· Private foundation
Harriet & Joe Foster Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 61% of Harriet & Joe Foster Foundation’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k7 grants · $38k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $180k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Harriet & Joe Foster Family YMCA | $40,000 |
| Houston Food Bank | $20,000 |
| Texas A&M | $20,000 |
| University of St Thomas | $20,000 |
| The Hobby Center | $15,000 |
| Center for Pursuit | $15,000 |
| Houston Hospice | $10,000 |
| Down Syndrome Association of Houston | $10,000 |
| San Jose Clinic | $10,000 |
| Christus Healthcare Foundation | $10,000 |
| Catholic Charities Archdiocese Galveston | $10,000 |
| Cristo Rey Jesuit College | $6,500 |
| Trees for Houston | $6,000 |
| Reach Unlimited | $5,000 |
| The Women's Fund | $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 (FY17–25, $131k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +22% since the first grant, against +5% for the ones you funded once.
27 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 16 since wound down; 7 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, 45% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $120k 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
- TATexas A&M Foundation3× · 2017–2019 · $103k · revenue +90%
The Houston Food Bank9× · 2017–2025 · $98k · revenue +107%- CFCHRISTUS Foundation for HealthCare3× · 2017–2019 · $65k · revenue +46%
Funded once
RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES GREATER HOUSTON INCone grant, 2017 · $25k · revenue -25%
United Way of Greater Houstonone grant, 2017 · $15k · revenue +5%- TVTHE VILLAGEone grant, 2017 · $10k
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 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…
To enrich life through discovery, education, and the conservation of plants and the natural environment.
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 Hospice at the Texas Medical Center holds a freestanding 37 bed inpatient facility in the Texas Medical Center that is operated and managed by Houston Hospice.
The mission of Family Service Center of Houston and Harris County (Family Houston) is to create a stronger community for tomorrow by helping individuals and families meet the challenges they face today. We help others help themselves.
Founded as a Christian ministry of healing, Baylor Scott & White Health promotes the well-being of all individuals, families and communities.
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,…
Founded as a Christian ministry of healing, Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH) promotes the well-being of all individuals, families and communities.
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…
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.
To provide high quality, cost-effective health care that delivers the best value to the people we serve in a spiritual environment of caring in association with internationally recognized teaching and research.
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,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Houston Achievement Place and the most unlike its peers is William Marsh Rice University. 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 52 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) — 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 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.
26 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. 26 of the 45 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 Young Men's Christian Association of the Greater Houston Area ↗
- Who funds Texas A&M Foundation ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON ACHIEVEMENT PLACE ↗
- Who funds CHRISTUS Foundation for HealthCare ↗
- Who funds HOME RUN HITTERS INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council ↗
- Who funds DOWN SYNDROME ASSOCIATION OF HOUSTON INC ↗
- Who funds Trees For Houston ↗
- Who funds Houston Hospice ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR PURSUIT ↗
- Who funds John P McGovern Museum of Health & Medical Science ↗
- Who funds Buffalo Bayou Partnership Inc ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAYS OF TEXAS INC ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR HEARING AND SPEECH ↗
- Who funds RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES GREATER HOUSTON INC ↗
- Who funds University of St Thomas ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds United Way of Greater Houston ↗
- Who funds INTERFAITH CAREPARTNERS INC ↗
- Who funds THE WOMEN'S HOME ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST ASSISTANCE MINISTRIES ↗
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: Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · Strake Foundation · MD Anderson Foundation · Greater Houston Community Foundation · The Brown Foundation Inc · John P McGovern Foundation · Harry S & Isabel C Cameron Foundation Sentinel Trust Company · Robert W Knox & Pearl Wallis Knox Charitable · Fred and Mabel R Parks Foundation · The Elkins Foundation · The William Stamps Farish Fund
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 Harriet & Joe Foster 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 Harriet & Joe Foster Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Harriet & Joe Foster 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.