Culture — what people teach (education), make or perform (the arts, including crafts) for others, to enhance quality of life — is divided into education and the arts; education is either formal (schools, colleges, universities, etc.) or informal (e.g., museums, historical societies, etc.). The arts is divided into performing (e.g., music, dance, drama, etc.), and material (literary, visual, and crafts). Classifying various associated activities invites fine distinctions: movies involve performing and a material product; opera involves all performing arts; after-school programs focusing on academic subjects to help students get better grades would be formal education; those that focus on other subjects and purposes would be classified as informal (or non-formal). Arts education programs aiming to produce art, artists, or liberally educated human beings, are in Culture; those that teach arts for social purposes are listed in Human Services. Many small arts organizations are not incorporated or designated as public charities, so they cannot be included here.

In 2003-4, Massachusetts had 908 small and mid-sized cultural charities — roughly 35.2% of all such charities, with total income of $475.3 million, or 29% of the whole. Here are some examples of sub-categorization:

Subfield     # (%) of Orgs        Income (% of Cat.)

Arts       383 (42%)               $154M (33%)
  Performing 229 (25%) of Culture    $93.8M (20%)
    Music       93 (42%) of Performing  $39.4M (42%)
    Dance       40 (18%) of Performing  $ 8.1M  (9%)
    Theatre     66 (29%) of Performing  $27.3M (29%)
Education  522 (58%)               $320M (68%)
  Formal     137 (15%) of Culture     $102M (22%)
  Informal   385 (43%) of Culture     $218M (46%)

The numbers of cultural charities followed a growth trajectory similar to other fields, with growth spurts in the 1970s and 1990s: by 1949 there were 54; 32 more in the ’50s, 48 in the ’60s; then 166 in the ’70s, with the creation of the National Endowments and a major program by the Ford Foundation to promote arts at the local level; 199 in the ’80s, 288 in the prosperous ’90s, and 113 in the first four years of the ’00s.

These numbers, incomplete as they are, tell many tales. Each of the subfields can be further analyzed for divisions of wealth, geographic distribution of services, ages of charities, etc., to assist donors in identifying where they would most like to invest.