· Private foundation
John and Allie Lea Orton Fdn
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: 57% of JOHN AND ALLIE LEA ORTON FDN’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 $10k15 grants · $64k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $11k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TEXAS EQUUSE SEARCH | $11,110 |
| CHRISTIAN YOUTH THEATER SAN ANT | $8,000 |
| SAMARITANS PURSE | $7,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $6,000 |
| JAMES DICK FOUNDATION FOR THE PE | $6,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF THE | $5,000 |
| University of Houston Foundation | $5,000 |
| A MOMENT OF HOPE | $5,000 |
| MIDSHIPMANS FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| BACH SOCIETY HOUSTON | $4,000 |
| MAGNOLIA CITY BRASS BAND | $3,500 |
| MAIN STREET THEATER | $2,500 |
| GERMAN TEXAN HERITAGE SOCIETY | $2,500 |
| BUGLE BOY FOUNDATION | $1,500 |
| Revels Houston | $1,500 |
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 (FY23–23, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
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 +40% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
29 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 2 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k 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
- MSMain Street Theater Houston8× · 2017–2025 · $33k · revenue +19%
- TETEXAS EQUUSEARCH MOUNTED SEARCH AND RECOVERY7× · 2017–2025 · $30k · revenue +90%
- SPSAMARITAN'S PURSE4× · 2022–2025 · $30k · revenue +40%
Funded once
- MOMosbacher Odyssey Academyone grant, 2020 · $7k
- GHGreater Houston Community Fndone grant, 2017 · $5k
- TWTHE WOMEN'S HOMEone grant, 2023 · $5k · revenue -6%
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.
Harmonia Stellarum is an ensemble of professional vocalists and instrumentalists specialized in historically informed performance practice who seek to inspire, entertain, and enlighten audiences with meaningful, historically informed…
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 support the operations of the Houston Symphony Society.
The mission of Houston Youth Symphony (HYS) is to nurture personal growth through exceptional music education. HYS envisions a world where exceptional music education is accessible to all.
Founded in 1993, American Festival for the Arts (AFA) provides high quality community-based music education programs and performance opportunities designed primarily for youth and, through its concert series and outreach, seeks to broaden…
The mission of the Houston Symphony is to inspire and engage a large and diverse audience in Greater Houston and beyond through exceptional orchestral performances, educational programs and community activities.
Hopera's mission is to produce live musical performances in unique Houston Area spaces that focus on and empower Houston Area artists. Our Pint-Sized Performance concert series empowers local musicians to create original programs that are…
The mission of HGO is to enrich our diverse community through the art of opera. We will do so by creating, curating, exploring, and producing outstanding experiences centered around the human voice.(Continued on Schedule O)
The mission of International Voiches Houston is to create global harmony by celebrating and giving voice to human difference. More specifically, it is to build cultural bridges across Houston's diverse population by exploring and…
Providing paid opportunities for Houston based singers.
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 Child Advocates Inc and the most unlike its peers is Samaritan's Purse. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 38 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 6% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 50 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 Main Street Theater Houston ↗
- Who funds TEXAS EQUUSEARCH MOUNTED SEARCH AND RECOVERY ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds Bach Society Houston ↗
- Who funds Camp For All Foundation ↗
- Who funds University of Houston Foundation ↗
- Who funds German-Texan Heritage Society ↗
- Who funds BUGLE BOY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Writers in the Schools ↗
- Who funds Houston Early Music Inc ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON BRASS BAND ↗
- Who funds A Moment of Hope ↗
- Who funds Midshipmans Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE WOMEN'S HOME ↗
- Who funds MOUNT SAINT MARY'S UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds Freewheels Houston ↗
- Who funds TEXAS ADAPTIVE AQUATICS 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: Alice Taylor Gray Foundation Acct #G02992 · Shell USA Company Foundation · Houston Arts Alliance · The Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts · Greater Houston Community Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 John and Allie Lea Orton Fdn 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.
- Best Buddies International Inc — 4% of income from government
- Mount Saint Mary's University 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.
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How do I get to John and Allie Lea Orton Fdn?
Find your warmest path to John and Allie Lea Orton Fdn 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.