· Private foundation
Nelson 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
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k28 grants · $80k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $53k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHRISTUS FOUNDATION | $23,000 |
| CASA JUAN DIEGO | $20,000 |
| STAR OF HOPE | $10,000 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES | $6,000 |
| HOUSTON FOOD BANK | $5,500 |
| PALESTINE CHILDREN'S RELIEF FUND | $5,000 |
| YELLOWSTONE ACADEMY | $5,000 |
| RED HOOK INITIATIVE | $5,000 |
| INNER CITY CATHOLIC SCHOOLS | $5,000 |
| DOMINICAN SISTERS OF HOUSTON | $5,000 |
| NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| CANDLELIGHTERS | $5,000 |
| MIDDLE EAST CHILDREN'S ALLIANCE | $5,000 |
| CASA DE ESPERANZA | $5,000 |
| OPEN DANCE PROJECT | $3,700 |
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 (FY21–24, $22k) land where the poverty rate runs at 18%, 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.
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 +34% since the first grant, against +9% for the ones you funded once.
30 repeat relationships — 27 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down; 4 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $17k 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
- CJCASA JUAN DIEGO5× · 2018–2024 · $100k · revenue +34%
- MLMOBILE LOAVES & FISHES INC4× · 2018–2023 · $16k · revenue +94%
- ODOpen Dance Project Inc6× · 2018–2024 · $14k · revenue +70%
Funded once
- SMST MICHAEL SCHOOLone grant, 2018 · $20k
- CFCHRISTUS Foundation for HealthCareone grant, 2018 · $17k · revenue +9%
- DWDARBY'S WARRIOR SUPPORTone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue +17%
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.
Non-profit corporation providing healthcare to the homeless.
Plant, protect and promote trees all over the greater Houston area.
The Hospitality Apartments provide no-cost lodgingexcept for cleaning fee to out of town patients living greater than 50 miles from Houston receiving care from any of the hospitals in the Houston Medical Center.
Mission: this organization is part of the methodist hospital, doing business as houston methodist hospital, whose mission is: to provide high quality, cost-effective health care that delivers the best value to the people we serve in a…
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,…
Hmm health provides quality healthcare to all its neighbors with love, compassion, and respect.
Our mission is to provide high quality and caring services to promote healthy people and communities.
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 mission of the Harris County Hospital District Foundation is to enhance the broad healthcare mission of the Harris Health System by soliciting and raising funds for programs and increasing the community's awareness of the Harris Health…
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…
Houston eye associates foundation is committed to preserving and restoring sight with comprehensive eye care surgeries, medications, and ancillary services for individuals in financial hardship; and supporting education and research…
Texas palliative care operates to strengthen and further the goals and purpose of hospice of east texas, a texas non-profit corporation.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Star of Hope Mission and the most unlike its peers is The Trans-Mississippi Golf Association. 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) — 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 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 51 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 CASA JUAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds STAR OF HOPE MISSION ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds CHRISTUS Foundation for HealthCare ↗
- Who funds MOBILE LOAVES & FISHES INC ↗
- Who funds YELLOWSTONE ACADEMY INC DBA YELLOWSTONE SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds Open Dance Project Inc ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds DARBY'S WARRIOR SUPPORT ↗
- Who funds NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MIDDLE EAST CHILDREN'S ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds EXTRASPECIALTEAS INC ↗
- Who funds RED HOOK INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds PALESTINE CHILDREN'S RELIEF FUND ↗
- Who funds FRACTURED ATLAS INC ↗
- Who funds SHATTERPROOF A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds HEIGHTS & HILLS INC ↗
- Who funds Open Door Mission ↗
- Who funds THETA CHARITY EVENTS INC ↗
- Who funds THE WILL ERWIN HEADACHE RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
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 · The Brown Foundation Inc · Strake Foundation · John P McGovern Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · Harry S & Isabel C Cameron Foundation Sentinel Trust Company · Mechia Foundation · Marek Family Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · American Endowment 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 Nelson 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.
- Extraspecialteas Inc — 83% of income from government
- Shatterproof a Nonprofit Corporation — 2% 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.