· Private foundation
The Carl a Davis and Lois E Davis 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k15 grants · $26k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $120k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $509k
- $250k+1 grant · $7.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF ST THOMAS | $7,175,000 |
| HOUSTON COALITION FOR LIFE | $175,000 |
| ETERNAL WORD TELEVISION NETWORK | $150,000 |
| LET THE CHILDREN LIVE | $75,000 |
| OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM CATHOLIC CHURCH | $59,300 |
| GUADALUPE RADIO NETWORK | $50,000 |
| STAR OF HOPE | $25,000 |
| ST JOHN PAUL II FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| THOMAS MORE SOCIETY | $20,000 |
| CATHOLIC LITERARY ARTS | $10,000 |
| THE PERSONAL ORDINARIATE OF THE CHAIR OF ST PETER | $10,000 |
| ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM | $10,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR LIFE | $10,000 |
| HOUSTON METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| HEROIC MEDIA | $5,000 |
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, $323k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 7% 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 +44% since the first grant, against +40% for the ones you funded once.
55 repeat relationships — 24 still active in FY2024, 31 since wound down; 5 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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $12k 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
- UOUniversity of St Thomas8× · 2017–2024 · $15M · revenue +70%
- EWETERNAL WORD TELEVISION NETWORK INC8× · 2017–2024 · $866k · revenue +98%
- HCHOUSTON COALITION FOR LIFE8× · 2017–2024 · $353k · revenue +77%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $2.5M
- STST THOMAS EPISCOPAL SCHOOLone grant, 2019 · $500k
- MAMISES ACADEMYone grant, 2017 · $35k
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.
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.
St. marys university, as a catholic marianist university, fosters the formation of people in faith and educates leaders for the common good through community, integrated liberal arts and professional education, and academic excellence.
Trinity university is an independent co-educational university whose mission is excellence in the interrelated areas of teaching, research and services.
The International Catholic Jurists Forum (ICJF) was established to produce, compile, and share resources on fundamental human rights under attack in the regional and international human rights protection systems. It operates as a forum for…
As a catholic university sponsored by the sisters of divine providence, our lady of the lake university is a community whose members are committed to serve students by: (continued on schedule o).
Loyola University New Orleans, a Jesuit and Catholic institution of higher education, welcomes students of diverse backgrounds and prepares them to lead meaningful lives with and for others; to pursue truth, wisdom, and virtue; and to work…
The institute's mission is to conduct research on key issues facing society to help both the church and society deal thoughtfully with the major issues they face globally. the institute also sponsors and conducts research and scholarship…
To provide high quality, cost-effective health care that delivers the best value to the people we serve in a spiritual environment of caring in association with internationally recognized teaching and research.
St. Peter Catholic High School empowers students to be models of faith through Catholic spiritual formation, while providing a creative and comprehensive education in career and technical pathways.
The ACLU of Texas works with communities, at the State Capitol, and in the courts to protect and advance civil rights and civil liberties for every Texan, no exceptions.
See Schedule O. See explanation for Form 990, Part I, Line 1 - Organization's Mission above.
Organization's mission loyola marymount university maintains a three-fold mission: 1)the encouragement of learning, 2) the education of the whole person, and 3)the service of faith and the promotion of justice.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is University of St Thomas and the most unlike its peers is Father Flanagan's Boys' Home. 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 45 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.
40 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. 40 of the 80 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 University of St Thomas ↗
- Who funds THE METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ETERNAL WORD TELEVISION NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON COALITION FOR LIFE ↗
- Who funds LET THE CHILDREN LIVE INC ↗
- Who funds LA PROMESA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds STAR OF HOPE MISSION ↗
- Who funds CPI FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE JOHN PAUL II FOUNDATION FOR LIFE AND FAMILY ↗
- Who funds MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM ↗
- Who funds ST DOMINIC VILLAGE ↗
- Who funds THOMAS MORE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR LIFE ↗
- Who funds TEXAS EDUCATION WORKS ↗
- Who funds NORTH HOUSTON CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds OILFIELD CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP OF HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds THOMAS MORE LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds CATH LEAGUE FOR RELIGIOUS & CIVIL RIGHTS ↗
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: Strake Foundation · Scanlan Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · Marek Family Foundation · Greater Houston Community Foundation · Harry S & Isabel C Cameron Foundation Sentinel Trust Company · The HydroPhilanthropy Foundation · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · Knights of Columbus Charitable Fund Inc · The Warren J and Marylou Hayford Family Foundation · The John G and Marie Stella Kenedy Memorial Foundation · Texas Instruments 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 Carl a Davis and Lois E Davis 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.
- Museum of Fine Arts — 0% 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 Carl a Davis and Lois E Davis Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Carl a Davis and Lois E Davis 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.