· Private foundation
The Kayser Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k29 grants · $111k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $88k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHILDREN'S FUND INC | $20,000 |
| MD ANDERSON CANCER CENTER | $17,500 |
| PERFORMING ARTS HOUSTON | $10,000 |
| AGAPE DEVELOPMENT | $10,000 |
| REFUEL CARES FOUNDATION LEUKEMIA & LYMPHOMA SOCIETY (LLS) 1ST ANNUAL REFUE | $10,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON - LAW FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| MEALS ON WHEELS | $10,000 |
| MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION | $9,000 |
| TEXAS CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $8,000 |
| THE MARINE CORPS SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION | $7,500 |
| HOUSTON ARBORETUM & NATURE CENTER | $7,500 |
| HOUSTON TEXANS FOUNDATION | $6,500 |
| ARMS SEEDS OF HOPE | $6,000 |
| INSPIRE WOMEN | $5,000 |
| THE BRYAN MUSEUM | $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, $58k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 78% 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 16% of The Kayser 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, 96% of the giving stays in TX; read by stated purpose it is 72% — less 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 +48% since the first grant, against +42% for the ones you funded once.
40 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2024, 22 since wound down; 17 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, 59% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $82k 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
- AFASTROS FOUNDATION4× · 2017–2022 · $58k · revenue +405%
- TCTHE CHILDREN'S FUND INC6× · 2017–2024 · $51k · revenue +93%
- PAPERFORMING ARTS HOUSTON5× · 2017–2024 · $48k · revenue +46%
Funded once
- UMUT MD ANDERSON CANCER CENTERone grant, 2018 · $30k
- TPTrinity Park Conservancygraduatedone grant, 2020 · $20k · revenue +405%
- GHGreater Houston Partnership Foundationgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $16k · revenue +268%
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 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.
The Houston Local Information Initiative, Inc. provides public service journalism that reflects the civic needs of the diverse communities comprising Greater Houston.
As the Houston affiliate of the National Christian Foundation (NCF), our mission is to serve and encourage givers to grow as faithful stewards who give wisely to further the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Our mission is to be the leading advocate for our member physicians, their patients and our community, in promoting the highest standards of ethical medical practice, access to quality medical care, medical education, research, and…
The HISD Foundation is dedicated to mobilizing the local community to support innovative priorities in HISD to improve outcomes for all students in the district. Our mission is to fund projects and programs of merit that fall outside of…
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.
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,…
American Leadership Forum (ALF) brings together, in classes, leaders with diverse perspectives so they can build relationships, learn to dialogue and respectfully differ, and work together for the good of our community.
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…
Seeking to put God's love into action, Houston Habitat for Humanity brings people together to build homes, communities and hope to provide a world where everyone has a decent place to live.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Memorial Hermann Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Astros 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 40 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 28% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 9% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
72 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. 72 of the 144 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 ASTROS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S FUND INC ↗
- Who funds PERFORMING ARTS HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds Memorial Hermann Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE WILL ERWIN HEADACHE RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Texas Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds Trinity Park Conservancy ↗
- Who funds COVENANT HOUSE TEXAS ↗
- Who funds CENIKOR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Greater Houston Partnership Foundation ↗
- Who funds Houston Arboretum & Nature Center ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds CHILD ADVOCATES INC ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON TRIDELTA PHILANTHROPIES INC ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON MARITIME MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS ↗
- Who funds Agape Development Ministries ↗
- Who funds PEGASUS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHANCE FOR HOPE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The University of Texas Law School Foundation ↗
- Who funds EASTER SEALS OF GREATER HOUSTON INC ↗
- Who funds University of Houston Law Foundation ↗
- Who funds NORTH TEXAS PUBLIC BROADCASTING 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: Greater Houston Community Foundation · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · Strake Foundation · Houston Endowment Inc · Shell USA Company Foundation · The Elkins Foundation · Harry S & Isabel C Cameron Foundation Sentinel Trust Company · The Brown Foundation Inc · Vivian L Smith Foundation · Hobby Family Foundation · Mechia Foundation · The William Stamps Farish 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 Kayser 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.
- Tulsa Community Foundation — 11% 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 Kayser Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Kayser 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.