Washington, D.C. · Nonprofit
THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS
THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS (Washington, D.C.) receives grants from 241 organizations whose IRS filings report $26,910,664 to it, the largest being REVADA FOUNDATION ($6,076,625). 139 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2025
- $13M
- Funders on record
- 241
- Grants received
- $27M
- Net assets
- $161M
What The National Museum of Women in the Arts does
Mission
The mission of The National Museum of Women in the Arts is to collect, conserve and elevate the achievements of women artists from all nationalities and to educate the public on their outstanding accomplishments. We strive to accomplish our mission by national and international outreach programs dedicated to provide an opportunity for all to join us in the recognition of women artists, motivate children and adults alike in the pursuit of a deeper understanding of the obstacles and accomplishments of women artists. With the museum's outstanding educational programs, in-house library, magazine, member benefits and exceptional exhibitions, we are able to promote and educate the public on the accomplishments of women artists and allow for the growth and future opportunity for aspiring women artists so that they too may realize their dreams.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Programs
Exhibits:year at a glance: - we opened six special exhibitions that featured more than sixty artists in total. "rich psychological terrain" during the recent year, nmwa presented exhibitions high-lighting women and nonbinary artists who, through their work, boldly redress history and visualize new futures. As the year began, new worlds: women to watch 2024 featured multidisciplinary works by twenty-eight contemporary artists responding to pressing social, political, and environmental issues. A collaboration between the museum and its national and international outreach committees, this edition of women to watch - the seventh and largest - showcased artists' brave visions as well as nmwa's unique, widespread network of supporters who share in the mission. Suchitra mattai: myth from matter, the artist's first major museum exhibition on the east coast, presented forty mixed-media works and large-scale textile installations. Combining innovative techniques with vintage and antique found materials such as saris, tapestries, jewelry, and needlepoints, mattai uses memory and visual culture to counter colonial and patriarchal narratives. Her works reimagine the past to center the…
$3,366,451 spent$268,310 earned by the program32% of program spendingCuratorial, library, and publications:year at a glance: programs from the betty boyd dettre library and research center (lrc) connected participants to the library's resources in inspiring ways. Continuing a longstanding partnership with wikimedia dc, the lrc hosted two wikipedia edit-a-thons. A poetry workshop in partnership with the local chapter of black girls in art spaces and black girls writers room invited participants to explore the lrc's archives and books. Throughout fy25, more than 5,600 visitors browsed the lrc collections, which comprise 25,000 books and print resources. Twenty-nine people booked research visits, and the lrc fulfilled 720 reference requests, 25% of which were in-depth research inquiries. The collection grew with more than 200 new acquisitions, including books, artists' books, zines, and other art publications.
$3,245,183 spent$1,306 earned by the program30% of program spendingOutreach:year at a glance: online, in action - connecting hundreds of thousands of people with resources on women in the arts, nmwa's website amplifies the museum's collection, exhibitions, and advocacy work. In fy25, the website debuted two major updates: - more than one hundred personal letters to and from frida kahlo, part of nmwa's archival nelleke nix and marianne huber collection: the frida kahlo papers, 1930-1954, were digitized. This feature includes high-resolution scans of the original correspondence alongside full transcriptions. - the refreshed calendar page enables visitors to explore upcoming offerings via new category tags and weekly event highlights. Meanwhile, website traffic grew, as did the museum's reach through social media and online programming. In the recent year: - nmwa.org received 1.3 million visits from nearly 900,000 users. - may 2025 marked the fifth anniversary of nmwa's art chats, its pioneering and popular virtual series. - across instagram, facebook, x, and tiktok, nmwa posts reached 9.1 million people. - videos on all of the museum's social media accounts were viewed more than 2.5 million times. - nmwa youtube videos received more than 47,000…
$2,623,580 spent$251,640 earned by the program25% of program spendingEducation & public programs:year at a glance: - more than 6,000 people attended thirty public programs featuring fifty artists and cultural innovators. - 237 teachers from seventeen states, washington, d.c., and five countries participated in the fifth annual virtual educator summer camp and the on-site art, books, and creativity teacher institute. Where art meets audience after a visit in march, a girl scout troop leader wrote, "we had a fabulous time exploring the art and such interesting discussions about why there aren't more women artists represented in art museums. Thank you again for a fantastic morning!" thousands of nmwa visitors had similar experiences: positive, creative, and thought-provoking. Visitors of all ages enjoyed tours, talks, and art-making opportunities during nmwa's popular, twice-monthly free community days: - more than 13,000 people attended the museum's free community days. - sunday free community days engaged an average of 828 attendees per day. - the busiest free community days occurred during women's history month: 512 people visited on wednesday, march 12, and 1,124 on sunday, march 1. In the susan swartz studio, the open studio series engaged free…
$1,420,488 spent$121,161 earned by the program13% of program spending
The 4 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $10,655,702.
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 $144M to $172M (+20%).
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 1% · 2018 2% · 2019 2% · 2020 3% · 2021 9% · 2022 3% · 2023 7% · 2024 12% · 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. 1 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.
Chief executive
Susan Fisher Sterling
Executive director (alice west dir.)
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 53 funders to 104 funders, grant income rose $564k → $8.5M.
32 of 241 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 40% 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 THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 241 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
THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 23% of grant income, and it takes 5 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 5 funders to its left
41% 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 THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 18% · 2018 57% · 2019 50% · 2020 24% · 2021 30% · 2022 22% · 2023 47% — 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
47% of THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 58% 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
THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS draws 96% of its grant income from funders outside Washington, D.C., across 36 states in all.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $11M arriving through sponsors registered in 21 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.
Government funding THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS receives
Grants and contracts to this organization from federal (USASpending) and state checkbooks, reconciled to its EIN. $1.0M on record.
- Institute of Museum and Library Services$790k
- National Endowment for the Arts$115k
- National Endowment for the Humanities$100k
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 THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS
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 Washington, D.C.
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
63% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
60%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 28 states
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS: 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 THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS?
- THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS (Washington, D.C.) receives grants from 241 organizations whose IRS filings report $26,910,664 to it, the largest being REVADA FOUNDATION ($6,076,625). 139 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS have?
- IRS filings report 241 organizations giving $26,910,664 in grants to THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS, 139 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS?
- REVADA FOUNDATION is the largest funder on record, with $6,076,625 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Washington, D.C.. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
Play a game about who funds National Museum of Women in the Arts →
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 241 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