National Film Preservation Foundation
San Francisco, CA · EIN 52-2055624. Reported 100 grants totalling $3,208,806 to 58 organizations across tax years 2021-2024, on Form 990 Schedule I.
Does this grantmaker accept applications?
Its tax return does not say, and we will not guess. Private foundations file Form 990-PF, which asks outright whether they fund only organizations they select themselves -- 78% say yes, and that one answer is what lets the rest of this site tell you which foundations are worth approaching. Grantmaking charities like this one file a regular Form 990 instead, and the IRS never puts the question to them. Anyone claiming to know the answer from the filing is inventing it.
Three things in the filing do bear on it:
- What kind of organization it is. For National Film Preservation Foundation, the IRS classifies it under arts & culture rather than as a grantmaker (NTEE A31) -- it is an operating charity that also makes grants.
- How spread out its giving is. 58 distinct organizations, with 26% of the dollars going to the largest single recipient. That is genuinely spread out -- the mark of a funder making many independent decisions rather than underwriting one institution.
- How much its list changes. 48% of one year's grantees are funded again the next, across 2 year-to-year transitions. That is below the 57% median for grantmaking charities, and well below the 67% private foundations manage. A list that turns over this much is one a newcomer can realistically join.
How big are its grants?
The median reported grant is $18,660. Half of what it reported fell between $11,720 and $20,860; the smallest was $5,750 and the largest $821,916. If you are asking for materially more than the top of that range, you are asking the wrong organization.
Every organization it funded
This is the complete list from its filings, largest first. Recipients are grouped by the EIN the filer reported, not by name, so an organization that was typed differently in two years appears once rather than twice.
| Organization | Location | Total received | Grants | Years funded | Last |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| See Schedule I | See Schedule I, NY | $821,916 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| George Eastman Museum | Rochester, NY | $322,410 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Smithsonian Institute | Washington, DC | $228,120 | 10 | 3 | 2024 |
| Regents Univ of California | Los Angeles, CA | $184,440 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Friends of the Knox County Public Library | Knoxville, TN | $112,400 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Chicago Film Society | Chicago, IL | $107,030 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Silent Film Festival | San Francisco, CA | $80,090 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Chicago Film Archives Nfp | Chicago, IL | $68,000 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Pan Am Historical Foundation Inc | Walnut Creek, CA | $67,270 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Appalshop Inc | Jenkins, KY | $62,120 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Yale University | New Haven, CT | $55,800 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Paso Del Norte Community Foundation | El Paso, TX | $54,630 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Alaska Moving Images Preservation Association | Anchorage, AK | $53,800 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Univ of South Carolina | Columbia, SC | $51,400 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| New York University | New York, NY | $47,190 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| National Gallery of Art | Landover, MD | $45,700 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Association of Moving Image Archivists | Los Angeles, CA | $43,600 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Pittsburgh Sound and Image | Pittsburgh, PA | $42,410 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Camera News Inc D B a Third World Newsreel | New York, NY | $42,040 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Regents of the University of California at Berkeley | Riverside, CA | $40,860 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| The New York Public Library Astor Lenox and Tilden Foundations | New York, NY | $40,000 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Inc | New York, NY | $38,520 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| University of California Santa Barbara | Santa Barbara, CA | $37,450 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation Inc | Wilmington, DE | $37,280 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Cranbrook Educational Community | Bloomfld Hls, MI | $36,380 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Rtpi of Natural History | Jamestown, NY | $32,450 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Atlanta Historical Society Inc | Atlanta, GA | $29,630 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Walker Art Center Inc | Minneapolis, MN | $20,930 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Documentary Educational Resources Inc | Watertown, MA | $20,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Frameline Inc | San Francisco, CA | $20,000 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Moore College of Art and Design | Philadelphia, PA | $20,000 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Visual Communications Media | Los Angeles, CA | $20,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Phoenix Arts Alliance Inc | Butte, MT | $19,660 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| National Geographic Society | Washington, DC | $19,450 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Huna Heritage Foundation Inc | Juneau, AK | $19,100 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| The Ted Stevens Foundation | Anchorage, AK | $18,930 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Hartford Public Library | Hartford, CT | $18,830 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Canyon Cinema Foundation | San Francisco, CA | $18,370 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| The Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago | Chicago, IL | $18,270 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Onondaga Historical Association | Syracuse, NY | $17,870 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | Chapel Hill, NC | $13,950 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Bruce Museum Inc | Greenwich, CT | $13,350 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Delaware County Historical Association | Delhi, NY | $12,710 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Foundation of the State University of New York at Binghamton Inc | Binghamton, NY | $12,340 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Electronic Arts Intermix Inc | New York, NY | $11,380 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| American Museum of Natural History | New York, NY | $10,960 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Wildlife Conservation Society | Bronx, NY | $10,250 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Friends of American Song Archives Inc | Tulsa, OK | $10,140 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Madera County Library | Madera, CA | $9,710 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Washington University | St Louis, MO | $9,200 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| North Carolina State Universi | Raleigh, NC | $9,070 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Delaware Valley University | Doylestown, PA | $8,710 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Association for Recorded Sound Collections Inc | Annapolis, MD | $8,000 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Aircraft Carrier Hornet Foundation | Alameda, CA | $7,720 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Southern Oregon Historical Society | Medford, OR | $6,990 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| The Ohio State University | Columbus, OH | $6,920 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Bob Mizer Foundation | San Francisco, CA | $6,610 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Rhode Island School of Design | Providence, RI | $6,450 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
22 of 58 (38%) received money in more than one year over the 4 years we hold. Remember the $5,000 floor: an organization funded every year at $3,000 shows up here as never funded at all.
What kind of organizations it funds
By each recipient's own IRS classification, for the 46 of 58 recipients we could match to a registered organization. These are assigned categories, not our guesses -- Schedule I reports the recipient's EIN, so this is a lookup rather than a name match.
Giving by year
| Tax year | Grants reported | Total | Median grant |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 1 | $821,916 | $821,916 |
| 2022 | 33 | $648,450 | $14,820 |
| 2023 | 33 | $1,053,230 | $19,290 |
| 2024 | 33 | $685,210 | $18,270 |
Tax years, not calendar years, and the most recent year is usually incomplete -- Form 990 arrives about a year after the year it covers, so a low final year means late paperwork rather than a grantmaker winding down.
Where its money goes
44% of its giving went to organizations in New York. Community foundations and federated funds are usually the most geographically bounded funders there are -- being outside the footprint is normally disqualifying in a way that a weak programme fit is not.
Down to the city
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Funders that support the same organizations
These grantmakers and private foundations gave to organizations this one also funded. Shared grantees are the strongest signal available that two funders have overlapping priorities -- and a funder already backing your peers is a far warmer prospect than one that merely lists your cause.
How to approach this grantmaker
- Look for a published programme first. Unlike most private foundations, organizations of this kind often do run open, deadlined grant cycles with written guidelines. Its own website is the authority on that; this page is the authority on who it has actually paid.
- Check you are its size. The median reported grant is $18,660 -- and because grants under $5,000 need not be reported, it very likely writes smaller cheques than this page can see.
- Check you are in its geography. Its giving concentrates in New York.
- Read the recipient list for organizations like yours. If nothing on it resembles your work, that is a real answer and a cheap one to get.
Related guides
Where these numbers come from
Everything above is taken from National Film Preservation Foundation's own Form 990 Schedule I filings, which the IRS publishes in bulk. We used 4 returns (tax years 2021-2024). Nothing here is scraped, inferred or estimated.
On its most recent return it told the IRS it made grants to 27 section 501(c)(3) organizations and 6 other organizations. That is the filer's own count for one year; the totals above cover every year we hold.
Address of record on the latest return: 145 9TH Street 260, San Francisco, CA, 94103.
EIN 52-2055624 · See the original filings on ProPublica · How we build this
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