Arizona · Nonprofit
Skystone Foundation Inc
Skystone Foundation Inc (Arizona) receives grants from 24 organizations whose IRS filings report $72,678,250 to it, the largest being CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ($51,400,000). 6 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
- $10M
- Funders on record
- 24
- Grants received
- $73M
- Net assets
- $128M
What Skystone Foundation Inc does
Program
Skystone Foundation was founded in 1979 originally called the Turrell Foundation and renamed in 1982 as the nonprofit private foundation responsible for fundraising, operation, and realization of James Turrell's Roden Crater Project. Roden Crater, Turrell's magnum opus, incorporates many aspects of his previous art works and presents an extraordinary convergence of art, architecture, astronomy, anthropological history of the area, and engineerings. Through a series of apertures in the cinder cone volcano, Turrell is sculpting a naked-eye observatory with discrete viewing spaces and chamber through which the public will experience the light from celestial objects and events. Skystone Foundation plans to carry out educational activities by practical demonstration through the form of graduate and undergraduate field lab courses incorporating astronomy, art, psychology, design, geology, agriculture, and range management studies as well as published articles to the general public. Skystone
$22,651,801 spent
The program described on its FY2024 Form 990-PF.
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.
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 $59M to $86M (+46%).
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
Chris Leonard
Chairman
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990-PF.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 5 funders to 6 funders, grant income rose $360k → $2.0M.
11 of 24 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 Skystone Foundation Inc’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 23 of 24 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
Skystone Foundation Inc leans on a few funders — its largest provides 71% of grant income and the top three 88%; half comes from just 1 funder.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 1 funder to its left
88% 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 Skystone Foundation Inc.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 28% · 2018 56% · 2019 71% · 2020 96% · 2021 92% · 2022 81% · 2023 76% — 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
50% of Skystone Foundation Inc's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 25% 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
81% of Skystone Foundation Inc'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 $14M that is directly attributable, 100% of it comes from funders outside Arizona, across 7 states.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $59M 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.
Organizations like Skystone Foundation Inc
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 Arizona
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 Skystone Foundation Inc: 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 Skystone Foundation Inc?
- Skystone Foundation Inc (Arizona) receives grants from 24 organizations whose IRS filings report $72,678,250 to it, the largest being CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ($51,400,000). 6 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 Skystone Foundation Inc have?
- IRS filings report 24 organizations giving $72,678,250 in grants to Skystone Foundation Inc, 6 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of Skystone Foundation Inc?
- CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION is the largest funder on record, with $51,400,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like Skystone Foundation Inc find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Arizona. 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 24 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