· Private foundation
Jfa Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k26 grants · $39k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $70k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SOUTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY | $25,000 |
| DILLEY METHODIST CHURCH | $15,000 |
| HOUSTON METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| CAMP LA JUNTA FUND | $10,000 |
| MEMORIAL PARK CONSERVANCY INC | $10,000 |
| BIG BEND CONSERVANCY | $5,000 |
| TEXAS LAND CONSERVANCY | $3,000 |
| AMERICAN RED CROSS | $3,000 |
| ST PAUL'S UNITED METHODIST CHURCH | $2,600 |
| THE JOHN FAIREY GARDEN CONSERVATION FOUNDATION | $2,000 |
| ORANGE SHOW CENTER FOR VISIONARY ART | $2,000 |
| EMERGENCY AID COALITION | $2,000 |
| USO | $2,000 |
| HERMANN PARK CONSERVANCY INC | $2,000 |
| DILLEY MEMORIAL CEMETERY ASSOCIATION | $2,000 |
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 (FY24–25, $2k) 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.
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 Jfa Foundation’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, 94% of the giving stays in TX; read by stated purpose it is 88% — 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +52% since the first grant, against +44% for the ones you funded once.
35 repeat relationships — 25 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 6 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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $16k 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
- SUSOUTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY9× · 2017–2025 · $70k · revenue +59%
- MPMemorial Park Conservancy Inc8× · 2017–2025 · $45k · revenue +138%
- TMTHE METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATION5× · 2021–2025 · $40k · revenue +52%
Funded once
- MFMenil Foundation Incone grant, 2022 · $15k · revenue -4%
- SPST PAUL'S METHODIST CHURCH CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETYone grant, 2018 · $3k
- TGTHE GEORGE AND BARBARA BUSH FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $3k · revenue +44%
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.
To enrich life through discovery, education, and the conservation of plants and the natural environment.
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 advance the conservation of birds and their habitats in the Greater Houston Gulf Coast region by acquiring and maintaining critical habitat as bird sanctuaries, providing education programs and nature experiences, and advocating policy…
To completely restore Houston Freedmen's Town as a heritage district that provides America with its only Freedmen's Town.
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…
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.
The Houston Parks Board mission is to expand, improve, and protect parks and greenspace in the Houston region.
The Houston Parks Board Foundation provides the Houston Parks Board with financial assistance to support operations and park projects.
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…
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,…
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 Houston Local Information Initiative, Inc. provides public service journalism that reflects the civic needs of the diverse communities comprising Greater Houston.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Houston Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Grand Canyon Conservancy. 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 42 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 29% 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.
30 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. 30 of the 51 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 SOUTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Memorial Park Conservancy Inc ↗
- Who funds THE METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK ↗
- Who funds Menil Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds EMERGENCY AID COALITION ↗
- Who funds Coastal Prairie Conservancy ↗
- Who funds Hermann Park Conservancy ↗
- Who funds Peckerwood Gardens Conservation Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds STAR OF HOPE MISSION ↗
- Who funds Texas Land Conservancy ↗
- Who funds BakerRipley ↗
- Who funds The Orange Show Foundation ↗
- Who funds Trees For Houston ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds Texas Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds THE GEORGE AND BARBARA BUSH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston ↗
- Who funds THE SHRINERS' HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds WORKSHOP HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds GREATER HOUSTON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YOUNG LIFE ↗
- Who funds THE WILL ERWIN HEADACHE RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
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 Powell Foundation · Houston Endowment Inc · The Susan Vaughan Foundation Inc · The Brown Foundation Inc · Shell USA Company Foundation · Hobby Family Foundation · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · Texas Instruments Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Jfa 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.
- The Shriners' Hospital for Children — 6% of income from government
- Volunteer Florida Foundation Inc — 2% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project 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 Jfa Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Jfa 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.