California · Nonprofit
Fender Play Foundation
Fender Play Foundation (California) receives grants from 6 organizations whose IRS filings report $315,994 to it, the largest being NATIONAL PHILANTHROPIC TRUST ($250,000). 4 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 81% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- Revenue FY2025
- $279
- Funders on record
- 6
- Grants received
- $316k
- Net assets
- $133k
What Fender Play Foundation does
Mission
Fender Play Foundation's mission is to serve as a meaningful, sustainable catalyst for music education. The Foundation believes: A -Philanthropy should be passionate and strategic, B - The power of music can inspire and unite people across cultural borders, C - All children deserve access to high-quality music arts education, and D - Collaboration and diversity yield the greatest outcome. The Foundation focuses in efforts in six key areas: 1 INSTRUCTION - Our focus is on fretted instruments including guitar, bass, and ukulele. Programs provide everything required to teach and learn including Fender Play personal digital learning. In addition to instruments, we provide regular instrument service and ongoing support. 2 PERFORMANCE - Live music performance is when it all comes to life. Fender Play Foundation provides all the gear needed for relevant, modern musical performance. 3 INSPIRATION - We want to offer an elevated sense of belonging, support, and commitment to students in our prog
As stated on its FY2022 Form 990.
Program
The Foundation promotes childhood musical education by providing musical instruments, monetary funding, and instructors to children in K-12, focusing specifically on schools and organizations with underserved populations. The foundation will also support foundations and other programs that support music education through funding and music research.
$121,335 spent
The program described on its FY2025 Form 990-PF.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2018, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2018, 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 2022 to 2023, from $493k to $314k (−36%).
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: 2022 2%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
104% of Fender Play Foundation’s revenue is contributions — more reliant on donations than three-quarters of its peers (78% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 0 of the last 5 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.
Who funds it, year by year
2019 → 2023: the base broadened from 1 funder to 4 funders, grant income fell $38k → $30k.
3 of 6 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 81% 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 Fender Play Foundation’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
Fender Play Foundation leans on a few funders — its largest provides 79% of grant income and the top three 95%; half comes from just 1 funder.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 1 funder to its left
93% 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 Fender Play Foundation.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2019 100% · 2020 99% · 2021 96% · 2022 92% · 2023 83% — 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.
Where its funders are
81% of Fender Play Foundation'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 $60k that is directly attributable, 100% of it comes from funders outside California, across 3 states.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $256k arriving through sponsors registered in 3 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
Fender Play Foundation's revenue fell 99% between 2018 and 2025.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 10,242 arts & culture nonprofits under $100k, FY2025
Organizations like Fender Play Foundation
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 California
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for Fender Play Foundation: 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 Fender Play Foundation?
- Fender Play Foundation (California) receives grants from 6 organizations whose IRS filings report $315,994 to it, the largest being NATIONAL PHILANTHROPIC TRUST ($250,000). 4 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 81% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- How many funders does Fender Play Foundation have?
- IRS filings report 6 organizations giving $315,994 in grants to Fender Play Foundation, 4 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of Fender Play Foundation?
- NATIONAL PHILANTHROPIC TRUST is the largest funder on record, with $250,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like Fender Play Foundation find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in California. 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 2018–2025), and the filings of 6 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