· Private foundation
The Cockrell 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
- Under $10k3 grants · $9k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $214k
- $250k+4 grants · $11M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| University of Texas Foundation | $4,016,163 |
| MD Anderson Cancer Center | $3,193,232 |
| Methodist Hospital Foundation | $1,693,232 |
| Houston Museum of Natural Science | $1,683,232 |
| Kids' Meals Inc | $30,000 |
| University of Texas Foundation | $23,764 |
| Kinkaid School Inc | $20,000 |
| Hermann Park Conservancy | $20,000 |
| Grace Bible Church | $20,000 |
| Houston's Amazing Place Inc | $20,000 |
| Second Baptist Church | $20,000 |
| The WorkFaith Connection | $20,000 |
| The Brookwood Community Inc | $20,000 |
| The Philanthropy Roundtable Inc | $10,000 |
| Houston Museum of Natural Science | $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.
Your human-services grants (FY17–24, $685k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 21% of The Cockrell Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 100% of the giving stays in TX; read by stated purpose it is 69% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +42% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
42 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2024, 28 since wound down.
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; $0 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
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS FOUNDATION INC8× · 2017–2024 · $29M · revenue +213%
Houston Museum of Natural Science8× · 2017–2024 · $12M · revenue +33%- IPIDEA Public Schools2× · 2020–2021 · $2.0M · revenue +78%
Funded once
- BSBoy Scouts of Americaone grant, 2017 · $275k
- BBakerRipleygraduatedone grant, 2017 · $25k · revenue +89%
- HMHOLOCAUST MUSEUM HOUSTONone grant, 2017 · $15k · revenue -55%
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.
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.
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…
MADE Houston was formed to create a school community focused on nurturing and developing the unique academic and social needs of students with learning differences and to successfully transition students into mainstream schools.
The Houston Local Information Initiative, Inc. provides public service journalism that reflects the civic needs of the diverse communities comprising Greater Houston.
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 mission of Collaborative for Children is to meaningfully improve the quality of early childhood education and care for Greater Houston's children through those most influential in their lives.
Seeking to put God's love into action, Houston Habitat for Humanity brings people together to build homes, communities and hope to provide a world where everyone has a decent place to live.
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…
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…
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…
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Houston Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Free Enterprise Institute. 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) — 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 18% 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.
57 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. 57 of the 68 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 THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Houston Museum of Natural Science ↗
- Who funds IDEA Public Schools ↗
- Who funds GREATER HOUSTON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds REASONING MIND INC ↗
- Who funds KIDS' MEALS INC ↗
- Who funds Free Enterprise Institute ↗
- Who funds Youth Entrepreneurs Inc ↗
- Who funds The Kinkaid School Inc ↗
- Who funds THE PHILANTHROPY ROUNDTABLE ↗
- Who funds THE WORKFAITH CONNECTION ↗
- Who funds The Brookwood Community Inc ↗
- Who funds SIRE INC ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR PURSUIT ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HORSES INC ↗
- Who funds Houston's Amazing Place Inc ↗
- Who funds BakerRipley ↗
- Who funds Hermann Park Conservancy ↗
- Who funds Texas A&M Foundation ↗
- Who funds Joy Development School ↗
- Who funds Menil Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds LILY'S TOY BOX ↗
- Who funds HOLOCAUST MUSEUM HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds Contemporary Arts Museum Houston ↗
- Who funds SECOND BAPTIST SCHOOL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Agape Development Ministries ↗
- Who funds MARCH OF DIMES INC ↗
- Who funds THE SUNSHINE KIDS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Teach for America 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: Greater Houston Community Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · The Brown Foundation Inc · The Elkins Foundation · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · Strake Foundation · Harry S & Isabel C Cameron Foundation Sentinel Trust Company · The William Stamps Farish Fund · Jack H & William M Light Charitable Trust · MD Anderson Foundation · Houston Endowment Inc · The John M O'Quinn 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 Cockrell 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 Cockrell Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Cockrell 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.