· Private foundation
Major Family 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 $10k18 grants · $31k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $25k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN | $25,000 |
| BREAKTHROUGH HOUSTON | $5,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT MEDICAL CENTER INC | $5,000 |
| FORTY FIRST FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| THE IMMUNIZATION PARTNERSHIP | $2,000 |
| BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE | $1,000 |
| AMERICAN ACADEMY OF HOME CARE MEDICINE INC | $1,000 |
| AMERICAN SOCIETY OF RETINA SPECIALISTS INC | $1,000 |
| RANSOM EVERGLADES SCHOOL INC | $1,000 |
| HOUSTON HUMANE SOCIETY | $1,000 |
| HERMANN PARK CONSERVANCY | $1,000 |
| SIGMA CHI FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| UINTA RESTORATION & PRESERVATION | $1,000 |
| ACADEMY AT OCEAN REEF INC | $1,000 |
| CASA MATEO | $1,000 |
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 (FY23–25, $4k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, 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.
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 5% of Major Family 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.
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.
12 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 3 since wound down; 10 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, 59% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $23k 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
- SJSt John's School4× · 2020–2023 · $55k · revenue +100%
- BCBaylor College of Medicine4× · 2022–2025 · $13k · revenue +19%
- THThe Houston Audubon Society4× · 2022–2025 · $8k · revenue +129%
Funded once
- EAEMERGENCY ASSISTANCE FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $3k · revenue +40%
- TFTrees For Houstongraduatedone grant, 2023 · $3k · revenue +70%
The Houston Food Bankgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $3k · revenue +46%
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…
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,…
To generate superior long-term investment returns to support The University of Texas and Texas A&M University systems as they provide world-class teaching, push the boundaries of discovery, and achieve excellence in patient healthcare for…
The mission of the Houston Academy of Medicine is to support the community service, education, scientific, and charitable programs for physicians, their patients, and the community at large in Harris County.
As a leading research university with a distinctive commitment to undergraduate education, Rice University aspires to path breaking research, unsurpassed teaching, and contributions to the betterment of our world. It seeks to fulfill this…
UF Health's mission is to promote health through outstanding and high-quality patient care, innovative and rigorous education in the health professions and biomedical sciences, and high-impact research across the spectrum of basic,…
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…
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,…
The Academy's mission is to enhance member career fulfillment and promote brain health for all.
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Houston Audubon Society and the most unlike its peers is The Peregrine Fund Inc. 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 41 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) — 11% of your grantees by number, and just 5% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 32 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 St John's School ↗
- Who funds Baylor College of Medicine ↗
- Who funds The Houston Audubon Society ↗
- Who funds THE PEREGRINE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ACADEMY OF HOME CARE MEDICINE ↗
- Who funds Breakthrough Houston ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds FORTY FIRST FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TROPICAL AUDUBON SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds RANSOM EVERGLADES SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Trees For Houston ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds THE IMMUNIZATION PARTNERSHIP ↗
- Who funds Msgr Kelly Catholic High School Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds RETINA SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds DECATUR HEALTH RESOURCES ↗
- Who funds THE EVERGLADES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Sigma Chi Foundation ↗
- Who funds Hermann Park Conservancy ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN GERIATRICS SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS ACTIVE IN DISASTER ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS OF TEXAS INC ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE ACADEMY AT OCEAN REEF INC ↗
- Who funds CASA MATEO ↗
- Who funds Emory University ↗
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: The John M O'Quinn Foundation · Greater Houston Community Foundation · The Elkins Foundation · The Powell Foundation · Houston Endowment Inc · The Brown Foundation Inc · Shell USA Company Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Major 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- The University of Vermont Medical Center — 1% 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 Major Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Major Family 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.