,000). 66 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does Children's Theatre Company and School have?
- IRS filings report 100 organizations giving $13,108,849 in grants to Children's Theatre Company and School, 66 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of Children's Theatre Company and School?
- WEM FOUNDATION is the largest funder on record, with $3,000,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like Children's Theatre Company and School 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.
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 100 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 22, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing