· Private foundation
Kinder 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k12 grants · $41k
- $10k–50k18 grants · $420k
- $50k–250k24 grants · $2.8M
- $250k+24 grants · $64M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BUFFALO BAYOU PARTNERSHIP | $19,433,012 |
| RICE UNIVERSITY | $11,869,293 |
| MEMORIAL PARK CONSERVANCY | $5,416,557 |
| HOUSTON PARKS BOARD | $5,207,549 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI | $4,732,150 |
| UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA | $2,377,494 |
| EMANCIPATION PARK CONSERVANCY | $2,371,957 |
| COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS OF HOUSTONHARRIS COUNTY | $1,425,933 |
| DEPELCHIN CHILDREN'S CENTER | $1,421,290 |
| CRISTO REY JESUIT | $1,420,839 |
| EMANCIPATION PARK CONSERVANCY | $1,000,000 |
| HARRIS HEALTH STRATEGIC FUND | $1,000,000 |
| UNITED WAY | $1,000,000 |
| DISCOVERY GREEN CONSERVANCY | $938,233 |
| BUFFALO BAYOU PARTNERSHIP | $695,053 |
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 (FY20–25, $3.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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 +27% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
40 repeat relationships — 25 still active in FY2025, 15 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, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6.8M 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
- BBBuffalo Bayou Partnership Inc6× · 2020–2025 · $71M · revenue +35% · 53% of their budget
- WMWilliam Marsh Rice University6× · 2020–2025 · $58M · revenue +68%
- GRGood Reason Houston Inc6× · 2020–2025 · $17M · revenue +16% · 78% of their budget
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $14M
- MOMUSEUM OF FINE ARTSone grant, 2020 · $14M
- CCCATHOLIC CHARITIES INCone grant, 2021 · $1.5M · revenue -4% · 49% of their budget
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 completely restore Houston Freedmen's Town as a heritage district that provides America with its only Freedmen's Town.
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.
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…
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…
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.
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…
Houston MediaSource aspires to be the community media center for the City of Houston. HMS provides public access to media platforms that promote citizen engagement, protect the right to free expression, and provide opportunities to advance…
The Health Museum is an innovative science center that provides an interactive and entertaining experience for all ages, promotes understanding and appreciation of the human body, mind, and spirit, and inspires a lifelong commitment to…
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…
Hermann Park Conservancy is a citizens organization dedicated to the stewardship and improvement of Hermann Park - today and for generations to come.
The Houston Parks Board Foundation provides the Houston Parks Board with financial assistance to support operations and park projects.
Arts Connect Houston unites with the greater Houston community to ensure access to high-quality arts education in creative writing, dance, music, theater, and the visual arts for every student, beginning with Houston ISD.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Houston Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Blue Triangle Multicultural. 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 35 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 30% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 4% 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.
53 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. 53 of the 85 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 Buffalo Bayou Partnership Inc ↗
- Who funds William Marsh Rice University ↗
- Who funds Memorial Park Conservancy Inc ↗
- Who funds Good Reason Houston Inc ↗
- Who funds Houston Parks Board ↗
- Who funds Discovery Green Conservancy ↗
- Who funds Houston Local Information Initiative Inc ↗
- Who funds THE UNITED WAY INC ↗
- Who funds Emancipation Park Conservancy ↗
- Who funds Project Row Houses ↗
- Who funds Trees For Houston ↗
- Who funds THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds YES Prep Public Schools Inc ↗
- Who funds DEPELCHIN CHILDREN'S CENTER ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds GREATER HOUSTON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Coalition for the Homeless of Houston Harris County ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds THE METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HARRIS HEALTH STRATEGIC FUND ↗
- Who funds Houston Arts Alliance ↗
- Who funds BakerRipley ↗
- Who funds PRH Preservation Inc ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds PROUNITAS 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 Endowment Inc · The Brown Foundation Inc · Greater Houston Community Foundation · Centerpoint Energy Foundation Inc · Shell USA Company Foundation · MD Anderson Foundation · The Powell Foundation · John P McGovern Foundation · Baker Hughes Foundation · The Sarofim Foundation · Vivian L Smith Foundation · The Elkins 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 Kinder 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Kinder Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Kinder 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.