· Private foundation
Grits Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k6 grants · $30k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $75k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $265k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TEXAS CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $165,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD | $100,000 |
| TEACH FOR AMERICA | $15,000 |
| URBAN HARVEST | $10,000 |
| COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| COHEN BRAY HOUSE OAKLAND | $10,000 |
| NEUHAUS EDUCATION CENTER | $10,000 |
| THE RISE SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| MEDICAL BRIDGES | $10,000 |
| CASA DE ESPERANZA | $5,000 |
| ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF AMERICA | $5,000 |
| SPCA OF SOLANO COUNTY | $5,000 |
| HOUSTON ARBORETUM & NATURE CENTER | $5,000 |
| HOUSTON MUSEUM OF NATURAL SCIENCES | $5,000 |
| SMALL STEPS NURTURING CENTER | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 14%. 98% 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 +48% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
22 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- TCTexas Children's Hospital9× · 2017–2025 · $705k · revenue +78%
- UHUrban Harvest Inc9× · 2017–2025 · $95k · revenue +87%
- TWThe W Oscar Neuhaus Memorial Foundation9× · 2017–2025 · $90k · revenue +43%
Funded once
- KTKIPP TEXAS PUBLIC SCHOOLSone grant, 2023 · $5k
- HSHOUSTON SOCIETY OF AIAone grant, 2017 · $5k
WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INCone grant, 2024 · $5k · revenue 0%
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.
To enrich life through discovery, education, and the conservation of plants and the natural environment.
Plant, protect and promote trees all over the greater Houston area.
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…
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…
The Houston Local Information Initiative, Inc. provides public service journalism that reflects the civic needs of the diverse communities comprising Greater Houston.
The mission of the Houston Academy of Medicine is to support the community service, education, scientific, and charitable programs for physicians, their patients, and the community at large in Harris County.
Mission: Connect communities with animals, inspiring action to save wildlife. Vision: Be a leader in the global movement to save wildlife. (Continued on Schedule O) Houston Zoo, Inc. (HZI) strives to be a zoo that practices exemplary…
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 Houston Parks Board mission is to expand, improve, and protect parks and greenspace in the Houston region.
The Club's mission is to stimulate the knowledge and love of gardening and to protect the quality of the environment through programs and action in the fields of education, conservation, and civic improvement.
The mission of Breakthrough Houston (BTH) is to work with highly motivated students to achieve post-secondary success and empower aspiring leaders to become the next generation of educational advocates.
Hermann Park Conservancy is a citizens organization dedicated to the stewardship and improvement of Hermann Park - today and for generations to come.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Houston Arboretum & Nature Center and the most unlike its peers is Planned Parenthood. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
14 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. 14 of the 27 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 PLANNED PARENTHOOD ↗
- Who funds Texas Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds Urban Harvest Inc ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds The W Oscar Neuhaus Memorial Foundation ↗
- Who funds Medical Bridges Inc ↗
- Who funds ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds Small Steps Nurturing Center ↗
- Who funds Houston Arboretum & Nature Center ↗
- Who funds Houston Museum of Natural Science ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds SAVE BUFFALO BAYOU ↗
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 Tapeats Fund · Marek Family Foundation · Strake Foundation · Centerpoint Energy Foundation Inc · Greater Houston Community Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 Grits 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.
- Archaeological Institute of America — 1% 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 Grits Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Grits 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.