· Private foundation
Rhett Butler Charitable 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 $10k4 grants · $6k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $376k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $160k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SPECIAL PALS | $60,000 |
| THE BROOKWOOD COMMUNITY | $50,000 |
| BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE | $50,000 |
| FORT BEND'S WOMENS CENTER | $40,000 |
| LEAKEY ISD | $36,000 |
| JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER | $35,000 |
| SMALL STEPS | $35,000 |
| AID TO VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC ABUSE | $35,000 |
| HOUSTON FOOD BANK | $30,000 |
| RETINA RESEARCH CENTER | $30,000 |
| RUPANI FOUNDATION USA | $25,000 |
| JUSTICE FORWARD | $25,000 |
| CHILD ADVOCATES OF FORT BEND | $25,000 |
| DAYA INC | $25,000 |
| IEDUCATE USA | $25,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $61k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +76% since the first grant, against +5% for the ones you funded once.
10 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2024, 4 since wound down; 14 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, 20% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $434k 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
- TCTexas Children's Hospital6× · 2017–2024 · $114k · revenue +78%
- RRRETINA RESEARCH FOUNDATION5× · 2017–2021 · $80k · revenue +76%
- AAVDA3× · 2017–2024 · $36k · revenue +90%
Funded once
- LVLeakey Volunteer Fire Department Inc2× · 2017–2018 · $3k · revenue +3%
- TATexas A&M Foundationgraduated2× · 2017–2018 · $1k · revenue +90%
- FCFRIO CANYON EMS INCgraduated2× · 2017–2018 · $750 · revenue +317%
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 children's advocacy center of van zandt county is committed to ensuring quality services and support to those children impacted by abuse while also building a future where no child in van zandt county experiences abuse.
The mission of Family Service Center of Houston and Harris County (Family Houston) is to create a stronger community for tomorrow by helping individuals and families meet the challenges they face today. We help others help themselves.
Mission: Connect communities with animals, inspiring action to save wildlife. Vision: Be a leader in the global movement to save wildlife. (Continued on Schedule O) Houston Zoo, Inc. (HZI) strives to be a zoo that practices exemplary…
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 Pets Alive!s (HPA!) mission is to save the lives of at-risk companion cats and dogs and find them loving homes.
The spca of texas is dedicated to providing every animal exceptional care and a loving home.
The texas hospital association's mission is to provide leadership in advocacy, information and education to enable texas hospitals to deliver superior, cost effective care which enhances the health care of individuals and their communities.
Houston Cares Rescue is a volunteer organization rescuing animals from the streets, and occasionally from shelters, in Houston, TX, and caring for them primarily with foster families until a loving home can be found. We operate a…
Houston Hospice provides uncompromising, compassionate end-of-life care to patients and families in our community. Houston Hospice cares for patients from all races, ethnicities, religious beliefs, and payor classes, including those with…
To advance children's health and well-being by advocating for policies and funding that promote children's access to high-quality, comprehensive health care.
Children's advocacy centers of texas, inc. (cactx) is the statewide organization for its 70 children's advocacy centers (cac's) across texas. cactx leads efforts, in partnership with investigatory and prosecution agencies, to pursue…
When care is within reach, lives change. Texas Community Counseling is a faith-based nonprofit committed to bringing hope and healing through mental health care to the communities that need it the most. We empower individuals to heal,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Houston Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Frio Canyon Ems 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 42 years old; the field is 10. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 31% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
24 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. 24 of the 43 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 Texas Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds RETINA RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Special Pals Inc ↗
- Who funds Baylor College of Medicine ↗
- Who funds The Brookwood Community Inc ↗
- Who funds AVDA ↗
- Who funds Small Steps Nurturing Center ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF DALLAS ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JUNIOR BRAHMAN ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds iEDUCATE ↗
- Who funds Daya Inc ↗
- Who funds JUSTICE FORWARD ↗
- Who funds Ft Bend County Child Advocates Inc ↗
- Who funds TREE OF PROMISE ↗
- Who funds GREATER HOUSTON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Leakey Volunteer Fire Department Inc ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds Texas A&M Foundation ↗
- Who funds FRIO CANYON EMS INC ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds VIOLA'S HUGE HEART FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION ↗
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 · H E Butt Foundation · Houston Endowment Inc · Shell USA Company Foundation · O'Kelley - Hemminghaus Foundation · The Brown Foundation Inc · Network for Good · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · 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 Rhett Butler Charitable 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 Rhett Butler Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Rhett Butler Charitable 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.