· Private foundation
Saunders 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 $10k15 grants · $30k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $92k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $241k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HERITAGE ED | $241,000 |
| CHI OMEGA FOUDNATON | $27,000 |
| CHRIST THE KING CHURCH | $20,000 |
| PRAGER UNIVERSITY | $15,000 |
| ALZHEIMERS ASSOCIATION HOUSTON CHAP | $10,000 |
| YOUNG LIFE | $10,000 |
| PINE COVE | $10,000 |
| HOSPICE AUSTIN | $8,500 |
| TEXAS CHILDRENS HOSPITAL | $5,100 |
| CODY STEPHENS GO BIG OR GO HOME | $5,000 |
| NORTH SHORE ROTARY FOUNDATION | $3,000 |
| WOMENS STORYBOOK PROJECT OF TEXAS | $2,833 |
| HOUSTON ALUMNAE PANHELLENIC FOUNDAT | $2,000 |
| LIGHTHOUSE OF HOUSTON | $1,000 |
| COLEL CHABAD | $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.
Your human-services grants (FY17–24, $88k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 27% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +38% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
41 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2024, 29 since wound down; 10 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $21k 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
- HEHERITAGE ED6× · 2019–2024 · $1.3M · revenue +414% · 70% of their budget
- HAHOSPICE AUSTIN7× · 2017–2024 · $58k · revenue +45%
CHI OMEGA FOUNDATION7× · 2017–2024 · $54k · revenue +77%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $15k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $11k
- TKThe Kinkaid School Incgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $10k · revenue +77%
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.
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 mission of houston christian university is to provide a learning experience that instills in students a passion for academic, spiritual, and professional excellence as a result of our central confession, "jesus christ is lord."
Plant, protect and promote trees all over the greater Houston area.
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…
Hospice care of terminally ill patients
South texas college of law houston provides a diverse body of students the opportunity to obtain an exceptional legal education, preparing graduates to serve their community and profession with distinction.
See Schedule OSt. John's School is an independent, co-educational day school presenting a 13-year sequence of college preparatory training. A non-profit institution, it was founded in 1946 to provide the community with a school of exacting…
The mission of Breakthrough Houston (BTH) is to work with highly motivated students to achieve post-secondary success and empower aspiring leaders to become the next generation of educational advocates.
Uatx is a nonprofit dedicated to building a liberal arts university committed to freedom of inquiry, freedom of conscience, and civil discourse. to maintain these principles, the university will be fiercely independent financially,…
See schedule ocentral houston champions a thriving downtown by connecting influential leaders through initiatives that advance the future of business and community for all.
As a christian university, we provide education and research opportunities preparing global leaders to partner with local communities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Hospice of the Valley and the most unlike its peers is North Channel Area 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 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) — 2% 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.
57 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. 57 of the 128 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 HERITAGE ED ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE AUSTIN ↗
- Who funds CHI OMEGA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YOUNG LIFE ↗
- Who funds Lighthouse For The Blind Of Houston Inc ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds FAMILIES EMPOWERED ↗
- Who funds PRISON ENTREPRENEURSHIP PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds The Kinkaid School Inc ↗
- Who funds ST VINCENTS HOUSE ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR SHIPBOARD EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds Texas Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds PURSUIT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL 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: Greater Houston Community Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · The Brown Foundation Inc · Strake Foundation · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · Baker Hughes Foundation · The Robert and Janice McNair Foundation · Austin Community Foundation Inc · The Jbd Foundation · Midway Foundation · MD Anderson Foundation · Vivian L Smith 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 Saunders 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.
- Hht Foundation — 30% of income from government
- Learning Ally Inc — 4% 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 Saunders Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Saunders 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.