· Private foundation
The Humphreys 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 $10k1 grant · $8k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $150k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $1.1M
- $250k+2 grants · $550k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HOUSTON GRAND OPERA | $300,000 |
| HOUSTON SYMPHONY | $250,000 |
| ALLEY THEATRE | $200,000 |
| HOBBY CENTER FOR PERFORMING ARTS | $200,000 |
| STAGES REPERTORY THEATER | $200,000 |
| THEATRE UNDER THE STARS | $175,000 |
| AD PLAYERS | $175,000 |
| PERFORMING ARTS HOUSTON | $100,000 |
| HOUSTON BALLET | $75,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $40,000 |
| THE VALLEY PLAYERS | $30,000 |
| THE GRAND 1984 OPERA HOUSE | $20,000 |
| MAIN STREET THEATER | $20,000 |
| RIVER OAKS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA | $20,000 |
| MILLER OUTDOOR THEATRE | $20,000 |
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 (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 14%. 98% 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 +21% since the first grant, against +2% for the ones you funded once.
41 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2025, 25 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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 · $2.5M · revenue +28%
- ATALLEY THEATRE9× · 2017–2025 · $2.3M · revenue +107%
- HSHouston Symphony Society9× · 2017–2025 · $1.8M · revenue +43%
Funded once
- SStagesone grant, 2019 · $300k · revenue -29%
- SSShepherds School of Musicone grant, 2017 · $25k
- SSShepherd School of Musicone grant, 2019 · $25k
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.
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.
Founded in 1993, American Festival for the Arts (AFA) provides high quality community-based music education programs and performance opportunities designed primarily for youth and, through its concert series and outreach, seeks to broaden…
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…
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 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.
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…
TexARTS is an arts education and performance destination that builds character, professionalism, and careers. Its mission is to cultivate a thriving arts community by exposing all people to the visual and performing arts. TexARTS prepares…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Performing Arts Houston and the most unlike its peers is Fine Arts Society of Liberty Texas. 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 45 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 29% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 18% 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.
27 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. 27 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 Houston Grand Opera Association Inc ↗
- Who funds ALLEY THEATRE ↗
- Who funds Houston Symphony Society ↗
- Who funds A D Players ↗
- Who funds Theatre Under the Stars Inc ↗
- Who funds PERFORMING ARTS HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds Stages ↗
- Who funds River Oaks Chamber Orchestra ↗
- Who funds Main Street Theater Houston ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON MASTERWORKS CHORUS INC ↗
- Who funds Beaumont Community Players Inc dba Southeast Texas Stages ↗
- Who funds 1894 INC ↗
- Who funds HITS Theatre ↗
- Who funds YOUNG AUDIENCES INC OF HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds University of St Thomas ↗
- Who funds THE ENSEMBLE THEATRE ↗
- Who funds Da Camera Society of Texas ↗
- Who funds CANTARE HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds OPERA IN THE HEIGHTS ↗
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 Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts · The Wortham Foundation Inc · Miller Theatre Advisory Board Inc · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · The Brown Foundation Inc · Houston Endowment Inc · Greater Houston Community Foundation · Mechia Foundation · The Powell Foundation · The Elkins 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 Humphreys 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.