· Public charity
The Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts
The Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts operates for the benefit of performing arts institutions within the State of Texas, primarily with respect to such institutions within the Greater Metropolitan Houston area.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $7k
- $10k–50k29 grants · $630k
- $50k–250k9 grants · $555k
- $250k+4 grants · $2.7M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Alley Theatre | $1,715,000 |
| Houston Ballet Foundation | $400,000 |
| Houston Symphony Society | $300,000 |
| Houston Grand Opera Association | $300,000 |
| Stages | $100,000 |
| University of Houston | $80,000 |
| Da Camera Society of Texas | $75,000 |
| Young Audiences of Houston | $50,000 |
| The Hobby Center Foundation | $50,000 |
| Mercury Chamber Orchestra | $50,000 |
| Da Camera Society of Texas | $50,000 |
| Theatre Under The Stars | $50,000 |
| Main Street Theater Houston | $50,000 |
| Catastrophic Theatre | $40,000 |
| 4th Wall Theatre Company | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY18–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 100% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +31% since the first grant, against -54% for the ones you funded once.
45 repeat relationships — 39 still active in FY2024, 6 since wound down; 2 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $90k 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
- ATALLEY THEATRE7× · 2018–2024 · $5.4M · revenue +41%
- HSHouston Symphony Society7× · 2018–2024 · $3.3M · revenue +55%
- HBHouston Ballet Foundation7× · 2018–2024 · $3.2M · revenue +14%
Funded once
- TFTHE FOUNDATION FOR JONES HALLone grant, 2023 · $1.5M · revenue -54%
- PRProject Row Housesone grant, 2022 · $300k · revenue -74%
- RCRothko Chapelone grant, 2022 · $250k
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.
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…
Hopera's mission is to produce live musical performances in unique Houston Area spaces that focus on and empower Houston Area artists. Our Pint-Sized Performance concert series empowers local musicians to create original programs that are…
Providing paid opportunities for Houston based singers.
APAC is a supporting organization to Stages, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization producing live theater.
Formed in 1993, the Classical Arts Society of Houston is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and maintaining the rich heritage of the classical performing arts of India. In particular, the organization presents South Indian…
The mission of International Voiches Houston is to create global harmony by celebrating and giving voice to human difference. More specifically, it is to build cultural bridges across Houston's diverse population by exploring and…
The Houston Choral Society is a professional quality civic chorus dedicated to performing great choral music to enrich the soul and advance the choral arts to Houston audiences and beyond.
American baroque opera company operates in the state of texas for the primary purpose of furthering the appreciaton of music, particularly opera, for the general public. american baroque opera company performs select operas throughout the…
To amplify diverse, under-performed, and newly composed classical music to communities in and beyond Houston through intensely collaborative chamber and orchestral performances.
The Garden Theatre's mission is to bring quality, artist-driven storytelling and forward-thinking theatrical experiences to audiences as diverse as the City of Houston.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Performing Arts Houston and the most unlike its peers is William Marsh Rice University. 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 35 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.
49 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. 49 of the 52 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 ALLEY THEATRE ↗
- Who funds Houston Symphony Society ↗
- Who funds Houston Ballet Foundation ↗
- Who funds Houston Grand Opera Association Inc ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FOR JONES HALL ↗
- Who funds Stages ↗
- Who funds Da Camera Society of Texas ↗
- Who funds Miller Theatre Advisory Board Inc ↗
- Who funds Multicultural Education and Counseling Through the Arts ↗
- Who funds Theatre Under the Stars Inc ↗
- Who funds Main Street Theater Houston ↗
- Who funds Project Row Houses ↗
- Who funds Mercury Chamber Orchestra Inc ↗
- Who funds William Marsh Rice University ↗
- Who funds Catastrophic Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds PERFORMING ARTS HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds YOUNG AUDIENCES INC OF HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds GILBERT & SULLIVAN SOCIETY OF HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds River Oaks Chamber Orchestra ↗
- Who funds THE ENSEMBLE THEATRE ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON CHAMBER CHOIR ↗
- Who funds 4TH WALL THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds MUSIC IN CONTEXT ↗
- Who funds HITS Theatre ↗
- Who funds CLASSICAL THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds DIVERSEWORKS INC ↗
- Who funds ARS LYRICA HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON YOUTH SYMPHONY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FESTIVAL FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON INTERNATIONAL DANCE COALITION ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON CHILDREN'S CHORUS INC ↗
- Who funds APOLLO CHAMBER PLAYERS ↗
- Who funds MUSIQA ↗
- Who funds Open Dance Project Inc ↗
- Who funds ASIA SOCIETY TEXAS CENTER ↗
- Who funds Express Childrens Theatre Express Childrens Theatre ↗
- Who funds CHAMBER MUSIC HOUSTON 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: Houston Arts Alliance · The Brown Foundation Inc · Houston Endowment Inc · Shell USA Company Foundation · Greater Houston Community Foundation · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · Miller Theatre Advisory Board Inc · The Powell Foundation · The Humphreys Foundation · The Wortham Foundation Inc · The Elkins Foundation · Arts Connect Houston
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 Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts 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 Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts?
Find your warmest path to The Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts 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.