· Private foundation
The Ott Family Foundation Fka as Ott Charitable 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HEART GIFT | $7,500 |
| THE KINKAID SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| WEST HOUSTON YOUNG LIFE | $5,000 |
| MCCOMBS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS | $5,000 |
| BAYOU BEND COLLECTION AND GARDENS | $4,600 |
| ST LUKE'S UNITED METHODIST CHURCH | $3,000 |
| EHLERS-DANLOS SOCIETY (EDS) | $3,000 |
| RIVER OAKS GARDEN CLUB | $3,000 |
| COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF HOUSTON | $2,000 |
| THE STORY CHURCH | $2,000 |
| GLENWOOD CEMETERY | $2,000 |
| FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $2,000 |
| WORKSHOP HOUSTON | $1,000 |
| NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION | $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 (FY20–22, $4k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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.
22 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 14 since wound down; 6 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, 67% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $15k 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
- TMTHE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON9× · 2017–2025 · $150k · revenue +96%
- TFTrees For Houston6× · 2018–2023 · $31k · revenue +181%
- ESEHLERS-DANLOS SOCIETY3× · 2018–2021 · $21k · revenue +498%
Funded once
- MOMen of Distinction of Greater Houstongraduatedone grant, 2019 · $15k · revenue +62%
- WSWEST SIDE YOUNG LIFEone grant, 2024 · $13k
- UOUNIVERSITY OF TEXAS - BLANTON MUSEUMone grant, 2017 · $5k
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…
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 Heritage Society (THS) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1954 whose mission is to tell the stories of the diverse history of Houston and Texas through collections, exhibits, the arts, educational programs, film, video, and other…
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…
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 Houston Local Information Initiative, Inc. provides public service journalism that reflects the civic needs of the diverse communities comprising Greater Houston.
The Houston Parks Board mission is to expand, improve, and protect parks and greenspace in the Houston region.
The Houston Parks Board Foundation provides the Houston Parks Board with financial assistance to support operations and park projects.
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 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…
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Goodwill Industries of Houston and the most unlike its peers is William Marsh Rice University. 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 36 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 30% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 19% 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.
32 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. 32 of the 54 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 THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds Trees For Houston ↗
- Who funds EHLERS-DANLOS SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds HEARTGIFT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Texas Heart Institute ↗
- Who funds The Kinkaid School Inc ↗
- Who funds Men of Distinction of Greater Houston ↗
- Who funds River Oaks Garden Club ↗
- Who funds Houston Botanic Garden ↗
- Who funds EX-STUDENTS' ASSOCIATION OF UT ↗
- Who funds WORKSHOP HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds GLENWOOD CEMETERY HISTORIC PRESERVATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Buffalo Bayou Partnership Inc ↗
- Who funds YOUNG LIFE ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF HOUSTON INC ↗
- Who funds KIDS' MEALS INC ↗
- Who funds GLENWOOD CEMETERY INC ↗
- Who funds GOODWILL INDUSTRIES OF HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds Bo's Place ↗
- Who funds South Texas Charity Weekend Inc ↗
- Who funds NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Texas Appleseed ↗
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 · The Brown Foundation Inc · William S & Lora Jean Kilroy Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · Brazelton Family Foundation · LykesKnapp Family Fund · Alvin & Lucy Owsley Foundation · J Squared Family Foundation · Hobby Family Foundation · Vivian L Smith Foundation · John P McGovern 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 Ott Family Foundation Fka as Ott Charitable 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.
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Find your warmest path to The Ott Family Foundation Fka as Ott Charitable 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.