Foundations that fund Humanities in California
250 grantmakers on record have funded humanities work in California, according to the IRS filings they submit themselves. Here is what those filings say about how they give.
| Grantmakers on record | 250 |
|---|---|
| Accept unsolicited applications | 58 |
| Typical grant range | $3,000 to $20,000 |
| Median grant | $10,000 |
| Grants recorded | 76,435 |
| Combined giving on file | $9.6 billion |
| Most recent filing year | 2025 |
What this tells you
23% state that they accept unsolicited applications, close to the 26% typical of this data.
The money is concentrated: the average grant across all 76,435 payments is far larger than the $10,000 the typical funder gives, which means a small number of very large grants dominate the total. Most organizations here are competing for the $3,000 to $20,000 band, not the headline figure.
How to read these numbers
The typical grant range is the middle half of what these funders give: a quarter give less than $3,000 on average and a quarter give more than $20,000. It is drawn from 250 funders who itemized their grants, so it describes what they actually paid rather than what they say they will consider.
Which of them would fund your work?
That is the part this page cannot answer. Praenum reads your organization's mission and ranks the grantmakers whose own filings show they fund work like yours, then emails you a short list every Tuesday. It also reads your own IRS filing, so it knows which foundations have already funded you.
See how it works