· Private foundation
The Gelb Family Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k20 grants · $49k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $95k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $100k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Cooper Union | $50,000 |
| Houston Grand Opera | $50,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $35,000 |
| Planned Parenthood Federation of America | $30,000 |
| Holocaust Museum Houston | $10,000 |
| Compu-Dopt | $10,000 |
| St Luke's Foundation | $10,000 |
| The Menil Collection | $5,000 |
| Doctors Without Borders | $5,000 |
| Museum of Fine Arts Houston | $5,000 |
| Yivo Institute | $5,000 |
| Houston Food Bank | $5,000 |
| Rice University | $5,000 |
| Breckenridge Outdoor Education Center | $3,000 |
| Johnny Mac Tennis Project Inc | $2,750 |
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%. 95% 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 +67% since the first grant, against +24% for the ones you funded once.
33 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 4 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, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $12k 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 Inc9× · 2017–2025 · $389k · revenue +28%
PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC9× · 2017–2025 · $111k · revenue +12%- UOUniversity of St Thomas6× · 2017–2022 · $61k · revenue +70%
Funded once
United Way of Greater Houstonone grant, 2022 · $6k · revenue +24%- AAAlzheimer's Associationone grant, 2020 · $1k
- EWEmery Weiner Schoolone grant, 2021 · $1k
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.
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…
To enrich life through discovery, education, and the conservation of plants and the natural environment.
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…
Mission: Connect communities with animals, inspiring action to save wildlife. Vision: Be a leader in the global movement to save wildlife. (Continued on Schedule O) Houston Zoo, Inc. (HZI) strives to be a zoo that practices exemplary…
Plant, protect and promote trees all over the greater Houston area.
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…
The mission of the Houston Academy of Medicine is to support the community service, education, scientific, and charitable programs for physicians, their patients, and the community at large in Harris County.
Memorial hermann health system is a nonprofit, values-driven, community-owned health system dedicated to improving health. our vision is to create healthier communities, now and for generations to come. our values are community,…
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…
See Schedule OSt. John's School is an independent, co-educational day school presenting a 13-year sequence of college preparatory training. A non-profit institution, it was founded in 1946 to provide the community with a school of exacting…
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is University of St Thomas and the most unlike its peers is Summit County Rescue Group Inc. 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 49 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) — 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 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.
28 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. 28 of the 43 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 Grand Opera Association Inc ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds University of St Thomas ↗
- Who funds COMP-U-DOPT INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds Menil Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds HOLOCAUST MUSEUM HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds Baylor College of Medicine ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds Breckenridge Outdoor Education Center ↗
- Who funds William Marsh Rice University ↗
- Who funds COLORADO FOURTEENERS INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds SUMMIT COUNTY RESCUE GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds The Awty International School ↗
- Who funds ST LUKE'S FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE GIVING BACK FUND ↗
- Who funds BARBARA BUSH HOUSTON LITERACY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JOHNNY MAC TENNIS PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds THE LADIES VILLAGE IMPROVEMENT SOCIETY OF EAST HAMPTON ↗
- Who funds San Francisco Nativity Academy ↗
- Who funds United Way of Greater Houston ↗
- Who funds The Blue Bird Circle ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Young Men's Christian Association of the Greater Houston Area ↗
- Who funds HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE ASSOCIATION ↗
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 · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund
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 Gelb Family 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.