· Private foundation
JA Sprague Family 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k13 grants · $44k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $123k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Portland Community Squash | $20,000 |
| Boston Rowing Federation | $20,000 |
| Pro-Vision Inc | $20,000 |
| Kinkaid School | $13,000 |
| Mission Squash | $10,000 |
| St John the Divine Episcopal Church | $10,000 |
| Connect | $10,000 |
| Hurricane Island Foundation | $10,000 |
| Three Trees Foundation | $10,000 |
| Just City | $7,500 |
| Ecclesia Houston | $5,000 |
| Houston Area Women's Center | $5,000 |
| Slingshot Memphis | $5,000 |
| Tabor Academy | $4,000 |
| Bowdoin College | $3,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $77k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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 +30% since the first grant, against +5% for the ones you funded once.
29 repeat relationships — 20 still active in FY2025, 9 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, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $30k 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
- BCBowdoin College9× · 2017–2025 · $182k · revenue +94%
- TKThe Kinkaid School Inc9× · 2017–2025 · $113k · revenue +87%
- PCPortland Community Squash8× · 2017–2025 · $86k · revenue +107%
Funded once
- ACASPEN CHAPELone grant, 2024 · $10k
- HHHouston Hospiceone grant, 2020 · $5k · revenue +5%
- TMTHE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTONgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $5k · revenue +73%
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.
The mission of the Houston Museum of Natural Science shall be to preserve and advance the general knowledge of natural science; to enhance in individuals the knowledge of and delight in natural science and related subjects; and to maintain…
Plant, protect and promote trees all over the greater Houston area.
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…
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…
See Schedule OThe purpose of Awty International School (Awty) is to create an environment where students experience excellence every day to make their mark on the world alongside their community, in a spirit of curiosity, courage and…
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…
As a leading research university with a distinctive commitment to undergraduate education, Rice University aspires to path breaking research, unsurpassed teaching, and contributions to the betterment of our world. It seeks to fulfill this…
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…
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.
The mission of Target Hunger is to alleviate hunger and its root causes in the Houston neighborhoods we serve. Target Hunger is on the front lines of hunger every day through its food distribution system that includes multiple food…
Houston Golf Association exists to make a difference in the Houston community and its youth through golf and charity.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Star of Hope Mission and the most unlike its peers is Prouts Neck Historical Society. 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 38 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) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 37 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 Bowdoin College ↗
- Who funds The Kinkaid School Inc ↗
- Who funds PRO-VISION INC ↗
- Who funds Portland Community Squash ↗
- Who funds SLINGSHOT MEMPHIS INC ↗
- Who funds Memorial Park Conservancy Inc ↗
- Who funds Houston Area Women's Center ↗
- Who funds TABOR ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds Just City Inc ↗
- Who funds DEPELCHIN CHILDREN'S CENTER ↗
- Who funds Houston Golf Association Youth Program Inc dba First Tee of Greater Houston ↗
- Who funds STAR OF HOPE MISSION ↗
- Who funds Southern Methodist University ↗
- Who funds MID-SOUTH FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds Nonesuch Oar & Paddle Club ↗
- Who funds Boston Rowing Federation Inc ↗
- Who funds THREE TREES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HELEN JAMES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE HURRICANE ISLAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK FOR NEW YORK CITY ↗
- Who funds PROUTS NECK HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CHILD ADVOCATES INC ↗
- Who funds Houston Hospice ↗
- Who funds I Am Waters Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds LYMPHOMA RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PURSUIT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds EASTER SEALS OF GREATER HOUSTON 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 · Strake Foundation · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Network for Good · National Philanthropic Trust · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation 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 JA Sprague 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.
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.