· Private foundation
Hobby 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 $10k13 grants · $46k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $238k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $157k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ST JOHN'S SCHOOL | $107,000 |
| BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE | $50,000 |
| MENIL FOUNDATION INC - THE MENIL COLLECTION | $45,000 |
| UATX | $33,333 |
| KAPPA ALPHA THETA FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF TEXAS | $25,000 |
| THE COLLEGE FOUNDATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA | $20,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN DEVELOPMENT OFFICE | $20,000 |
| SAN MARCOS CITIZENS POLICE ACAD ASSOC | $15,000 |
| HAYS CNTY CITIZENS SHERRIFS ACAD ALUMNI | $15,000 |
| HAYS COUNTY FOOD BANK | $10,000 |
| MEMORIAL PARK CONSERVANCY | $10,000 |
| TELLURIDE FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| FRIENDS OF PUMPKIN PARK | $10,000 |
| TEXAS BUSINESS HALL OF FAME FOUNDATION | $7,100 |
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 (FY17–20, $12k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 17% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
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 +36% since the first grant, against +33% for the ones you funded once.
100 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2025, 85 since wound down; 11 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $70k 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
- MPMemorial Park Conservancy Inc8× · 2017–2025 · $661k · revenue +138%
- TUThe University of Texas Law School Foundation5× · 2017–2023 · $403k · revenue +146%
- BCBaylor College of Medicine7× · 2017–2025 · $297k · revenue +67%
Funded once
- VCVANGUARD CHARITABLE ENDOWNMENT PROGRAMone grant, 2023 · $12M
- KKKAPPA KAPPA GAMMA FRATERNITY INCone grant, 2020 · $75k
- NMNATIONAL MEDAL OF HONOR MUSEUM FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $50k · revenue -16%
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.
Glasstire is a website about visual art in Texas. Our mission is to expand the conversation about visual art in Texas.
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 Heritage Society (THS) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1954 whose mission is to tell the stories of the diverse history of Houston and Texas through collections, exhibits, the arts, educational programs, film, video, and other…
To facilitate research and development within the texas a&m university system and selected other entities.
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.
University of Houston Foundation provides program support to University of Houston System for various scholarship and educational programs.
The witte museum inspires people to shape the future of texas through transformative and relevant experiences in nature, science and culture.
The Houston Parks Board Foundation provides the Houston Parks Board with financial assistance to support operations and park projects.
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.
Lone Star Flight Museum (LSFM) celebrates flight and achievements in Texas aviation, engages youth through STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), and believes aviation inspires achievement and endless possibilities.
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.
American Leadership Forum (ALF) brings together, in classes, leaders with diverse perspectives so they can build relationships, learn to dialogue and respectfully differ, and work together for the good of our community.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Houston Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Astros Foundation. 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 35 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
142 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. 142 of the 258 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 Memorial Park Conservancy Inc ↗
- Who funds The University of Texas Law School Foundation ↗
- Who funds Menil Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Baylor College of Medicine ↗
- Who funds St John's School ↗
- Who funds TELLURIDE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Houston Parks Board ↗
- Who funds The Hobby Center Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA ALUMNI ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR NEW AMERICAN MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds UATX ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Texas Cultural Trust Council ↗
- Who funds THE LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BRENHAM MAIN STREET HISTORICAL PRESERVATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE WILL ERWIN HEADACHE RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Greater San Marcos Youth Council Inc ↗
- Who funds Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies ↗
- Who funds Buffalo Bayou Partnership Inc ↗
- Who funds THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds Center for Public Policy Priorities ↗
- Who funds THE COLLEGE FOUNDATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA ↗
- Who funds KAPPA ALPHA THETA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL MEDAL OF HONOR MUSEUM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SIRE 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: Greater Houston Community Foundation · The Brown Foundation Inc · Houston Endowment Inc · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · The Powell Foundation · Vivian L Smith Foundation · Sterling-Turner Foundation · The Elkins Foundation · Strake Foundation · The William Stamps Farish Fund · Alvin & Lucy Owsley Foundation · Austin Community 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 Hobby 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.
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.