· Private foundation
Elma Dill Russell Spencer Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $21k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $250k
- $50k–250k16 grants · $1.8M
- $250k+6 grants · $2.9M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF THE INCARNATE WORD | $1,125,000 |
| TEXAS WILDLFE ASSOCIATION FOUNDATION | $500,000 |
| TRINITY UNIVERSITY | $375,000 |
| TEXAS FACILITIES FUND | $333,334 |
| SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY | $300,000 |
| HARMONY PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $250,000 |
| TEXAS AGRICULTURAL LAND TRUST | $230,000 |
| ST ANDREW'S UNITED METHODIST CHURCH | $180,000 |
| TEXAS CAVALIERS CHARITABLE FOUNDATION | $175,000 |
| CHOOSE TO SUCCEED | $175,000 |
| ST PETER THE APOSTLE CATHOLIC SCHOOL | $147,515 |
| NEW FRONTIERS PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $125,000 |
| HILL COUNTRY YOUTH RANCH | $100,000 |
| SAN ANTONIO ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY | $100,000 |
| CHILDREN'S ASSOCIATION FOR MAXIMUM POTENTIAL | $100,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $815k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 14%. 33% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 23% of Elma Dill Russell Spencer Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
32 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2024, 9 since wound down; 14 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, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.4M 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
- UOUniversity of the Incarnate Word6× · 2019–2024 · $6.7M · revenue +12%
- TATexas Agricultural Land Trust6× · 2019–2024 · $1.9M · revenue ×13
- TUTrinity University5× · 2020–2024 · $1.7M · revenue +62%
Funded once
- MOMEALS ON WHEELSone grant, 2021 · $250k · revenue +19%
- GIGIRLS INCone grant, 2021 · $100k
- E3EPHESIANS 3 FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $100k
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 mission of the Hill Country Alliance is to bring together a diverse coalition of partners to preserve the open spaces, starry night skies, clean and abundant waters, and unique character of the Texas Hill Country.
To enrich life through discovery, education, and the conservation of plants and the natural environment.
The texas tribune promotes civic engagement and public education across the state by producing and sharing for free public data interactives, statewide events and intensive and daily reporting on texas public policy, politics and current…
The Coastal Prairie Conservancy (CPC) works to sustain a resilient Texas by preserving coastal prairies, wetlands, farms, and ranches to benefit people and wildlife forever. Continued on Schedule OCPC conserves land, restores and enhances…
To facilitate research and development within the texas a&m university system and selected other entities.
The mission of texas trees foundation is to improve the health of cities and people through the transformative power of trees.
To generate superior long-term investment returns to support The University of Texas and Texas A&M University systems as they provide world-class teaching, push the boundaries of discovery, and achieve excellence in patient healthcare for…
Partner with families to provide students a christ-centered education while fostering a life of faith and service. the school desires to associate with like-minded teachers, administrators, staff, parents, and students to communicate the…
The mission of Bexar Land Trust (Green Spaces) is to sustain the natural environment and enhance urban spaces through land conservation, community engagement, and education.
To support texas land trusts and promote land conservation efforts in texas. host texas land conservation conference to educate conservation related professionals and volunteers from across the state.
The mission of Southwest Winners Foundation is to provide an adaptive and effective learning environment that prepares students for success in the workplace and/or college.
As the state chamber of commerce, tab is the most influential and dominant voice for public policy issues affecting business in texas. through proven results-oriented advocacy and member services, tab develops a climate in texas which…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Choose to Succeed Inc and the most unlike its peers is Meals On Wheels. 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 35 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
35 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. 35 of the 69 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 University of the Incarnate Word ↗
- Who funds Texas Agricultural Land Trust ↗
- Who funds Trinity University ↗
- Who funds CHOOSE TO SUCCEED INC ↗
- Who funds IDEA Public Schools ↗
- Who funds HILL COUNTRY YOUTH RANCH ↗
- Who funds THE CHARITY BALL ASSOCIATION OF SAN ANTONIO INC ↗
- Who funds TEXAS BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF CIBOLO WILDERNESS ↗
- Who funds RIVERWALK EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HARMONY PUBLIC SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS ↗
- Who funds NEW FRONTIERS PUBLIC SCHOOLS INC ↗
- Who funds SAN ANTONIO ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE TEXAS CAVALIERS CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAN ANTONIO RIVER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds City Kids Adventures ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S ASSOC FOR MAXIMUM POTENTIAL ( ↗
- Who funds Bobwhite Brigade ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds SUNSHINE COTTAGE SCHOOL FOR DEAF CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds Haven for Hope of Bexar County ↗
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: San Antonio Area Foundation · The Ewing Halsell Foundation · Mays Family Foundation · Betty Stieren Kelso Foundation · Faye L & William L Cowden Charitable Foundation · Fb Doane Foundation · The Jeanie Wyatt Family Foundation · The Nancy Wood Moorman Foundation · Charitable Foundation Frost F0359600 · Marcia & Otto Koehler Foundation · Pryor Myra Stafford Char Tr F0030100 · Elizabeth Huth Coates Charitable Foundation of 1992
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 Elma Dill Russell Spencer 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
How do I get to Elma Dill Russell Spencer Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Elma Dill Russell Spencer 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.