SEATTLE OPERA

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.

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 13% · 2018 7% · 2019 3% · 2020 6% · 2021 9% · 2022 31% · 2023 16% · 2024 1% · 2025 3%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.

Surplus & reserves

Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 4 of the last 9 reported years ran a deficit.

Who funds it, year by year

2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 29 funders to 39 funders, grant income fell $3.3M → $3.0M.

19 of 79 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 56% 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: $17M from one payer (the payer shares this organization's board, largest Seattle Opera Foundation). These are real filings, and they are not money SEATTLE OPERA raised.

From the IRS filings of SEATTLE OPERA’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 79 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

SEATTLE OPERA has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 26% of grant income, and it takes 4 funders to reach half.

64% 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 SEATTLE OPERA.

Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 42% · 2018 63% · 2019 23% · 2020 17% · 2021 36% · 2022 21% · 2023 18% — 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

54% of SEATTLE OPERA's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 71% 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

56% of SEATTLE OPERA'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 $10M that is directly attributable, 77% of it comes from Washington funders.

Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $13M arriving through sponsors registered in 15 statesis 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.