· Public charity
Gulf of Mexico Alliance
The alliance's mission is to promote the protection, restoration, enhancement, understanding, awareness and wise use of the natural resources of the gulf of america through aligned and cooperative efforts involving research, planning, management, information and resource sharing and public education.
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.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $7k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $275k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $856k
- $250k+2 grants · $560k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE WATER INSTITUTE | $291,147 |
| MOREHOUSE SWCD | $269,333 |
| MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY | $201,504 |
| GULF STATES MARINE FISHERIES COMMISSION | $130,231 |
| MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF MARINE RESOURCES | $126,361 |
| HAMLINE UNIVERSITY | $124,939 |
| FLORIDA HOUSING COALITION | $122,691 |
| NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY INC | $98,775 |
| CNL WORLD | $51,130 |
| TEXAS A&M AGRILIFE RESEARCH | $44,036 |
| TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY - CORPUS CHRISTI | $40,303 |
| THE FLORIDA AQUARIUM INC | $30,507 |
| GALVESTON BAY FOUNDATION | $29,948 |
| INSTITUTE FOR DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT | $28,382 |
| UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI | $28,320 |
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 19%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 96% 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.
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 61% of Gulf of Mexico Alliance’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, 16% of the giving stays in MS; read by stated purpose it is 1% — 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.
49 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2024, 38 since wound down; 9 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, 53% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $795k 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 Miami3× · 2017–2019 · $5.2M · revenue +96%
The Rand Corporation3× · 2017–2019 · $3.8M · revenue +34%- TATHE ADMINISTRATORS OF THE TULANE EDUCATIONAL FUND3× · 2017–2019 · $3.6M · revenue +72%
Funded once
- ACARANSAS COUNTYone grant, 2019 · $45k
- BEBarataria-Terrebonne Estuary Foundationgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $41k · revenue +77%
- BHBACKCOUNTRY HUNTERS & ANGLERSone grant, 2023 · $40k · revenue -15%
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.
Coastal bend bays & estuaries program is dedicated to protecting and restoring bays and estuaries of the texas coastal bend. coastal bend bays and estuaries remain a vital part of the environmental and economic landscape by preserving and…
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…
The advancement of marine and environmental sciences through scientific research, education and public outreach, leading new discoveries, revitalization and sustainability of our oceans and greater public understanding of our marine…
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
The institutes mission is to cultivate a responsibility for the natural environment and our human communities through interdisciplinary science education.
Provide scientific support and tools for decision making and communication through collaborative efforts.
Provide scientific, environmental research and education for environmental conservation, preservation, restoration, recycling, and environmental planning
The mission of Ocean First Institute is ocean conservation through research and education. We work to deepen the natural connection between people and the ocean. We educate and empower people to understand the ocean is our life support…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Coastal Conservation Association and the most unlike its peers is Texas Sealife Center. 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 38 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
31 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. 31 of the 74 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 Miami ↗
- Who funds The Rand Corporation ↗
- Who funds THE ADMINISTRATORS OF THE TULANE EDUCATIONAL FUND ↗
- Who funds University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION FOR A NEW AMERICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MARINE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES CONSORTIUM ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE WATER INSTITUTE OF THE GULF ↗
- Who funds Nova Southeastern University Inc ↗
- Who funds Galveston Bay Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE HAMLINE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds FLORIDA HOUSING COALITION INC ↗
- Who funds PONTCHARTRAIN CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds NatureServe ↗
- Who funds Inwater Research Group Inc ↗
- Who funds SMART HOME AMERICA 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: National Fish and Wildlife Foundation · National Academy of Sciences · National Marine Sanctuary Foundation · The Administrators of the Tulane Educational Fund · National Collegiate Athletic Association · The Greater New Orleans Foundation · The Nature Conservancy · Foundation for Louisiana · University of Miami · Shell USA Company Foundation · Folds of Honor Foundation · Greater Houston Community 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 Gulf of Mexico Alliance 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- University of Miami — 5% of income from government
- Nova Southeastern University Inc — 2% of income from government
- The Florida Aquarium Inc — 0% 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 Gulf of Mexico Alliance?
Find your warmest path to Gulf of Mexico Alliance 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.