Minnesota · Nonprofit
Free Guitars 4 Kids
Free Guitars 4 Kids (Minnesota) receives grants from 10 organizations whose IRS filings report $941,440 to it, the largest being FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ($370,150). 6 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 57% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
Against its field
Free Guitars 4 Kids has grown faster than three-quarters of the 10,664 arts & culture nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 10,664 arts & culture nonprofits $100k–$1M, FY2025
Three funders worth looking at
Grantmakers with no record of funding this organization, ranked by how strongly the co-funder graph and the mission embeddings agree. The evidence is in section 03.
- Memorial Foundation Incshared funders
- The Cma Foundationportfolio match
- The Mockingbird Foundationportfolio match
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2022, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2022, 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.
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 Free Guitars 4 Kids’s revenue is contributions — more reliant on donations than three-quarters of its peers (64% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 0 of the last 4 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Who funds it, year by year
2021 → 2023: the base broadened from 1 funder to 6 funders, grant income rose $1k → $172k.
4 of 10 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 57% 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 Free Guitars 4 Kids’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
Free Guitars 4 Kids leans on a few funders — its largest provides 39% of grant income and the top three 76%; half comes from just 2 funders.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 2 funders to its left
72% 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 Free Guitars 4 Kids.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2021 100% · 2022 50% · 2023 44% — 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
57% of Free Guitars 4 Kids'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 $400k that is directly attributable, 100% of it comes from funders outside Minnesota, across 5 states.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $541k arriving through sponsors registered in 4 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.
Funders to approach
Grantmakers that don’t fund you yet, surfaced two ways: they back organizations that share your funders, or their grantees resemble your mission. The ones both signals agree on come first.
- Memorial Foundation Incshared fundersTN · backs 25 organizations that share your funders
- The Cma Foundationportfolio matchits grantees resemble your mission
- The Mockingbird Foundationportfolio matchits grantees resemble your mission
- W J Brace Charitable Trustportfolio matchits grantees resemble your mission
- Tdecu Cares Foundation Incportfolio matchits grantees resemble your mission
- Soundwaves Art Foundationportfolio matchits grantees resemble your mission
- D'Addario Foundation Incportfolio matchits grantees resemble your mission
- Les Paul Foundationportfolio matchits grantees resemble your mission
- Gabus Foundationportfolio matchits grantees resemble your mission
- Dolores J & Robert A Bochatey Foundationportfolio matchits grantees resemble your mission
- Cohn Sadie & Louis Char Tuwportfolio matchits grantees resemble your mission
- Taylor Family Foundation Incportfolio matchits grantees resemble your mission
From the co-funder graph (funders backing at least two comparable organizations, shrunk for grantee count, donor-advised and mega-funds excluded) and the universe embeddings. A research starting point; overlap is association, not a guarantee of fit.
Organizations like Free Guitars 4 Kids
Nonprofits whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over the universe of 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
88% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 7 states
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for Free Guitars 4 Kids: 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. How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds Free Guitars 4 Kids?
- Free Guitars 4 Kids (Minnesota) receives grants from 10 organizations whose IRS filings report $941,440 to it, the largest being FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ($370,150). 6 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 57% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- How many funders does Free Guitars 4 Kids have?
- IRS filings report 10 organizations giving $941,440 in grants to Free Guitars 4 Kids, 6 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of Free Guitars 4 Kids?
- FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND is the largest funder on record, with $370,150 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like Free Guitars 4 Kids 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 2022–2025), and the filings of 10funders 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 August 27, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing