· Private foundation
Elva Johnston Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k21 grants · $63k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TRINITY HOPE | $10,000 |
| THE STORY CHURCH | $7,000 |
| BLOOM AGAIN HOUSTON | $6,000 |
| RIVER OAKS GARDEN CLUB | $5,000 |
| SAN ANTONIO AREA FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| LAMAR HIGH SCHOOL PTA | $5,000 |
| CHILDRENS HOSPITAL PHILADELPHIA | $5,000 |
| THE RISE SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000 |
| CHILD ADVOCATES | $2,500 |
| BOS PLACE | $2,000 |
| CANCARE INC | $2,000 |
| YELLOWSTONE SCHOOLS | $2,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN | $2,000 |
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 (FY17–22, $8k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 14%. 100% 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.
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.
43 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2025, 27 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 60% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $29k 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
- TMTHE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON7× · 2017–2024 · $25k · revenue +96%
CANCARE INC9× · 2017–2025 · $23k · revenue +41%- RORiver Oaks Garden Club7× · 2017–2025 · $23k · revenue +30%
Funded once
- CHCHILDRENS HOSP PHILADELPHIA FNDNone grant, 2024 · $5k
- CHCHILDRENS HSP PHILA FNDNone grant, 2023 · $5k
- THTRINITY HOPEone grant, 2024 · $5k
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.
Plant, protect and promote trees all over the greater Houston area.
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 mission of the Houston Museum of Natural Science shall be to preserve and advance the general knowledge of natural science; to enhance in individuals the knowledge of and delight in natural science and related subjects; and to maintain…
Christian pre-school from age 3-months to school-age, and school from
The Houston Local Information Initiative, Inc. provides public service journalism that reflects the civic needs of the diverse communities comprising Greater Houston.
The Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Houston's mission is to inspire and enable all youth, especially those who need us most, to realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens.
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.
Rebuilding Together Houston is the only organization in Houston and Harris County providing free home repairs to hundreds of families each year. We employ licensed contractors to restore homes to safe, livable conditions, extending each…
MADE Houston was formed to create a school community focused on nurturing and developing the unique academic and social needs of students with learning differences and to successfully transition students into mainstream schools.
Seeking to put God's love into action, Houston Habitat for Humanity brings people together to build homes, communities and hope to provide a world where everyone has a decent place to live.
As the Houston affiliate of the National Christian Foundation (NCF), our mission is to serve and encourage givers to grow as faithful stewards who give wisely to further the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Family, School, and Church united in the education and support of each child - this is the founding premise upon which Presbyterian School nurtures and challenges its students. The school provides an educational program of the highest…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Texas Children's Hospital and the most unlike its peers is The Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 31 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 30% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 10% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 19% 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.
28 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. 28 of the 65 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 Houston Botanic Garden ↗
- Who funds THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds CANCARE INC ↗
- Who funds River Oaks Garden Club ↗
- Who funds BOOKS BETWEEN KIDS INC ↗
- Who funds Lanier Middle School PTO ↗
- Who funds YELLOWSTONE ACADEMY INC DBA YELLOWSTONE SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds Houston Hospice ↗
- Who funds Bo's Place ↗
- Who funds TEXAS EDUCATION WORKS ↗
- Who funds TRINITY HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds CHILD ADVOCATES INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF HOUSTON INC ↗
- Who funds Urban Harvest Inc ↗
- Who funds RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES GREATER HOUSTON INC ↗
- Who funds LAMAR HIGH SCHOOL PTO ↗
- Who funds TREES OF HOPE ↗
- Who funds BLOOMAGAIN HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds Buffalo Bayou Partnership Inc ↗
- Who funds LOCAL INFANT FORMULA FOR EMERGENCIES ↗
- Who funds Texas Children's Hospital ↗
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: Greater Houston Community Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · ESB3 Foundation · Sterling-Turner Foundation · Vivian L Smith Foundation · The Elkins Foundation · Harry S & Isabel C Cameron Foundation Sentinel Trust Company · Strake Foundation · The Zions Bancorporation Foundation · The Brown Foundation Inc · Centerpoint Energy Foundation Inc
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 Elva Johnston 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 Elva Johnston Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Elva Johnston 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.