· Public charity
Creative Waco
CREATIVE WACO's mission is to grow and support a thriving cultural and creative community in waco and mclennan county, texas.
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.
The 11 grants below total $232,000 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $294,606 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $62,606 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $8k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $224k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WACO SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION INC | $48,000 |
| WACO CULTURAL ARTS FEST | $41,500 |
| WACO CIVIC THEATRE | $41,500 |
| WACO CREATIVE ART CENTER | $33,000 |
| HEART OF TEXAS FILM SOCIETY | $10,000 |
| JACOB DECORDOVA SOCIETY | $10,000 |
| SILENT HOUSE THEATRE CO | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| HOT CHILDREN'S THEATRE | $10,000 |
| GB LINDSEY FAMILY CHARITABLE FUND | $10,000 |
| EMPOWERMENT DRIVEN BY KNOWLEDGE | $8,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 15%. 100% of your 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.
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 +66% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
13 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2024, 7 since wound down; 5 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, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $48k 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
- WCWACO CIVIC THEATRE8× · 2017–2024 · $319k · revenue +91%
- WCWACO CREATIVE ART CENTER8× · 2017–2024 · $302k · revenue ×20
WACO SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION INC8× · 2017–2024 · $301k · revenue +66%
Funded once
- C7CULTIVATE 7TWELVEone grant, 2021 · $25k
- TSTRINITY SPORTS ORGANIZATIONone grant, 2023 · $15k · revenue +286%
- PAPROFESSIONAL ARTISTS OF CENTRAL TEXASone grant, 2019 · $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.
Mission to promotote hispanic and latino culture through art and film from both local and international artists
Festival on the brazos is a non-profit volunteer organization that promotes the unique spirit of waco by sharing waco's history, providing educational scholarships, and creating community-minded connections.
Provide fine arts opportunities scholarships to students
Provide a low cost theatre options for the community of washington
Booster club for public high school theater program
Paris Community Theatre is dedicated to producing high-quality entertainment that engages, inspires, educates, and transforms. Through the arts, we provide cultural enrichment, creative development, and opportunities for self-discovery. We…
Creative waco's mission is to grow and support a thriving cultural and creative community in waco and mclennan county, texas.
The Festival of Texas Fiddling is dedicated to the preservation, presentation, and performance, and education about of all styles of fiddling and fiddle-associated music played historically and currently in the State of Texas.
To promote tourism awareness in the city of denison, texas.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Waco Civic Theatre and the most unlike its peers is Phi Iota Alpha Fraternity Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
11 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. 11 of the 31 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 WACO CIVIC THEATRE ↗
- Who funds WACO CREATIVE ART CENTER ↗
- Who funds WACO SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds Waco Cultural Arts Fest ↗
- Who funds HEART OF TEXAS FILM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds GB LINDSEY FAMILY CHARITABLE FUND ↗
- Who funds WILD IMAGININGS ↗
- Who funds TRINITY SPORTS ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds CEN-TEX HISPANIC CHAMBER OF COMM ↗
- Who funds HEART OF TEXAS CHILDRENS THEATRE ↗
- Who funds PHI IOTA ALPHA FRATERNITY INC ↗
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: Waco Foundation · Cooper Foundation · The Fentress Foundation · Bernard & Audre Rapoport Foundation · Amazonsmile Foundation
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 Creative Waco 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.