· Private foundation
The Gilstrap Foundation
Its FY2025 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
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k23 grants · $62k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HOUSTON METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATI | $10,000 |
| CONGREGATION BETH ISRAEL | $5,650 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER HOUSTO | $5,500 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF ELMIRA-CORN | $5,350 |
| HOUSTON AREA WOMEN'S CENTER | $5,182 |
| RAPE ABUSE INCEST NATIONAL NETWORK | $5,000 |
| STAR OF HOPE MISSION | $5,000 |
| WXXI PUBLIC BROADCASTING | $5,000 |
| HOUSTON FOOD BANK | $5,000 |
| HOUSTON AUDUBON SOCIETY | $3,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,500 |
| FORSYTH HUMANE SOCIETY | $2,010 |
| JACKSON HOLE JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTE | $2,000 |
| TEXAS CASA | $1,000 |
| FINGER LAKES SPCA | $1,000 |
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 (FY21–25, $62k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 9% of The Gilstrap 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, 55% of the giving stays in TX; read by stated purpose it is 63% — more 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 +11% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
31 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down; 5 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $8k 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
WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY3× · 2021–2023 · $71k · revenue +24%
DRESS FOR SUCCESS HOUSTON4× · 2021–2024 · $16k · revenue +38%- TFThe Finger Lakes Land Trust Inc3× · 2021–2023 · $11k · revenue +15%
Funded once
PARTNERS IN HEALTH A NONPROFIT CORPORATIONone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue -14%
FUTURES WITHOUT VIOLENCEgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue +51%- HHHouston Habitat for Humanity Incone grant, 2024 · $3k · revenue 0%
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.
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…
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.
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 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…
The Houston Bar Foundation supports programs that help provide legal representation to the indigent, promote community understanding of our legal system, and foster the administration of justice.
The ACLU of Texas works with communities, at the State Capitol, and in the courts to protect and advance civil rights and civil liberties for every Texan, no exceptions.
The ACLU Foundation of Texas is the unyielding guardian and promoter of freedom, justice, equality and dignity of all people, particularly for those who are still fighting to secure the full exercise of their civil rights and liberties.…
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.
At the Every Texan, we believe in a Texas that offers everyone the chance to compete and succeed in life. We envision a Texas where everyone is healthy, well educated, and financially secure. We want the best Texas, a proud state that sets…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Houston Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Houston Nursing Education Foundation. 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 31 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.
47 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. 47 of the 67 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 WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Houston Area Women's Center ↗
- Who funds United Way of Greater Houston ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF THE SOUTHERN TIER INC ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds DRESS FOR SUCCESS HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds The Finger Lakes Land Trust Inc ↗
- Who funds Jewish Federation of Greater Houston ↗
- Who funds TEXAS CENTER FOR JUSTICE AND EQUITY ↗
- Who funds PARTNERS IN HEALTH A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Rape Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) ↗
- Who funds WXXI PUBLIC BROADCASTING COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds KIDS' MEALS INC ↗
- Who funds STAR OF HOPE MISSION ↗
- Who funds Camp For All Foundation ↗
- Who funds Making It Better dba Literacy Now ↗
- Who funds FUTURES WITHOUT VIOLENCE ↗
- Who funds FINGER LAKES SPCA INC ↗
- Who funds HOLOCAUST MUSEUM HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds INSIDE BOOKS PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Forsyth Humane Society ↗
- Who funds The Houston Audubon Society ↗
- Who funds Houston Habitat for Humanity Inc ↗
- Who funds TEXAS CASA INC ↗
- Who funds PLANT IT FORWARD ↗
- Who funds Texas Coastal Exchange ↗
- Who funds ALI FORNEY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds LEE COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER HOUSTON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
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 · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · Centerpoint Energy Foundation Inc · Houston Endowment Inc · Mechia Foundation · Houston Jewish Community Foundation · Meadows Foundation Inc · Greater Houston Community Foundation · Austin Community Foundation Inc · Texas Mutual Insurance Company · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · New Venture 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 Gilstrap 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.
- Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation — 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.