· Public charity
Houston in Action
Provide support for 501(c)(3) organizations
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2022.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 14 grants below total $6,669,853 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $13,783,353 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $7,113,500 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2022
- $10k–50k3 grants · $94k
- $50k–250k10 grants · $729k
- $250k+1 grant · $5.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HOUSTON IN ACTION NETWORK | $5,846,853 |
| BONDING AGAINST ADVERSITY INC | $100,000 |
| GULF COAST LEADERSHIP COUNCIL INC | $100,000 |
| WEST STREET RECOVERY | $90,000 |
| YOUNG INVINCIBLES | $78,000 |
| BACK TO EDEN FELLOW PROGRAM | $70,000 |
| THE MAHOGANY PROJECT | $65,000 |
| MI FAMILIA VOTA EDUCATION FUND | $60,000 |
| CRISTINA PROJECT | $60,000 |
| URBAN COMMUNITY NETWORK | $55,000 |
| W HAYWOOD BURNS INSTITUTE | $51,000 |
| ALIANZA AMERICAS | $45,000 |
| GREENHOUSE INTERNATIONAL CHURCH | $29,000 |
| MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION AND COUNSELING THROUGH THE ARTS | $20,000 |
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 (FY18–22, $403k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +46% since the first grant, against +42% for the ones you funded once.
21 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2022, 11 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (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 FY2022, 9% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6.1M 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
- GCGULF COAST LEADERSHIP COUNCIL INC3× · 2020–2022 · $210k · revenue +30%
- PJPure Justice2× · 2020–2021 · $201k · revenue +105%
- MFMI FAMILIA EN ACCION3× · 2020–2022 · $154k · revenue +20%
Funded once
- ICINTERCULTURAL CENTER FOR HEALTH RESEARCH AND WELLNESSone grant, 2021 · $100k · revenue -53% · 55% of their budget
- JIJOLT INITIATIVEgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $50k · revenue +63%
- TMThe Montrose Centerone grant, 2021 · $50k · revenue -2%
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 Houston Local Information Initiative, Inc. provides public service journalism that reflects the civic needs of the diverse communities comprising Greater Houston.
Empower and inspire the success of the large and fast-growing hispanic community in the greater houston area thereby strengthening the entire community.
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.
Houston Legal Aid Center protects and advances the rights of the poor through the poor through the provision of pro bono or reduced cost legal services while also addressing the underlying spiritual and relational issues affecting…
Improving low-income communities by helping individuals get into and through college/career training.
To work for justice by building empowered community with refugees, immigrants, and local Houstonians. FAM builds and strengthens diverse communities in Houston through our cornerstone practices of hospitality, mutuality, storytelling, and…
The organization provides medical services in the form of primary and preventive care to underserved and underinsured residents of harris county.
Asian Texans for Justice connects Asian and Pacific Islander Texans with civic action to build personal and political power.
The mission of the Collaborative is to create a coordinated network of effective and efficient services to assist low-income immigrants access to the information and legal representation that allows them to make choices in their own best…
Providing accurate, accessible, and comprehensive voter information and resources to empower informed participation. Actively involving communities in voter registration drives and educational events to foster a culture of civic…
Research and Community Support
The mission of Justice for All Immigrants is to provide low-income individuals and families with affordable, high quality immigration legal services, and to engage in immigration education and advocacy.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Tejano Center for Community Concerns Inc and the most unlike its peers is Back to Eden Fellow Program. 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 21 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 28% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 68% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 17% 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.
47 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. 47 of the 49 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 Houston in Action Network ↗
- Who funds URBAN COMMUNITY NETWORK ↗
- Who funds GULF COAST LEADERSHIP COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds Pure Justice ↗
- Who funds MI FAMILIA EN ACCION ↗
- Who funds THE MAHOGANY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds EAST HARRIS COUNTY EMPOWERMENT COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds THE PROVIDENCE ON SOUTHMORE ↗
- Who funds Avenue Community Development Corporation ↗
- Who funds West Street Recovery ↗
- Who funds BACK TO EDEN FELLOW PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds Alianza Americas ↗
- Who funds BONDING AGAINST ADVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds INTERCULTURAL CENTER FOR HEALTH RESEARCH AND WELLNESS ↗
- Who funds YOUNG INVINCIBLES ↗
- Who funds Emgage Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds POLICHIC ENGAGEMENT FUND ↗
- Who funds The Cristina Project ↗
- Who funds CULTURE OF HEALTH - ADVANCING TOGETHER ↗
- Who funds W HAYWOOD BURNS INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds BakerRipley ↗
- Who funds JOLT INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds The Montrose Center ↗
- Who funds Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Houston Inc ↗
- Who funds MOVEMENT STRATEGY CENTER ↗
- Who funds GRASSROOTS LEADERSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds ASIAN COMMUNITY SUPPORT SERVICES CENTER ↗
- Who funds Multicultural Education and Counseling Through the Arts ↗
- Who funds LINK HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds TEXAS FREEDOM NETWORK EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds ASIAN AMERICAN HEALTH COALITION OF THE GREATER HOUSTON AREA ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON WHITE ROSE FOUNDATION INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds TEJANO CENTER FOR COMMUNITY CONCERNS INC ↗
- Who funds WESLEY COMMUNITY CENTER INC OF HOUSTON TEXAS ↗
- Who funds WORKERS DEFENSE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR MULTICULTURAL COMMUNITY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Vietnamese Culture & Science Association ↗
- Who funds BOAT PEOPLE SOS 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: Houston in Action Network · Houston Endowment Inc · Greater Houston Community Foundation · United Way of Greater Houston · NEO Philanthropy Inc · The Methodist Hospital · Tides Foundation · Rockwell Fund Inc · Texas Organizing Project · The Simmons Foundation · Episcopal Health Foundation · The Houston Fund for Social Justice and Economic Equity
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 in Action 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 Houston in Action?
Find your warmest path to Houston in Action 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.