· Private foundation
Houston Endowment Inc
Its FY2024 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 FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k8 grants · $31k
- $10k–50k27 grants · $687k
- $50k–250k218 grants · $25M
- $250k+102 grants · $74M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors INC | $5,000,000 |
| Greater Houston Community Foundation | $5,000,000 |
| Harmony Public Schools | $3,000,000 |
| United Way of Greater Houston | $3,000,000 |
| Houston Local Information Initiative Inc DBA Houston Landing | $2,325,000 |
| Pacific Charter School Development Inc | $2,000,000 |
| Greater Houston Community Foundation | $1,502,090 |
| Texas Immigration Law Council | $1,400,000 |
| EMERGE Fellowship | $1,250,000 |
| Harris County Public Library | $1,169,800 |
| Collective Action For Youth | $1,165,000 |
| Houston Independent School District Foundation | $1,035,000 |
| Contemporary Arts Museum Houston | $1,000,000 |
| Trees For Houston | $1,000,000 |
| Trees For Houston | $1,000,000 |
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 (FY18–24, $33.8M) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 95% 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 10% of Houston Endowment Inc’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, 87% of the giving stays in TX; read by stated purpose it is 92% — more 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 +16% for the ones you funded once.
425 repeat relationships — 187 still active in FY2024, 238 since wound down; 29 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $9.2M 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
- GRGood Reason Houston Inc7× · 2018–2024 · $30M · revenue +8% · 71% of their budget
- WMWilliam Marsh Rice University7× · 2018–2024 · $16M · revenue +63%
- CFCoalition for the Homeless of Houston Harris County3× · 2020–2023 · $15M · revenue +116% · 41% of their budget
Funded once
- TFTHE FOUNDATION FOR JONES HALLgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $2.5M · revenue +28% · 35% of their budget
- CCSHone grant, 2018 · $2.3M
- TAThe Alliance Collaborationone grant, 2022 · $1.6M · revenue -46%
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 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.
To enrich life through discovery, education, and the conservation of plants and the natural environment.
The Progress Texas Institute provides research and strategic communications on issues with the ultimate goal of increasing civic engagement.
At the Every Texan, we believe in a Texas that offers everyone the chance to compete and succeed in life. We envision a Texas where everyone is healthy, well educated, and financially secure. We want the best Texas, a proud state that sets…
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…
See schedule ocentral houston champions a thriving downtown by connecting influential leaders through initiatives that advance the future of business and community for all.
The ACLU of Texas works with communities, at the State Capitol, and in the courts to protect and advance civil rights and civil liberties for every Texan, no exceptions.
RAISE Texas advances equitable policies and programs that foster financial security and economic mobility for low- and moderate-income Texans. We equip, innovate and advocate to reduce disparities, remove barriers and build opportunities…
Community information now (cinow) provides data, tools, analysis, and training to inform decisions to improve texas communities. cinow's vision is improved lives and decreased disparities through democratized data.
See Schedule OThe Women's Resource of Greater Houston helps women and girls make choices toward becoming independent, productive, and financially stable. We fulfill our mission by recruiting volunteer instructors to deliver our programs in…
Leadership austin connects and develops leaders to courageously engage and transform our communities.
As an interdependent alliance of construction industry leaders, we are collectively committed to positively impacting the future of the industry by strengthening the safe, skilled, and sustainable craft workforce pipeline.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Grantmakers for Education and the most unlike its peers is The Alliance Collaboration. 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 29 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 7% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
597 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. 597 of the 980 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 Good Reason Houston Inc ↗
- Who funds Houston Independent School District Foundation ↗
- Who funds GREATER HOUSTON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds William Marsh Rice University ↗
- Who funds Coalition for the Homeless of Houston Harris County ↗
- Who funds Houston in Action Network ↗
- Who funds YES Prep Public Schools Inc ↗
- Who funds Buffalo Bayou Partnership Inc ↗
- Who funds EQUITABLE FACILITIES FUND INC ↗
- Who funds United Way of Greater Houston ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES FOUNDATION OF TEXAS INC ↗
- Who funds Houston Local Information Initiative Inc ↗
- Who funds BLUEPRINT ↗
- Who funds Houston Parks Board ↗
- Who funds TEXAS SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY FOUNDATIO ↗
- Who funds Houston Arts Alliance ↗
- Who funds Houston Immigration Legal ServicesCollab ↗
- Who funds SPARK ↗
- Who funds Houston Zoo Inc ↗
- Who funds ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC ↗
- Who funds HARMONY PUBLIC SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds LOCAL INITIATIVES SUPPORT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Trees For Houston ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF GALVESTON - HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds IDEA Public Schools ↗
- Who funds KIPP Texas Inc ↗
- Who funds Mental Health America of Greater Houston Inc ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON IN ACTION ↗
- Who funds Project Row Houses ↗
- Who funds Children's Assessment Center Foundation ↗
- Who funds Hermann Park Conservancy ↗
- Who funds EMERGE Fellowship ↗
- Who funds Discovery Green Conservancy ↗
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 Brown Foundation Inc · The Powell Foundation · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · Houston Arts Alliance · United Way of Greater Houston · The Elkins Foundation · The Methodist Hospital · Strake Foundation · Greater Houston Community Foundation · Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation · The William Stamps Farish Fund · Vivian L Smith 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 Houston Endowment Inc 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.
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Teacher Prep Inspection-Us Inc — 8% 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.