· Private foundation
Mary Louise Dobson 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 $10k9 grants · $32k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $242k
- $250k+1 grant · $300k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Boys & Girls Club-Greater Houston | $300,000 |
| Just Do It Now Inc | $30,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $30,000 |
| Boys & Girls Club of El Campo | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| Team Wharton Inc | $25,000 |
| Wharton County Junior College | $24,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $17,157 |
| Blessing Cup Storehouse | $15,350 |
| 20th Century Technology Museum | $15,141 |
| Wharton Police Officer Assoc | $15,000 |
| Scholarships for Wharton Ag Students | $10,700 |
| Boys & Girls Club-Palacios | $10,000 |
| Texas Hearing Institute | $7,840 |
| Girl Scouts of San Jacinto | $6,500 |
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 (FY20–24, $54k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, 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.
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.
25 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 14 since wound down; 11 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, 76% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $138k 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
- BABoys and Girls Clubs of Greater Houston Inc4× · 2019–2022 · $1.4M · revenue +53%
- JDJust Do It Now Inc9× · 2017–2025 · $138k · revenue +18%
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF EL CAMPO8× · 2017–2025 · $120k · revenue +19%
Funded once
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF GHone grant, 2023 · $368k
- MEMATAGORDA EPISCOPAL HEALTH OUTREACHone grant, 2021 · $37k
- BABOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF BAY CITY AND MATAGORDA COUNTYone grant, 2022 · $30k · revenue -192%
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.
The organization's primary purpose is for recreational activities and educational activities in wharton, texas
The wharton county recovery team's mission is to assist in identifying disaster caused recovery needs, and to coordinate access to resources that would provide relief. disaster: flood, tornado, windstorm, or as designated, that effects…
The boys and girls club of southwest alabama actively works with local youth of all backgrounds to develop the qualities needed to become responsible citizens and future leaders in our community.
To inspire and empower all young people, especially those who need us most, to realize their full potential as healthy, productive, caring and responsible citizens.
Provides facilities, personnel and organization for various activities and services
The organization operates to inspire and enable all young people, especially those from disadvantaged circumstances, to realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens.
To enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, and responsible citizens
Provided a safe place for area youth to use as a recreational facility and to conduct educational reinforcement classes for "at risk" youth
To provide a second chance in a christ centered environment for young men who have struggled with behavior.
Provide a safe place for youth to go for recreational and educational programs.
To enable all young people, especially those who have limited opportunities, to develop life skills in a safe, caring place that will instill and encourage self-esteem as well as sense of pride and belonging.
To enable all young people, especially those who need us the most; to reach their full potential as productive, caring, and responsible citizens.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Team Wharton Inc and the most unlike its peers is Scholarships for Wharton Ag. 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 28 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) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 7% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 81 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 Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Houston Inc ↗
- Who funds Just Do It Now Inc ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF EL CAMPO ↗
- Who funds Team Wharton Inc ↗
- Who funds GULF COAST CASA ↗
- Who funds HESED HOUSE OF WHARTON INC ↗
- Who funds Stop Inc ↗
- Who funds Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR HEARING AND SPEECH ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF BAY CITY AND MATAGORDA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds BOLING DISTRICT IMPROVEMENT AS ↗
- Who funds WHARTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ↗
- Who funds THERE IS VICTORY IN JESUS RECOVERY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds RESTORATION CITY INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHSIDE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BLESSING CUP STOREHOUSE 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: Gulf Coast Medical Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · Greater Houston Community Foundation · 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 Mary Louise Dobson 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 Mary Louise Dobson Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Mary Louise Dobson 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.