Florida · Nonprofit
The Society of the Four Arts Inc
The Society of the Four Arts Inc (Florida) receives grants from 356 organizations whose IRS filings report $37,209,344 to it, the largest being FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ($7,960,475). 249 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2025
- $118M
- Funders on record
- 356
- Grants received
- $37M
- Net assets
- $248M
What The Society of the Four Arts Inc does
Mission
To enrich, inspire and engage the Palm Beach County community, enhancing the quality of our lives through educational and cultural programs in art, music, drama, literature, historical and current affairs.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Programs
Artistic programming consists of art exhibitions, concerts, films, HD screenings from cultural partners, and lectures. Each season The Society of the Four Arts presents a full season of notable programs in music, drama, literature, and the visual arts. Concerts include programs by the world's leading musicians in diverse performances of classical, jazz, bluegrass, and more. Recent art exhibitions included Past Forward: Native American Art from Gilcrease Museum and Rory McEwen: A New Perspective on Nature. Each run included a lecture on the exhibition. The Four Arts curates a Friday Film Series and hosts screenings from the Metropolitan Opera in New York, National Theatre Live in London, and an Exhibition on Screen series. Attendance 21,534 over 83 programs.
$5,638,219 spent$575,257 earned by the program61% of program spendingBecause the Town of Palm Beach has no public libraries, the Society's two libraries - the King Library for adults and a separate, superbly equipped Children's Library, serve, in effect, as the town's "official" libraries. Both are open to the public at no charge (adults pay a small fee for borrowing privileges); both present a full season's schedule of events: story hours for children, plus celebrations of special events like National Fire Prevention week when Palm Beach's fire trucks and firefighters visit the children's library, author visits, book signings, poetry readings, lectures, book discussions, and other events for adults. Attendance 75,530 including 313 events.
$479,289 spent5% of program spendingEducation (Campus on the Lake) programming consists of field trips, lectures, master classes, seminars, and workshops dedicated to the living arts. These programs and events are presented in the new Four Arts Dixon Education Building. The presentations range widely in subject matter: ongoing classes on classical music, opera, literature, art, watercolor painting, sculpture, cooking, and flower arranging; one-time lectures on a wide variety of subjects. Designed to attract a broad audience, the Campus on the Lake has won wide praise for the variety and depth of its programs. Attendance 10,163 over 124 programs.
$1,721,006 spent$402,284 earned by the program19% of program spendingThe Four Arts gardens were founded in the 1930's, when many visitors and new residents were unfamiliar with the subtropical flora of south Florida. The gardens were designed to demonstrate the varieties of horticulture possible in the region. The horticultural display gardens feature nine separate sections ranging from a Chinese-style walled garden to a formal colonial garden to a Spanish garden against a mediterranean-revival facade and showcasing an antique Spanish well. The gardens are maintained by the Garden Club of Palm Beach.Immediately adjacent, the two-acre Philip Hulitar sculpture garden, which displays an encyclopedic collection of American and international sculpture and functions as a public park for Palm Beach, is a further showcase for subtropical horticulture. The gardens are open to the public year-round, free of charge. Attendance 56,450 while open for 342 days..
$1,443,531 spent$26,650 earned by the program16% of program spending
The 4 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $9,282,045.
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 2024 to 2025, from $148M to $251M (+70%).
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: 2018 4% · 2019 5% · 2020 4% · 2021 2% · 2022 3% · 2023 3% · 2024 2% · 2025 1%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
94% of The Society of the Four Arts Inc’s revenue is contributions — more reliant on donations than three-quarters of its peers (56% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 0 of the last 8 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
Dr Philips Rylands
President & CEO
Board chair
Dr Randolph H Guthrie
Chairman
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 70 funders to 191 funders, grant income rose $1.3M → $5.4M.
31 of 356 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 48% 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 Society of the Four Arts Inc’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 356 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 Society of the Four Arts Inc has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 21% of grant income, and it takes 11 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 11 funders to its left
49% 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 Society of the Four Arts Inc.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 11% · 2018 30% · 2019 22% · 2020 14% · 2021 20% · 2022 21% · 2023 10% — broadly stable.
“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
61% of The Society of the Four Arts Inc's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 70% 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 Society of the Four Arts Inc draws 53% of its grant income from funders outside Florida, across 27 states in all.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $18M arriving through sponsors registered in 16 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
The Society of the Four Arts Inc runs a healthier operating margin than three-quarters of the 43 arts & culture nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 43 arts & culture nonprofits over $100M, FY2025
Government funding The Society of the Four Arts Inc receives
Grants and contracts to this organization from federal (USASpending) and state checkbooks, reconciled to its EIN. $50 on record.
- REFUNDS - GENERAL $50
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 Society of the Four Arts 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 Florida
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
61% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
79%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 1 state
Part of a family of 2 related entities
- 2020 Seaview Properties LLC · disregarded
- Embassy Corporation · corp_trust
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for The Society of the Four Arts 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 The Society of the Four Arts Inc?
- The Society of the Four Arts Inc (Florida) receives grants from 356 organizations whose IRS filings report $37,209,344 to it, the largest being FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ($7,960,475). 249 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does The Society of the Four Arts Inc have?
- IRS filings report 356 organizations giving $37,209,344 in grants to The Society of the Four Arts Inc, 249 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of The Society of the Four Arts Inc?
- FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND is the largest funder on record, with $7,960,475 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like The Society of the Four Arts Inc find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Florida. 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 Society of the Four Arts →
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 356 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