· Public charity
The Onestar Foundation
Onestar strengthens texas communities by creating pathways for individuals and organizations to engage, connect, and accelerate their impact.
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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CIS - SAN ANTONIO | $91,800 |
| CIS OF CENTRAL TEXAS | $60,169 |
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 (FY17–22, $19.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 44% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 +31% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
47 repeat relationships — 0 still active in FY2024, 47 since wound down; 2 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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $152k 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
- DDONORSCHOOSEORG2× · 2017–2018 · $4.3M · revenue +24%
- LILIFTFUND INC2× · 2017–2018 · $2.0M · revenue +88%
- LULearning Undefeated Inc2× · 2018–2019 · $1.8M · revenue +356% · 36% of their budget
Funded once
- NCNATIONAL CENTER FOR VICTIMS OF CRIME INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $7.2M · revenue +29%
- TCTEXAS CENTER FOR CHILD AND FAMILY STUDIESgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $2.4M · revenue ×437
- LSLONE STAR LEGAL AIDgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $2.3M · revenue +43%
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.
RAISE Texas advances equitable policies and programs that foster financial security and economic mobility for low- and moderate-income Texans. We equip, innovate and advocate to reduce disparities, remove barriers and build opportunities…
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.
To lead texas communities to make homelessness rare, brief, and non- curring; to help communities strategically plan to prevent and end homelessness.
The Houston Local Information Initiative, Inc. provides public service journalism that reflects the civic needs of the diverse communities comprising Greater Houston.
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…
To continuously improve the lives of South Texans by providing high quality health care, education, housing and economic opportunities to reduce poverty through services and partnerships.
Central houston civic improvement lnc.'s mission is to ensure the continued vitality and to support development of downtown and the central city that is critical to the continued health and growth of houston.
The mission of Family Service Center of Houston and Harris County (Family Houston) is to create a stronger community for tomorrow by helping individuals and families meet the challenges they face today. We help others help themselves.
See schedule ocentral houston champions a thriving downtown by connecting influential leaders through initiatives that advance the future of business and community for all.
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…
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.
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Houston Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Sandcastle Ministries Church. 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 32 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) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
144 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. 144 of the 222 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 NATIONAL CENTER FOR VICTIMS OF CRIME INC ↗
- Who funds DONORSCHOOSEORG ↗
- Who funds KABOOM INC ↗
- Who funds TEXAS CENTER FOR CHILD AND FAMILY STUDIES ↗
- Who funds LONE STAR LEGAL AID ↗
- Who funds Houston Responds ↗
- Who funds ICONNECT OUTREACH INC ↗
- Who funds COASTAL BEND DISASTER RECOVERY GROUP ↗
- Who funds LIFTFUND INC ↗
- Who funds Learning Undefeated Inc ↗
- Who funds GOLDEN CRESCENT HABITAT FOR HUMANITY ↗
- Who funds TEXAS STATE AFFORDABLE HOUSING CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds WHARTON RECOVERY TEAM ↗
- Who funds Texas Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds Collaborative for Children ↗
- Who funds NATL CHRISTIAN CHARITABLE FDN INC ↗
- Who funds United Way of Brazoria County ↗
- Who funds DEL MAR COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GOOD360 ↗
- Who funds SER-JOBS FOR PROGRESS OF THE TEXAS GULF COAST INC ↗
- Who funds ROCKPORT FULTON ISD EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE ST BERNARD PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds EDUCATION SERVICE CENTER REGION II ↗
- Who funds FAMILY SERVICES OF SOUTHEAST TEXAS INC ↗
- Who funds Texas Network of Youth Services Inc ↗
- Who funds PORT ARANSAS CHAMBER OF COMMERCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NEHEMIAH'S VISION INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED CORPUS CHRISTI CHAMBER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ATTACK POVERTY ↗
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: Center for Disaster Philanthropy Inc · Coastal Bend Community Foundation · United Way of Greater Houston · Houston Endowment Inc · Centerpoint Energy Foundation Inc · Greater Houston Community Foundation · Save The Children Federation Inc · Ed Rachal Foundation · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · The Houston Food Bank · Texas Mutual Insurance Company · The Brown Foundation Inc
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 Onestar 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.
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- Enterprise Community Partners Inc — 22% of income from government
- National Center for Victims of Crime Inc — 10% 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 Onestar Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Onestar 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.