· Private foundation
Frankel Family 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 $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $105k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $325k
- $250k+2 grants · $500k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TEXAS MEDICAL CENTER | $250,000 |
| RICE UNIVERSITY | $250,000 |
| BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE | $150,000 |
| ST JOHN'S SCHOOL | $75,000 |
| MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY | $50,000 |
| HOOVER INSTITUTION AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY | $50,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON LAW FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| AMAZING PLACE | $25,000 |
| AMERICAN HERITAGE EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC | $10,000 |
| YES PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $10,000 |
| BEST FRIENDS ANIMAL SOCIETY | $10,000 |
| HILLSDALE COLLEGE | $10,000 |
| MENLO COLLEGE | $10,000 |
| ARMY WAR COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
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 (FY17–17, $15k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 15% of Frankel Family 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. Read by recipient address, 67% of the giving stays in TX; read by stated purpose it is 61% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +38% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
30 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 22 since wound down; 3 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, 36% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $525k 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
- SCSANTA CATALINA SCHOOL5× · 2018–2023 · $510k · revenue +38%
The Houston Food Bank7× · 2018–2024 · $480k · revenue +28%- BCBaylor College of Medicine6× · 2020–2025 · $460k · revenue +47%
Funded once
- TCTexas Children's Hospitalone grant, 2024 · $25k · revenue 0%
- MAMD ANDERSON CHILDREN'S CANCER HOSPITALone grant, 2024 · $25k
- HGHouston Grand Opera Association Incone grant, 2024 · $25k · revenue +14%
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.
Texas christian university is an institution of higher education which includes nine major academic units: liberal arts, science and engineering, business, education, fine arts, communication, honors, nursing and health sciences, and the…
See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.
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…
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
Trinity university is an independent co-educational university whose mission is excellence in the interrelated areas of teaching, research and services.
The mission of baylor university is to educate men and women for worldwide leadership and service by integrating academic excellence and christian commitment within a caring community.
The central mission of the university of southern california is the development of human beings and society as a whole through the cultivation and enrichment of the human mind and spirit. the principal means by which our mission is…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
South texas college of law houston provides a diverse body of students the opportunity to obtain an exceptional legal education, preparing graduates to serve their community and profession with distinction.
Memorial hermann health system is a nonprofit, values-driven, community-owned health system dedicated to improving health. our vision is to create healthier communities, now and for generations to come. our values are community,…
Memorial hermann health system is a nonprofit, values-driven, community-owned health system dedicated to improving health. our vision is to create healthier communities, now and for generations to come. our values are community,…
HMC seeks to educate engineers, scientists, and mathematicians well versed in all of these areas and in the humanities, social sciences and the arts so that they may assume leadership in their fields with a clear understanding of the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Methodist Hospital Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Breakthrough T1D. 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 55 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 26% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
37 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. 37 of the 52 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 SANTA CATALINA SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds Baylor College of Medicine ↗
- Who funds St John's School ↗
- Who funds Massachusetts Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds William Marsh Rice University ↗
- Who funds TEXAS MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds University of Houston Law Foundation ↗
- Who funds University of St Thomas ↗
- Who funds MONTAGE HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BEST FRIENDS ANIMAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds YES Prep Public Schools Inc ↗
- Who funds MENLO COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Houston Symphony Society ↗
- Who funds THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON ACHIEVEMENT PLACE ↗
- Who funds NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ARMY WAR COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ALLEY THEATRE ↗
- Who funds KIPP Inc dba Knowledge is Power Program Inc ↗
- Who funds CHRISTUS Foundation for HealthCare ↗
- Who funds CHILDBUILDERS ↗
- Who funds American Heritage Education Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Texas Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds Houston Grand Opera Association Inc ↗
- Who funds RIVER OAKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY SERVICE ↗
- Who funds The Spirit Golf Association ↗
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 · Mechia Foundation · Strake Foundation · Charity Guild of Catholic Women of Harris County Inc · Marek Family Foundation · Houston Jewish Community Foundation · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Shell USA Company Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · American Endowment Foundation · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn 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 Frankel Family 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.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
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 Frankel Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Frankel Family 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.