· Private foundation
The Robertson-Finley 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 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 $10k51 grants · $137k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $68k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center | $12,000 |
| Amazing Place | $12,000 |
| Baylor Medical Foundation | $12,000 |
| University of Texas at Austin Institute for Fusion Studies | $12,000 |
| Institute for Justice | $10,000 |
| Pacific Legal Foundation | $10,000 |
| State Policy Network | $7,000 |
| New Civil Liberties Alliance | $7,000 |
| The Leadership Institute | $6,000 |
| Houston SPCA | $5,000 |
| The Federalist Society | $5,000 |
| Judicial Watch | $5,000 |
| The Heartland Institute | $5,000 |
| Salvation Army of Greater Houston | $5,000 |
| American Federation for Children Growth Fund | $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 (FY20–22, $21k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
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 +48% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
84 repeat relationships — 56 still active in FY2025, 28 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
- IFINSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE9× · 2017–2025 · $72k · revenue +57%
- PLPacific Legal Foundation8× · 2017–2025 · $66k · revenue +136%
- WMWilliam Marsh Rice University3× · 2017–2019 · $54k · revenue +104%
Funded once
- TATexas A&M Foundationgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $18k · revenue +90%
- UOUniversity of Texas Austinone grant, 2017 · $17k
- TUTHE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS SOUTHWESTERN MEDICAL CENTEone grant, 2020 · $10k
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.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The foreign policy research institute (frpi) is dedicated to producing the highest quality scholarship and nonpartisan policy analysis focused on crucial foreign policy and national security challenges facing the united states. we educate…
Preservation of civil liberties through litigation and public education.
The Progress Texas Institute provides research and strategic communications on issues with the ultimate goal of increasing civic engagement.
Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan "fact tank" that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. Pew Research Center generates a foundation of facts that enriches the public dialogue and…
The institute's mission, as set out in its certificate of incorporation, is to promote the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs, to secure the better administration of justice, and to…
The ACLU Foundation of Texas is the unyielding guardian and promoter of freedom, justice, equality and dignity of all people, particularly for those who are still fighting to secure the full exercise of their civil rights and liberties.…
The National Academy of Public Administration is an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit, non partisan Organization established in 1967 and chartered by Congress in 1984. See Schedule O
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.
The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
To advance the practice of higher education attorneys for the benefit of the institutions they serve.
Competitive enterprise institute (cei) is a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. we believe that consumers are best helped not by government regulation but by being…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is New York 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 37 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
60 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. 60 of the 102 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 INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds Pacific Legal Foundation ↗
- Who funds Baylor Medical Foundation ↗
- Who funds William Marsh Rice University ↗
- Who funds STATE POLICY NETWORK ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds Leadership Institute ↗
- Who funds THE HEARTLAND INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY FOR LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY STUDIES ↗
- Who funds TEXAS PUBLIC POLICY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL TAXPAYERS UNION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MANHATTAN INSTITUTE FOR POLICY RESEARCH INC ↗
- Who funds JUDICIAL WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds TURNING POINT USA INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FEDERATION FOR CHILDREN GROWTH FUND INC ↗
- Who funds New Civil Liberties Alliance ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds THE CLAREMONT INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF STATESMANSHIP & POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN TRANSPARENCY ↗
- Who funds EdChoice Inc ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FEDERATION FOR CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds Texas A&M Foundation ↗
- Who funds Houston's Amazing Place Inc ↗
- Who funds Academic Freedom Alliance ↗
- Who funds Speech First Inc ↗
- Who funds Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Inc ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND EXPRESSION INC ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC INTEREST LEGAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TRINITY CLASSICAL SCHOOL OF HOUSTON INC ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE WILDLIFE CENTER OF TEXAS 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: Donors Trust Inc · The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation Inc · Bradley Impact Fund Inc · Sarah Scaife Foundation Incorporated · Greater Houston Community Foundation · Bader Family Foundation · Diana Davis Spencer Foundation Inc · Shell USA Company Foundation · Holman Foundation Inc · Woodford Foundation · The Searle Freedom Trust · John William Pope 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 Robertson-Finley 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.