· Private foundation
The Awe and Wonder 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FOCUS North America | $75,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $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 (FY23–24, $150k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, 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.
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 +34% since the first grant, against +24% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2024, 15 since wound down; 1 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, 60% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $50k 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
- TSTHE SAINT CONSTANTINE SCHOOL3× · 2017–2023 · $197k · revenue +274%
- ADAgape Development Ministries3× · 2021–2023 · $150k · revenue +60%
INT'L ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN CHARITIES INC2× · 2020–2021 · $150k · revenue +22%
Funded once
- SSST SILOUAN ORTHODOX CHURCHone grant, 2019 · $126k
- AMAmazima Ministries International Education and Empowerment for Eastone grant, 2017 · $100k · revenue +10%
- FFFELLOWSHIP FOR PERFORMING ARTS INCone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue +24%
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 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."
Partner with families to provide students a christ-centered education while fostering a life of faith and service. the school desires to associate with like-minded teachers, administrators, staff, parents, and students to communicate the…
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…
Christian pre-school from age 3-months to school-age, and school from
Trinity Classical School is a Christian school that uses classical curriculum and a collaborative approach.
TWCA is an independent, Christ-centered college preparatory school that integrates learning with biblical faith and challenges our students to reach their highest potential - intellectually, creatively, physically, and socially - for the…
Provide teaching of the word of god and religious music.
The mission is to provide a biblically based classical college preparatory education that inspires a passion for excellence a heart of grace and the character of Christ.
Christian Mission for the United Nations Community is a ministry aimed at leading the head of every nation and other top leaders to faith in Jesus Christ and helping them to walk in dependence upon God as they discharge the…
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…
Global City Mission Initiative is dedicated to cross-cultural evanglism, disciplemaking, church planting among diverse diaspora populations in strategic cities reaching out evangelistically to start multiply churches, training believers to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Houston Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is The Preemptive Love Coalition. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 23 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% 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.
19 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. 19 of the 39 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 Harbor Christian Academy ↗
- Who funds THE SAINT CONSTANTINE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Agape Development Ministries ↗
- Who funds INT'L ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds FOCUS NORTH AMERICA ↗
- Who funds Amazima Ministries International Education and Empowerment for East ↗
- Who funds FELLOWSHIP FOR PERFORMING ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds THE PREEMPTIVE LOVE COALITION ↗
- Who funds MISSION CENTERS OF HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds Mercury Chamber Orchestra Inc ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds STAR OF HOPE MISSION ↗
- Who funds YOUTH-REACH HOUSTON INC ↗
- Who funds THE COCAMA PROJECT ↗
- Who funds YELLOWSTONE ACADEMY INC DBA YELLOWSTONE SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF THE BRAZOS VALLEY ↗
- Who funds GREATER HOUSTON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PARKER SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Recipe for Success Foundation ↗
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 · Oldham Little Church Foundation · The Brown Foundation Inc · Christian Community Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · American Endowment Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc
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 Awe and Wonder 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.
- Int'l Orthodox Christian Charities Inc — 7% 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 The Awe and Wonder Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Awe and Wonder 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.