· Private foundation
The Powell 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 $10k107 grants · $426k
- $10k–50k64 grants · $1.2M
- $50k–250k80 grants · $7.6M
- $250k+20 grants · $11M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Precinct4Forward | $1,500,000 |
| Boys & Girls Club of Walker County | $1,262,295 |
| The Holdsworth Center | $981,164 |
| BridgeYear | $949,815 |
| The Bridgespan Group | $838,175 |
| Catalyst Education DBA Catalyst Exchange | $700,000 |
| United Way for Greater Austin | $655,729 |
| University of Houston Foundation | $399,000 |
| Education First | $372,313 |
| 40 Schools | $370,000 |
| AVANCE Inc | $365,000 |
| Arts Connect Houston | $350,000 |
| Creative Action | $350,000 |
| National Association for Family Child Care | $350,000 |
| Trust for Learning a project of New Venture Fund | $350,000 |
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, $7.2M) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 99% 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 8% of The Powell 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.
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 +22% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
283 repeat relationships — 141 still active in FY2025, 142 since wound down; 66 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, 66% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6.9M 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
- MMINDPOP6× · 2017–2024 · $2.0M · revenue +8% · 60% of their budget
- BGBoys & Girls Club of Walker County Texas Inc7× · 2017–2025 · $1.7M · revenue +2%
- GRGood Reason Houston Inc3× · 2019–2025 · $1.6M · revenue ×24
Funded once
- KIKABOOM INCone grant, 2021 · $1.5M · revenue -22%
- HAHouston Arts Allianceone grant, 2021 · $993k · revenue -2%
- EOEQUAL OPPORTUNITY SCHOOLSgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $867k · revenue +31%
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 Houston Local Information Initiative, Inc. provides public service journalism that reflects the civic needs of the diverse communities comprising Greater Houston.
Glasstire is a website about visual art in Texas. Our mission is to expand the conversation about visual art in Texas.
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…
The Progress Texas Institute provides research and strategic communications on issues with the ultimate goal of increasing civic engagement.
Leadership austin connects and develops leaders to courageously engage and transform our communities.
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.
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…
Wonderworks educates students to become better-qualified college applicants and better equipped to succeed in undergraduate studies by exploring challenging subject matter and techniques in a college setting.
The witte museum inspires people to shape the future of texas through transformative and relevant experiences in nature, science and culture.
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…
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.
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For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Grantmakers for Education and the most unlike its peers is The Foundation At Shield Ranch. 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 33 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.8% 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.
370 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. 370 of the 527 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 MINDPOP ↗
- Who funds THE BRIDGESPAN GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds Boys & Girls Club of Walker County Texas Inc ↗
- Who funds Good Reason Houston Inc ↗
- Who funds BRIDGEYEAR ↗
- Who funds PRECINCT4FORWARD ↗
- Who funds KABOOM INC ↗
- Who funds THE HOLDSWORTH CENTER ↗
- Who funds SPARK ↗
- Who funds Hermann Park Conservancy ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY FOR GREATER AUSTIN ↗
- Who funds Collaborative for Children ↗
- Who funds MEADOWS MENTAL HEALTH POLICY INSTITUTE FOR TEXAS ↗
- Who funds United Way of Greater Houston ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF HOUSTON INC ↗
- Who funds HAY Center Foundation ↗
- Who funds Houston Arts Alliance ↗
- Who funds Collegespring Inc ↗
- Who funds Breakthrough Houston ↗
- Who funds YES Prep Public Schools Inc ↗
- Who funds Houston Zoo Inc ↗
- Who funds EQUAL OPPORTUNITY SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds Memorial Park Conservancy Inc ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds The W Oscar Neuhaus Memorial Foundation ↗
- Who funds Houston Arboretum & Nature Center ↗
- Who funds Texas Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds E3 ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds Buffalo Bayou Partnership Inc ↗
- Who funds GREATER HOUSTON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Arts Connect Houston ↗
- Who funds DISCOVERU ↗
- Who funds New Hope Housing Inc ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED ↗
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 Endowment Inc · The Brown Foundation Inc · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · Strake Foundation · The Elkins Foundation · Greater Houston Community Foundation · Vivian L Smith Foundation · United Way of Greater Houston · The William Stamps Farish Fund · Centerpoint Energy Foundation Inc · Harry S & Isabel C Cameron Foundation Sentinel Trust Company · The Methodist Hospital
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 Powell 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Powell Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Powell 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.