· Private foundation
Kittsie & Charlie Thomas Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 59% of KITTSIE & CHARLIE THOMAS FAMILY FOUNDATION’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 · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $112k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $64k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HOUSTON FOOD BANK | $63,500 |
| AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION | $26,000 |
| PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY SEAVER COLLEGE | $13,500 |
| STAGES | $12,500 |
| INTERFAITH MINISTRIES | $10,000 |
| GROUNDWIRE MINISTRY | $10,000 |
| MILLER OUTDOOR THEATRE | $10,000 |
| THE BROOKWOOD COMMUNITY | $10,000 |
| HOUSTON SPCA | $10,000 |
| MONOMOY COMMUNITY SERVICES | $10,000 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $5,000 |
| RIVER OAKS BAPTIST SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| NMDP (BE THE MATCH) | $5,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $99k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 90% 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 +53% since the first grant, against +39% for the ones you funded once.
37 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 29 since wound down; 5 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, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $40k 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
The Houston Food Bank8× · 2017–2024 · $328k · revenue +107%- AFAIDS FOUNDATION HOUSTON INC5× · 2017–2021 · $70k · revenue +179%
- PUPEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY6× · 2019–2024 · $64k · revenue +39%
Funded once
- CMCHAMPION MINISTRIES INC AKA GROUNDWIREone grant, 2021 · $25k
- ADAgape Development Ministriesgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $25k · revenue +107%
- TSThe Sanctuary Foster Care Servicesgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $15k · revenue +80%
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.
Plant, protect and promote trees all over the greater Houston area.
LifeHouse is a Christ-centered ministry ensuring life for unborn children by providing opportunities for housing, help, and hope for young women during their pregnancies and beyond.
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 Local Information Initiative, Inc. provides public service journalism that reflects the civic needs of the diverse communities comprising Greater Houston.
To enrich life through discovery, education, and the conservation of plants and the natural environment.
Houston Hospice provides uncompromising, compassionate end-of-life care to patients and families in our community. Houston Hospice cares for patients from all races, ethnicities, religious beliefs, and payor classes, including those with…
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…
The mission of Family Service Center of Houston and Harris County (Family Houston) is to create a stronger community for tomorrow by helping individuals and families meet the challenges they face today. We help others help themselves.
Seeking to put God's love into action, Houston Habitat for Humanity brings people together to build homes, communities and hope to provide a world where everyone has a decent place to live.
Fostering family dba the riverside project is a 501(c)(3) public charity that on behalf of houston's children and their families, brings together organizations and passionate people working as one to help families heal and children thrive.
The Hospice at the Texas Medical Center holds a freestanding 37 bed inpatient facility in the Texas Medical Center that is operated and managed by Houston Hospice.
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Houston Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Planned Parenthood. 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 43 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
44 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. 44 of the 72 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 The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds AIDS FOUNDATION HOUSTON INC ↗
- Who funds PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds Joy Development School ↗
- Who funds Stages ↗
- Who funds Agape Development Ministries ↗
- Who funds Caring Friends Inc ↗
- Who funds Houston Area Women's Center ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds The Sanctuary Foster Care Services ↗
- Who funds Christian Community Service Center Inc ↗
- Who funds STRONG MISSIONS INC ↗
- Who funds NMDP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MONOMOY COMMUNITY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds The Brookwood Community Inc ↗
- Who funds Elijah Rising ↗
- Who funds WAITING UNDER THE WILLOW FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Hermann Park Conservancy ↗
- Who funds Southern Smoke Foundation ↗
- Who funds TREES OF HOPE ↗
- Who funds VITA LIVING INC ↗
- Who funds LOCAL INFANT FORMULA FOR EMERGENCIES ↗
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 · Shell USA Company Foundation · The Elkins Foundation · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · The Brown Foundation Inc · Vivian L Smith Foundation · Strake Foundation · ESB3 Foundation · Baxter Trust Co Private Foundation Services · Harry S & Isabel C Cameron Foundation Sentinel Trust Company · The William Stamps Farish Fund · Houston Endowment Inc
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 Kittsie & Charlie Thomas Family 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.