· Private foundation
The Crain 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 $10k94 grants · $257k
- $10k–50k37 grants · $627k
- $50k–250k13 grants · $1.0M
- $250k+1 grant · $760k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| EPISCOPAL HIGH SCHOOL | $760,000 |
| LONGVIEW MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS | $195,000 |
| TRINITY SCHOOL OF TEXAS THE | $101,600 |
| ST LUKES UNITED METHODIST CHURCH | $100,000 |
| ST JOHN'S SCHOOL | $86,000 |
| LAWRENCEVILLE SCHOOL THE | $78,000 |
| AUSTIN TRINITY SCHOOL | $75,000 |
| HOUSTON METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATI | $70,000 |
| WASHINGTON LEE UNIVERSITY | $60,000 |
| FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $55,000 |
| RHODES COLLEGE | $50,000 |
| MARTIN HOUSE CAC THE | $50,000 |
| CAMP FOR ALL FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY SERVICE CENTER | $50,000 |
| NEUHAUS EDUCATION CENTER | $40,000 |
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, $803k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, 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.
211 repeat relationships — 136 still active in FY2024, 75 since wound down; 7 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $19k 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
- RCRhodes College8× · 2017–2024 · $935k · revenue +13%
- LMLONGVIEW MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS7× · 2017–2024 · $888k · revenue +159% · 29% of their budget
Camp For All Foundation8× · 2017–2024 · $575k · revenue +280%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $110k
- RMRONALD MCDONALD HOUSEone grant, 2017 · $25k
- KHKILGORE HISTORICAL PRESERVATION FOUone grant, 2017 · $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.
The witte museum inspires people to shape the future of texas through transformative and relevant experiences in nature, science and culture.
The Houston Local Information Initiative, Inc. provides public service journalism that reflects the civic needs of the diverse communities comprising Greater Houston.
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…
Lone Star Flight Museum (LSFM) celebrates flight and achievements in Texas aviation, engages youth through STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), and believes aviation inspires achievement and endless possibilities.
The Hospice at the Texas Medical Center holds a freestanding 37 bed inpatient facility in the Texas Medical Center that is operated and managed by Houston Hospice.
Texas christian university is an institution of higher education which includes nine major academic units: liberal arts, science and engineering, business, education, fine arts, communication, honors, nursing and health sciences, and the…
Founded as a Christian ministry of healing, Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH) promotes the well-being of all individuals, families and communities.
To generate superior long-term investment returns to support The University of Texas and Texas A&M University systems as they provide world-class teaching, push the boundaries of discovery, and achieve excellence in patient healthcare for…
The mission of hardin-simmons university is to be a community dedicated to providing excellence in education enlightened by christian faith and values.
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 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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Yellowstone Academy Inc Dba Yellowstone Schools and the most unlike its peers is Snooty Giggles Dog Rescue. 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 39 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 27% 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 17% 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.
146 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. 146 of the 282 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 TRUSTEES OF THE LAWRENCEVILLE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Rhodes College ↗
- Who funds LONGVIEW MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS ↗
- Who funds Camp For All Foundation ↗
- Who funds Washington and Lee University ↗
- Who funds BUCKNER INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds St John's School ↗
- Who funds Christian Community Service Center Inc ↗
- Who funds The W Oscar Neuhaus Memorial Foundation ↗
- Who funds LONGVIEW WORLD OF WONDERS INC ↗
- Who funds REMIND ↗
- Who funds Southern Methodist University ↗
- Who funds NORTHEAST TEXAS HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds PANOLA COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PRESBYTERIAN CAMPS AT GILMONT INC ↗
- Who funds COLGATE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LONGVIEW SYMPHONY LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds TIRR Foundation ↗
- Who funds AUSTIN TRINITY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Texas Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds GOOD SHEPHERD FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds KENYON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds THE KILGORE COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
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: Rosa May Griffin Foundation · East Texas Communities Foundation · Greater Houston Community Foundation · Vivian L Smith Foundation · American Electric Power Foundation · The Brown Foundation Inc · Strake Foundation · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · Ben and Maytee Fisch Foundation · The Elkins Foundation · Wece B and Martha a Johnson Foundation · Houston Endowment 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 Crain 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.
- Preeclampsia Foundation Inc — 9% of income from government
- K9S for Warriors Inc — 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 Crain Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Crain 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.