· Private foundation
Alvin & Lucy Owsley Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k31 grants · $89k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $169k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $323k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HOUSTON BALLET | $99,890 |
| STAGES | $87,627 |
| CONTEMPORARY ARTS MUSEUM HOUSTON | $75,000 |
| ST JOHN'S SCHOOL | $60,500 |
| GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY | $40,000 |
| HOUSTON CINEMA ARTS SOCIETY | $26,000 |
| CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL | $21,650 |
| PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY | $17,500 |
| LELAND TOWNSHIP PUBLIC LIBRARY | $12,500 |
| FRIENDS OF RIVER OAKS THEATRE | $11,000 |
| MD ANDERSON | $10,150 |
| BUFFALO BAYOU PARTNERSHIP | $10,000 |
| HERMANN PARK CONSERVANCY | $10,000 |
| HOUSTON METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| TEXAS CULTURAL TRUST | $9,000 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Your human-services grants (FY22–24, $3k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 73% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
Which US states your grants reach
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +27% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
54 repeat relationships — 29 still active in FY2024, 25 since wound down; 16 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $54k went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- DMDallas Museum of Art7× · 2017–2023 · $1.1M · revenue +396%
- SStages8× · 2017–2024 · $408k · revenue +8%
- SJSt John's School8× · 2017–2024 · $352k · revenue +130%
Funded once
- HMHOUSTON METHODISTone grant, 2019 · $22k
- EBELITE BAHAMIAN EDUCATION PROGRAMone grant, 2019 · $19k
- ECENTOUCH COUNSELING CENTERone grant, 2018 · $10k
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
The Heritage Society (THS) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1954 whose mission is to tell the stories of the diverse history of Houston and Texas through collections, exhibits, the arts, educational programs, film, video, and other…
The Houston Local Information Initiative, Inc. provides public service journalism that reflects the civic needs of the diverse communities comprising Greater Houston.
The Health Museum is an innovative science center that provides an interactive and entertaining experience for all ages, promotes understanding and appreciation of the human body, mind, and spirit, and inspires a lifelong commitment to…
To advance the conservation of birds and their habitats in the Greater Houston Gulf Coast region by acquiring and maintaining critical habitat as bird sanctuaries, providing education programs and nature experiences, and advocating policy…
To completely restore Houston Freedmen's Town as a heritage district that provides America with its only Freedmen's Town.
American Leadership Forum (ALF) brings together, in classes, leaders with diverse perspectives so they can build relationships, learn to dialogue and respectfully differ, and work together for the good of our community.
Our mission is to be the leading advocate for our member physicians, their patients and our community, in promoting the highest standards of ethical medical practice, access to quality medical care, medical education, research, and…
The HISD Foundation is dedicated to mobilizing the local community to support innovative priorities in HISD to improve outcomes for all students in the district. Our mission is to fund projects and programs of merit that fall outside of…
The Houston Parks Board Foundation provides the Houston Parks Board with financial assistance to support operations and park projects.
Houston MediaSource aspires to be the community media center for the City of Houston. HMS provides public access to media platforms that promote citizen engagement, protect the right to free expression, and provide opportunities to advance…
The mission of HGO is to enrich our diverse community through the art of opera. We will do so by creating, curating, exploring, and producing outstanding experiences centered around the human voice.(Continued on Schedule O)
The Houston Bar Foundation supports programs that help provide legal representation to the indigent, promote community understanding of our legal system, and foster the administration of justice.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Methodist Hospital Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Wild and Free Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 39 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 29% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 18% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
73 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 73 of the 122 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds Dallas Museum of Art ↗
- Who funds Stages ↗
- Who funds St John's School ↗
- Who funds Contemporary Arts Museum Houston ↗
- Who funds Camp Allen Camp & Conference Center ↗
- Who funds GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON CINEMA ARTS SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Menil Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds The Orange Show Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE BEACON OF DOWNTOWN HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds River Oaks Chamber Orchestra ↗
- Who funds Garden Club of Houston ↗
- Who funds Hermann Park Conservancy ↗
- Who funds Buffalo Bayou Partnership Inc ↗
- Who funds Texas Cultural Trust Council ↗
- Who funds Crime Stoppers of Houston Inc ↗
- Who funds Houston Hospice ↗
- Who funds Galveston Bay Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Breakthrough Houston ↗
- Who funds Friends of River Oaks Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds Houston Botanic Garden ↗
- Who funds Houston Arboretum & Nature Center ↗
- Who funds YOUNG LIFE ↗
- Who funds GLENWOOD CEMETERY HISTORIC PRESERVATION FOUNDATION ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: The Brown Foundation Inc · Greater Houston Community Foundation · Houston Endowment Inc · The Elkins Foundation · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · Vivian L Smith Foundation · Strake Foundation · The Powell Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · Hobby Family Foundation · John P McGovern Foundation · The Methodist Hospital
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization Alvin & Lucy Owsley Foundation funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
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Find your warmest path to Alvin & Lucy Owsley Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.