· Private foundation
May Kay Houck 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k13 grants · $47k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $82k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GENESEE VALLEY CONSERVANCY | $15,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $14,000 |
| FINGER LAKES LAND TRUST | $13,000 |
| CANANDAIGUA LAKE WATERSHED ASSOC | $10,000 |
| LIGHTHOUSE VISION LOSS EDUCATION CT | $10,000 |
| COBBLESTONE FOUNDATIONS | $10,000 |
| REACH OF HAYWOOD COUNTY INC | $10,000 |
| FOODLINK | $8,000 |
| HAYWOOD HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $7,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $7,000 |
| SOUTHEASTERN GUIDE DOGS INC | $5,000 |
| MOHAWK HUDSON LAND CONSERVANCY | $5,000 |
| WILD WINGS INC | $5,000 |
| MOTE MARINE LABORATORY | $4,000 |
| VAIL VETERANS FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
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 (FY17–25, $172k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 53% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 +90% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.
32 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 14 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $12k 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
- TFThe Finger Lakes Land Trust Inc9× · 2017–2025 · $101k · revenue +172%
- MLMANA-SOTA LIGHTHOUSE FOR THE BLIND INC9× · 2017–2025 · $101k · revenue +42%
- GVGenesee Valley Conservancy Inc9× · 2017–2025 · $84k · revenue ×20
Funded once
- AAAIM AT MELANOMAone grant, 2018 · $5k · revenue +17%
- TRTHE RESCUE INN INCgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $5k · revenue +88%
- BABOYS AND GIRLS CLUB SARASOTA COone grant, 2017 · $4k
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 central new york land trust seeks to preserve and protect natural areas in order to provide our communities clean water, clean air, wildlife habitat, and a chance to connect with the land.
Genesee Land Trust preserves and protects natural lands and waterways that enhance the quality of life in the Greater Rochester region - providing wildlife habitat, locally grown food, and connections to nature.
Dedicated to permanently preserve the natural, scenic and recreational resources of the Lake George Basin.
Acquire land and easements to preserve and enhance the open lands, forests, water resources, scenic areas and historical sights of the Woodstock, NY area. Steward protected lands and offer educational programs and events regarding nature…
Support regional economic development in new york's 14 northernmost counties
The Land Conservancy of Ridgefield, Inc. ("the Land Conservancy"), founded in 1967, preserves and protects, for the general benefit of the public, Ridgefield, Connecticut's natural resources including land and water resources, the plant…
The primary mission of the Westchester Land Trust is to conserve, maintain and enhance the natural environment and resources of Westchester County and eastern Putnam County. The Trust acquires interests in land exhibiting important natural…
Protect land along rivers, lakes and wetlands of vt; protect public access, wildlife habitat, scenic natural beauty, and ecological integrity.
The mission of the Organization is the conservation of the natural resources of the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, the preservation of wildlife habitat, the stewardship of lands that define the character of the region and its quality of…
Our mission is conserving West Michigans ecologically critical land. We protect land by creating public nature preserves, providing support to communities and local governments in creating natural areas, and helping private landowners…
To manage the preservation and conservation of an approximate 50,000 acre preserve.
The mission of the adirondack center for loon conservation is to inspire passion for and promote the conservation of adirondack loons as an environmental sentinel.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Adirondack Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Mote Marine Laboratory 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 36 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
34 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. 34 of the 49 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 Finger Lakes Land Trust Inc ↗
- Who funds MANA-SOTA LIGHTHOUSE FOR THE BLIND INC ↗
- Who funds Genesee Valley Conservancy Inc ↗
- Who funds REACH OF HAYWOOD COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INTERNATIONAL HAYWO ↗
- Who funds Canandaigua Lake Watershed Association ↗
- Who funds MOHAWK HUDSON LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds Southeastern Guide Dogs Inc ↗
- Who funds FOODLINK INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds COBBLESTONE FOUNDATION INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds SARGES ANIMAL RESCUE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CANCER CONNECTION INC ↗
- Who funds VAIL VETERANS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds YMCA OF GREATER ROCHESTER (4368) ↗
- Who funds The Friends of the Mendon Public Library Inc ↗
- Who funds MOTE MARINE LABORATORY INC ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MOUNTAIN PROJECTS INC ↗
- Who funds THE ADIRONDACK COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds AIM AT MELANOMA ↗
- Who funds THE RESCUE INN INC ↗
- Who funds ROCHESTER CROSS COUNTRY SKIFOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WILD WINGS INC ↗
- Who funds AIM HIGH CHILDRENS SERVICES ↗
- Who funds THE LAKE PLACID ASSOCIATION FOR MUSIC DRAMA AND ART INC ↗
- Who funds ADIRONDACK MOUNTAIN CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds GUIDING EYES FOR THE BLIND INC ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds PROTECT THE ADIRONDACKS 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: Rochester Area Community Foundation · Cloudsplitter Foundation · Ge Aerospace Foundation · Rochester Area Community Foundation Depository Inc · Ibm International Foundation · JM McDonald Foundation Inc · The Nature Conservancy · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Duke Energy Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 May Kay Houck 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.
- Mote Marine Laboratory Inc — 4% of income from government
- Southeastern Guide Dogs 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to May Kay Houck Foundation?
Find your warmest path to May Kay Houck 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.