NICK GRAY's Patron View

About Patron View

Nick Gray

Patron View is a fundraising research platform created by me, Nick Gray. I'm the founder of Museum Hack and author of the book The 2-Hour Cocktail Party. Connect with me on LinkedIn.

Museum Hack

For eight years, I led Museum Hack as Founder and CEO. We reimagined the museum experience for a new generation of audiences.

Museum Hack grew to over 60 employees giving tours at major museums across the US. Our work leading renegade museum tours caught the attention of major media—the New York Times featured us as "Museum Tours for People Who Don't Like Museums," Forbes wrote about how we were disrupting traditional museum models, The Washington Post covered our innovative approach, The Wall Street Journal featured our growth, and Bloomberg Businessweek highlighted how our "Renegade Museum Tours Lure Newbies, Bros, and the Easily Bored."

During my time at Museum Hack, we worked with dozens of museums globally, including the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery in DC, the Art Institute in Chicago, the Getty Museum in LA, and more. The company also did professional development, event production, and major consultations with nearly 100 institutions including the National Park Service, California Academy of Sciences, Corning Museum of Glass, and the Florida Museum of Natural History. I eventually sold the company in 2019.

Through this experience, I gained 10+ years of insight into analyzing cultural philanthropy and understanding the critical role donors play in sustaining our cultural institutions.

Why Patron View?

My eight years leading Museum Hack provided firsthand insight into how essential private donations are for cultural institutions. Working closely with development teams at dozens of museums, I witnessed the challenges they faced in identifying and cultivating new donors—especially younger generations.

This inspired me to create Patron View in June 2025. It was mentioned on the My First Million podcast by Shaan Puri and Sam Parr as an innovative approach to democratizing philanthropic data.

Now, I'm aggregating major donor data from New York City's premier museums and cultural institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, The Frick Collection, The Metropolitan Opera, The Morgan Library, Carnegie Hall, and more.

Patron View creates detailed patron profiles that showcase the great contributions that a wide variety of individuals make to support these organizations—making this previously scattered information accessible and actionable for the first time.

How It Works

Patron View compiles philanthropic donor data from major museums and cultural organizations. Right now I'm focused on organizations in New York City, with plans to expand to DC, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

My software transforms scattered donor information into explorable, comprehensive patron profiles that reveal the full scope of someone's giving across different institutions.

Who Benefits from Patron View

For the Public

Explore and celebrate the incredible generosity that sustains our cultural institutions. Browse patron profiles to discover the individuals and families whose contributions make world-class art and culture accessible to millions. See how philanthropy shapes institutions like The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA.

For Fundraising Professionals

Access comprehensive donor intelligence that was previously scattered across hundreds of documents. Patron View helps development and fundraising departments:

  • Identify emerging donors and their giving patterns across multiple institutions
  • Research prospective donors' philanthropic interests and capacity
  • Understand peer institutions' donor cultivation strategies
  • Discover connections between donors for more effective cultivation

Data Sources & Methodology

My database draws from annual reports, IRS Form 990 filings, institutional publications, and official documents—compiling donor information that has never before been aggregated in one searchable platform.

For detailed information about our data sources, verification process, and how to submit corrections, see the Where Our Philanthropic Data Comes From section on our Privacy Policy page.

Technology and Credits

This website was originally built as an MVP using Stetson's I'll Build Your MVP service. Today I have help from two colleagues at my family office, Mohamed and Alexis, in developing features and adding new data.

This website is mostly powered by Cloudflare services whenever possible to ensure fast, reliable access to data. Here are some of the tools we use:

  • Cloudflare D1 - Serverless database with low latency
  • Cloudflare Workers Pages - Edge hosting for global performance
  • Astro - For fast, server-side rendered pages
  • Google Gemini 2.5 Flash - for database categorization and cleaning
  • LandingAI's Agentic Document Extraction - pre-processing donor lists
  • Claude Code - AI pair programming

Contact Information

You can reach me personally at:

My mailing address is 1900 Barton Springs Road #1006, Austin TX 78704.

I welcome feedback and suggestions for improving Patron View. If you have ideas for new features, or if you want early access to search the database as a fundraiser, please email nick@patronview.com.