· Private foundation
The Edward and Helen Oppenheimer 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 50% of THE EDWARD AND HELEN OPPENHEIMER FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k27 grants · $107k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $210k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HOUSTON FOOD BANK | $47,500 |
| ARTIST BOAT | $40,000 |
| HOUSTON HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $37,500 |
| THE SCHLENKLER SCHOOL | $20,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $15,000 |
| OUT YOUTH | $10,000 |
| MATERNITY CARE COALITION-PHILADELPH | $10,000 |
| MEMORIAL HERMANN FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| VERMONT COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS | $10,000 |
| ST ANNE'S SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| FOOD BANK OF THE SOUTHERN TIER | $7,500 |
| INTERFAITH MINISTRIES | $6,500 |
| HOLCAUST MUSEM HOUSTON | $6,000 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS | $5,000 |
| PODER | $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, $81k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 94% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +32% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.
92 repeat relationships — 32 still active in FY2024, 60 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $35k 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
- HHHouston Habitat for Humanity Inc8× · 2017–2024 · $318k · revenue +7%
- TATHE ARTIST BOAT INC7× · 2017–2024 · $138k · revenue +252%
The Houston Food Bank7× · 2017–2024 · $74k · revenue +107%
Funded once
- CBCONGREGATION BETH YESHURUN-DAY SCHOone grant, 2020 · $35k
- CBCONGREGATION BETH ISRAELone grant, 2017 · $11k
- GWGenesys Worksone grant, 2018 · $10k
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.
To enrich life through discovery, education, and the conservation of plants and the natural environment.
The Houston Local Information Initiative, Inc. provides public service journalism that reflects the civic needs of the diverse communities comprising Greater Houston.
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.
Glasstire is a website about visual art in Texas. Our mission is to expand the conversation about visual art in Texas.
The mission of the Houston Museum of Natural Science shall be to preserve and advance the general knowledge of natural science; to enhance in individuals the knowledge of and delight in natural science and related subjects; and to maintain…
See schedule ocentral houston champions a thriving downtown by connecting influential leaders through initiatives that advance the future of business and community for all.
Community information now (cinow) provides data, tools, analysis, and training to inform decisions to improve texas communities. cinow's vision is improved lives and decreased disparities through democratized data.
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.
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…
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…
LifeHouse is a Christ-centered ministry ensuring life for unborn children by providing opportunities for housing, help, and hope for young women during their pregnancies and beyond.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Houston Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Cair-Pennsylvania. 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 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 26% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 11% 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.
126 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. 126 of the 221 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 Houston Habitat for Humanity Inc ↗
- Who funds THE ARTIST BOAT INC ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds VERMONT COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds INPRINT INC ↗
- Who funds Texas Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds Theatre Under the Stars Inc ↗
- Who funds Memorial Hermann Foundation ↗
- Who funds DONORSCHOOSEORG ↗
- Who funds HOLOCAUST MUSEUM HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds BAYOU LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds The Brookwood Community Inc ↗
- Who funds PENNSYLVANIA PRISON SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Central Texas Food Bank Inc ↗
- Who funds Philabundance ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST ASSISTANCE MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds THE COLORADO COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Coastal Prairie Conservancy ↗
- Who funds WRITESPACE ↗
- Who funds WEST HOUSTON ASSISTANCE MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds FAITH IN PRACTICE ↗
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: Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · Greater Houston Community Foundation · The Brown Foundation Inc · Shell USA Company Foundation · The Powell Foundation · Centerpoint Energy Foundation Inc · Houston Endowment Inc · United Way of Greater Houston · Strake Foundation · The Elkins Foundation · The Methodist Hospital · Marek Family 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 Edward and Helen Oppenheimer 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.
- Outside in — 33% of income from government
- Urban League of Portland Inc — 33% of income from government
- Transition Projects Inc — 29% of income from government
- Oregon Food Bank — 21% of income from government
- The Portland Playhouse — 11% of income from government
- Central City Concern — 10% of income from government
- Learning Ally Inc — 4% of income from government
- The Institute of Contemporary Art Inc — 1% of income from government
- Northwest Professional Dance Projec Dba Northwest Dance Project — 1% of income from government
- Vermont College of Fine Arts 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 Edward and Helen Oppenheimer Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Edward and Helen Oppenheimer 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.