· Private foundation
Sterling-Turner Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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
- $10k–50k81 grants · $2.0M
- $50k–250k25 grants · $1.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Crossway Bible Church | $120,000 |
| The Museum of Fine Arts Houston | $100,000 |
| Houston Food Bank | $100,000 |
| Star of Hope Mission | $80,000 |
| Texas Education Works | $60,000 |
| Forge for Families | $60,000 |
| Open Door Mission | $60,000 |
| Mercy Gate Ministries Inc | $50,000 |
| San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts | $50,000 |
| Hope and Healing Center & Institute | $50,000 |
| Magnificat Houses Inc | $50,000 |
| Houston Botanic Garden | $50,000 |
| The Museum of Fine Arts Houston | $50,000 |
| Camp for All Foundation | $50,000 |
| Kids' Meals Inc | $50,000 |
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, $1.3M) 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.
96 repeat relationships — 71 still active in FY2024, 25 since wound down; 28 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, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $750k 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
- SStages6× · 2017–2024 · $2.3M · revenue +8%
- TMTHE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON7× · 2018–2024 · $844k · revenue +54%
- TKThe Kinkaid School Inc4× · 2017–2023 · $800k · revenue +87%
Funded once
- RTRemember the Alamo Foundationone grant, 2023 · $500k · revenue -9%
- UOUniversity of Houston Foundationone grant, 2017 · $500k · revenue +20%
- MOMuseum of Fine Artsone grant, 2017 · $325k
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.
Plant, protect and promote trees all over the greater Houston area.
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.
Rebuilding Together Houston is the only organization in Houston and Harris County providing free home repairs to hundreds of families each year. We employ licensed contractors to restore homes to safe, livable conditions, extending each…
The Houston Local Information Initiative, Inc. provides public service journalism that reflects the civic needs of the diverse communities comprising Greater Houston.
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…
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.
See Schedule OThe Women's Resource of Greater Houston helps women and girls make choices toward becoming independent, productive, and financially stable. We fulfill our mission by recruiting volunteer instructors to deliver our programs in…
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…
As the Houston affiliate of the National Christian Foundation (NCF), our mission is to serve and encourage givers to grow as faithful stewards who give wisely to further the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
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…
Fostering family dba the riverside project is a 501(c)(3) public charity that on behalf of houston's children and their families, brings together organizations and passionate people working as one to help families heal and children thrive.
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,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Houston Ballet Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Reining Strength Therapeutic Horsemanship. 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 35 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 29% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 17% 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.
150 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. 150 of the 192 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 Stages ↗
- Who funds THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds The Kinkaid School Inc ↗
- Who funds Remember the Alamo Foundation ↗
- Who funds University of Houston Foundation ↗
- Who funds STAR OF HOPE MISSION ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts ↗
- Who funds KIDS' MEALS INC ↗
- Who funds Discovery Green Conservancy ↗
- Who funds Open Door Mission ↗
- Who funds CASA DE ESPERANZA DE LOS NINOS INC ↗
- Who funds Joy Development School ↗
- Who funds THE FORGE FOR FAMILIES ↗
- Who funds Houston Botanic Garden ↗
- Who funds Hope and Healing Center & Institute ↗
- Who funds Houston Museum of Natural Science ↗
- Who funds RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES GREATER HOUSTON INC ↗
- Who funds Seal Legacy Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Small Steps Nurturing Center ↗
- Who funds Houston Ballet Foundation ↗
- Who funds MERCY GATE MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds Magnificat Houses Inc ↗
- Who funds Houston Arboretum & Nature Center ↗
- Who funds THE WOMEN'S HOME ↗
- Who funds HILL COUNTRY CASA INC ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS LONE STAR ↗
- Who funds GRAPE CREEK VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT INC ↗
- Who funds BRIDGES TO LIFE ↗
- Who funds Hermann Park Conservancy ↗
- Who funds 1HOPE FOR KIDS INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL MEDAL OF HONOR MUSEUM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Christian Community Service Center 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: Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · Strake Foundation · Harry S & Isabel C Cameron Foundation Sentinel Trust Company · The Brown Foundation Inc · Greater Houston Community Foundation · The Elkins Foundation · Vivian L Smith Foundation · The William Stamps Farish Fund · Shell USA Company Foundation · Marek Family Foundation · The Powell Foundation · MD Anderson 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 Sterling-Turner 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 Sterling-Turner Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sterling-Turner 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.