· Private foundation
Meyer and Ida Gordon 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
83% of Meyer and Ida Gordon Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Houston Jewish Community Foundation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 3 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k4 grants · $17k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $27k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $115k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HOUSTON JEWISH COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $65,000 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER HOUSTON | $50,000 |
| HOUSTON JEWISH COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $17,000 |
| TEXAS CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $10,000 |
| SEVEN ARCES JEWISH SENIOR CARE SERVICES INC | $5,500 |
| THE FORGE FOR FAMILIES | $5,000 |
| SEVEN ARCES JEWISH SENIOR CARE SERVICES INC | $5,000 |
| METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY19–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 99% of your 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.
13 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2025, 11 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, 57% 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
- HMHOLOCAUST MUSEUM HOUSTON5× · 2019–2024 · $14k · revenue +33%
- TCTexas Children's Hospital2× · 2019–2025 · $11k · revenue +48%
- TFTIRR Foundation3× · 2021–2024 · $10k · revenue +18%
Funded once
- EHEPISCOPAL HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2024 · $10k
- RFROTARY FOUNDATION OF HOUSTONone grant, 2023 · $5k
Houston Museum of Natural Scienceone grant, 2019 · $5k · revenue -6%
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.
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,…
Plant, protect and promote trees all over the greater Houston area.
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,…
Founded as a Christian ministry of healing, Baylor Scott & White Health promotes the well-being of all individuals, families and communities.
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.
Through its affiliates, thr operates an integrated healthcare system with services and facilities throughout north central texas to improve the health of the people in the communities they serve.
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…
To foster and support the activities and purposes of Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH), to encourage broad-based public support of the healthcare system and its affiliated institutions, and to advance the medical objectives, including…
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…
University of Houston Foundation provides program support to University of Houston System for various scholarship and educational programs.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Memorial Hermann Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Institute for Spirituality and Health at the Texas Medical Center. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 29 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 Jewish Federation of Greater Houston ↗
- Who funds Houston Jewish Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds HOLOCAUST MUSEUM HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds Texas Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds TIRR Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE FORGE FOR FAMILIES ↗
- Who funds Houston Museum of Natural Science ↗
- Who funds NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Bo's Place ↗
- Who funds The Brookwood Community Inc ↗
- Who funds GREATER HOUSTON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Institute for Spirituality and Health at the Texas Medical Center ↗
- Who funds Memorial Hermann Foundation ↗
- Who funds Baylor College of Medicine ↗
- Who funds THE METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Small Steps Nurturing Center ↗
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 · 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 Meyer and Ida Gordon 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 Meyer and Ida Gordon Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Meyer and Ida Gordon 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.