· Private foundation
The Arena Energy 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 $10k21 grants · $49k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $245k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA | $50,000 |
| MEALS ON WHEELS MONTGOMERY COUNTY | $36,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $35,000 |
| BIG BROTHER BIG SISTERS OF HOUSTON | $31,000 |
| ANGEL REACH | $30,000 |
| ALL EARS LISTENING AND LANGUAGE CENTER | $25,000 |
| COMBINED ARMS | $22,619 |
| INSPIRATION RANCH | $15,000 |
| EMS FDNY HELP FUND | $10,194 |
| THE PARISH SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| SPRING WOODLANDS MINISTRIES | $10,000 |
| GO DRILL INTERNATIONAL INC | $10,000 |
| DREAMS COME TRUE OF LOUISIANA | $10,000 |
| COLLINS 8 FOUNDATION | $8,888 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,050 |
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, $521k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 36% 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 +53% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
48 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 30 since wound down; 15 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, 76% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $71k 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
- IRINSPIRATION RANCH INC6× · 2019–2025 · $220k · revenue +118%
- ARANGEL REACH8× · 2018–2025 · $106k · revenue +71%
- AEAll Ears Listening and Language Center7× · 2018–2025 · $105k · revenue +284%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $32k
- TMTOMAGWA MINISTRIES INC DBA TOMAGWA HEALTHCARE MINISTRIESone grant, 2020 · $25k · revenue -2%
- RRRAHAB'S RANCH AND RETREATone grant, 2018 · $20k
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.
To provide emergency assistance to people in Montgomery County, TX who are in an unexpected crisis.
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.
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,…
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…
Our mission is to provide high quality and caring services to promote healthy people and communities.
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,…
Knowing that every child's life is sacred, our promise is to improve the health of every child in our region through the prevention and treatment of illness, disease and injury.
With more than 1 million patient visits each year, Children's Health is North Texas' leading pediatric health system and among the largest in the nation. For more than a century, our mission has been clear: make life better for children.…
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.
To enrich life through discovery, education, and the conservation of plants and the natural environment.
Hmm health provides quality healthcare to all its neighbors with love, compassion, and respect.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Inspiration Ranch Inc and the most unlike its peers is Music City Bass. 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 29 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 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
63 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. 63 of the 159 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 INSPIRATION RANCH INC ↗
- Who funds ANGEL REACH ↗
- Who funds All Ears Listening and Language Center ↗
- Who funds Compassion United ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds Go Drill International Inc ↗
- Who funds Combined Arms ↗
- Who funds INSPIRE FILM FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds KIDS' MEALS INC ↗
- Who funds BRIGHT LIGHT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS MONTGOMERY COUNTY ↗
- Who funds SPRING-WOODLANDS MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds IMPACT HUB HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds Small Steps Nurturing Center ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TOMAGWA MINISTRIES INC DBA TOMAGWA HEALTHCARE MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds MILES PERRET CANCER SERVICES ↗
- Who funds DREAMS COME TRUE OF LOUISIANA INC ↗
- Who funds PRISON ENTREPRENEURSHIP PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds COVENANT HOUSE TEXAS ↗
- Who funds Montgomery County Childrens Advocacy Center Inc ↗
- Who funds RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES GREATER HOUSTON INC ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds Woodlands Waterway Arts Council Inc ↗
- Who funds The John Cooper School ↗
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: Shell USA Company Foundation · Greater Houston Community Foundation · Montgomery County Community Foundation · The Woodforest Charitable Foundation · United Way of Greater Houston · The Hillcrest Foundation · The Methodist Hospital · Wcn Cares · Baker Hughes Foundation · Halliburton Charitable Foundation · Strake Foundation · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable 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 The Arena Energy 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 The Arena Energy Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Arena Energy 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.