· Private foundation
Palmer 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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k5 grants · $25k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $255k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $70k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NEW BRAUFELS FOOD BANK | $70,000 |
| ST JOHN'S SCHOOL | $45,000 |
| CASA DE ESPERANZA | $35,000 |
| DEPELCHIN CHILDREN'S CENTER | $35,000 |
| THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| KID'S MEALS | $25,000 |
| INTERFAITH MINISTRIES HOUSTON | $20,000 |
| ALAMO AREA BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA | $15,000 |
| MAGELLAN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL | $15,000 |
| GIRLS SCOUTS OF SOUTHERN TEXAS | $15,000 |
| MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON | $10,000 |
| TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY KINGSVILLE FOU | $10,000 |
| MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION | $7,500 |
| TRINIDAD STATE JUNIOR COLLEGE ED F | $5,000 |
| NEW BRAUNFELS PARKS FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
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 (FY19–25, $388k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 97% 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.
34 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2025, 22 since wound down; 5 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, 67% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $115k 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
- SASAN ANTONIO FOOD BANK6× · 2019–2024 · $273k · revenue +46%
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS FOUNDATION INC7× · 2019–2025 · $170k · revenue +56%- DCDEPELCHIN CHILDREN'S CENTER7× · 2019–2025 · $169k · revenue +31%
Funded once
- CICOMP-U-DOPT INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $15k · revenue +286%
SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDRENgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $12k · revenue +78%- NCNehemiah Center Incone grant, 2019 · $10k · revenue +14%
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.
Plant, protect and promote trees all over the greater Houston area.
The witte museum inspires people to shape the future of texas through transformative and relevant experiences in nature, science and culture.
Family, School, and Church united in the education and support of each child - this is the founding premise upon which Presbyterian School nurtures and challenges its students. The school provides an educational program of the highest…
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…
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…
To advance the conservation of birds and their habitats in the Greater Houston Gulf Coast region by acquiring and maintaining critical habitat as bird sanctuaries, providing education programs and nature experiences, and advocating policy…
Provide quality education for students from pre school through middle school using the Montessori method of learning and teaching.
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…
The Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Houston's mission is to inspire and enable all youth, especially those who need us most, to realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens.
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…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center and the most unlike its peers is New Braunfels Parks Foundation. 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 51 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 27% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 16% 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 46 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 SAN ANTONIO FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DEPELCHIN CHILDREN'S CENTER ↗
- Who funds St John's School ↗
- Who funds KIDS' MEALS INC ↗
- Who funds CASA DE ESPERANZA DE LOS NINOS INC ↗
- Who funds Houston Area Women's Center ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUTS OF SOUTHWEST TEXAS INC ↗
- Who funds Houston Museum of Natural Science ↗
- Who funds THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA ALAMO AREA COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds THE MAGELLAN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Houston Zoo Inc ↗
- Who funds THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSON'S RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds TRINIDAD STATE COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds COMP-U-DOPT INC ↗
- Who funds New Braunfels Parks Foundation ↗
- Who funds SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds FALFURRIAS VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT ↗
- Who funds Nehemiah Center Inc ↗
- Who funds DNA DOE PROJECT ↗
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 Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · 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 Palmer 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.
- Shriners Hospitals for Children — 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.