· Private foundation
The Carruth Foundation Inc
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
- $10k–50k6 grants · $108k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $635k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BUFFALO BAYOU PARTNERSHIP | $200,000 |
| HOUSTON SPCA | $150,000 |
| THE PARISH CHILDREN'S SCHOOL | $100,000 |
| SARATOGA SPRINGS PRESERVATION FDN | $85,000 |
| HOUSTON MUSEUM OF NATURAL SCIENCE | $50,000 |
| HOUSTON SYMPHONY SOCIETY | $50,000 |
| STORM HARBOR EQUESTRIAN CENTER | $25,000 |
| THE BEACON | $25,000 |
| ST JOHN SCHOOL | $25,000 |
| THEATRE UNDER THE STARS | $12,500 |
| THE WILL ERWIN HEADACHE RESEARCH FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| CAMP FOR ALL | $10,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 92% of your 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.
16 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down; 3 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $85k 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
- HGHouston Grand Opera Association Inc4× · 2017–2021 · $340k · revenue +28%
- BBBuffalo Bayou Partnership Inc2× · 2017–2025 · $225k · revenue +185%
- SSSARATOGA SPRINGS PRESERVATION FOUNDATION INC4× · 2022–2025 · $180k · revenue +67%
Funded once
- RORiver Oaks Chamber Orchestragraduatedone grant, 2017 · $30k · revenue +127%
Hermann Park Conservancygraduatedone grant, 2024 · $25k · revenue +32%- HAHouston Arboretum & Nature Centergraduatedone grant, 2017 · $25k · revenue +25%
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.
Plant, protect and promote trees all over the greater Houston area.
The Health Museum is an innovative science center that provides an interactive and entertaining experience for all ages, promotes understanding and appreciation of the human body, mind, and spirit, and inspires a lifelong commitment to…
The Heritage Society (THS) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1954 whose mission is to tell the stories of the diverse history of Houston and Texas through collections, exhibits, the arts, educational programs, film, video, and other…
Harmonia Stellarum is an ensemble of professional vocalists and instrumentalists specialized in historically informed performance practice who seek to inspire, entertain, and enlighten audiences with meaningful, historically informed…
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…
To completely restore Houston Freedmen's Town as a heritage district that provides America with its only Freedmen's Town.
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 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…
CAMH presents extraordinary and thought-provoking arts programming and exhibitions.
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Beacon of Downtown Houston and the most unlike its peers is Blood Cancer United Inc. 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 43 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 30% 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 19% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 30 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 HOUSTON SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds THE PARISH CHILDREN'S SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Houston Museum of Natural Science ↗
- Who funds NORTHLAND CHRISTIAN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Houston Grand Opera Association Inc ↗
- Who funds Buffalo Bayou Partnership Inc ↗
- Who funds SARATOGA SPRINGS PRESERVATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SLIPPERY ROCK UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Presbyterian School ↗
- Who funds Theatre Under the Stars Inc ↗
- Who funds Camp For All Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE BEACON OF DOWNTOWN HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds Houston Symphony Society ↗
- Who funds River Oaks Chamber Orchestra ↗
- Who funds St John's School ↗
- Who funds Hermann Park Conservancy ↗
- Who funds Houston Arboretum & Nature Center ↗
- Who funds Joy Development School ↗
- Who funds THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds Discovery Green Conservancy ↗
- Who funds RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES GREATER HOUSTON INC ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds THE WILL ERWIN HEADACHE RESEARCH 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 · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · Houston Endowment Inc · The Brown Foundation Inc · Vivian L Smith Foundation · The William Stamps Farish Fund · John P McGovern Foundation · Strake Foundation · The Wortham Foundation Inc · The Sarofim Foundation · Alvin & Lucy Owsley 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 Carruth Foundation Inc 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 Carruth Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to The Carruth Foundation Inc 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.