· Private foundation
The Seawell Elam 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FOSTER ANGELS OF CENTRAL TEXAS | $11,000 |
| LIFEWORKS AUSTIN | $10,000 |
| AVANCE | $10,000 |
| PEAS OFFICE (PARTNERS FOR EDUCATION AGRICULTURE AND SUSTAINABILITY) | $10,000 |
| WELCOME TABLE | $10,000 |
| GIRLSTART | $10,000 |
| KIPP | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| CREATIVE ACTION | $10,000 |
| COLLEGE POSSIBLE | $10,000 |
| AUSTIN CLASSICAL GUITAR | $10,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $81k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +39% since the first grant, against +8% for the ones you funded once.
21 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2025, 16 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, 46% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $60k 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
- FAFOSTER ANGELS OF CENTRAL TEXAS FOUNDATION3× · 2021–2025 · $31k · revenue +46%
- GGENAUSTIN3× · 2020–2024 · $30k · revenue +32%
- YAYOUTH AND FAMILY ALLIANCE3× · 2020–2025 · $30k · revenue +49%
Funded once
- ACATX CHAMBER MUSIC AND JAZZone grant, 2024 · $15k · revenue -51%
- TUTHE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTINone grant, 2024 · $15k
- ABANY BABY CAN OF AUSTIN INCone grant, 2024 · $12k · revenue 0%
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.
Leadership austin connects and develops leaders to courageously engage and transform our communities.
Good Work Austin's mission is to foster healthy careers in the local food and beverage industry through professional development and advocacy for more equitable practices.
Austin together enables sustained collaborations that strengthen the nonprofit community to create better outcomes for central texans through our unique grant and community engagement model.
Austin Justice Coalition educates, organizes, and empowers communities in Austin to build racial equity and dismantle systems of oppression through advocacy, policy change, and community programs.
Teen and Family Services Austin provides counseling and education on an individual as well as group basis to provide support to parents and teens who are coping with teen high risk behavior.
Apie provides college and career readiness support through individualized academic and mentoring programs to prepare students for success.
The mission of Austin Creative Alliance is to advance, connect, and celebrate Austin's arts, culture, and creative communities in order to nourish and strengthen the character, quality of life, and economic prosperity of our region.
Friends of the children - austin is a texas based nonprofit with the mission of impacting generational change by empowering youth who are facing the greatest obstacles through relationships with professional mentors - 12+ years,no matter…
To equip Austinites to make informed decisions through independent, in-depth reporting, diverse opinions, and civil dialogue. A strong local press is essential for a healthy community and democracy. We work to make Austin a more empowered…
ATX Helps was created to fill gaps in the spectrum of services available to people in Austin who are experiencing homelessness.
To increase the collective impact of our member organization on improving education economic development outcomes within the Austin Community.
ATX KIDS CLUB's mission is to empower youth through educational adventures that promote independence, confidence, and a deeper connection to their community - one field trip at a time.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Center for Child Protection and the most unlike its peers is Families in Nature. 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 34 years old; the field is 12. 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 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
38 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. 38 of the 55 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 FOSTER ANGELS OF CENTRAL TEXAS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GENAUSTIN ↗
- Who funds YOUTH AND FAMILY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds Creative Action ↗
- Who funds AUSTIN YOUTH RIVER WATCH ↗
- Who funds THE SAFE ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds JEREMIAH PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds OPEN DOOR PRESCHOOL ↗
- Who funds AUSTIN CLASSICAL GUITAR SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds AUSTIN YOUTH & COMMUNITY FARM INC DBA URBAN ROOTS ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF AUSTIN AND TRAVIS COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds AUSTIN YMBL SUNSHINE CAMP ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH ↗
- Who funds BALLET AUSTIN INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds AUSTIN EXPLORE INC ↗
- Who funds KEEP AUSTIN BEAUTIFUL INC ↗
- Who funds ATX CHAMBER MUSIC AND JAZZ ↗
- Who funds ANY BABY CAN OF AUSTIN INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILIES IN NATURE ↗
- Who funds CARITAS OF AUSTIN ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF CENTRAL TEXAS ↗
- Who funds Uprise Circus ↗
- Who funds Camp Fire Central Texas ↗
- Who funds ZACHARY SCOTT THEATRE CENTER ↗
- Who funds GIRLSTART ↗
- Who funds AUSTIN THEATRE ALLIANCE ↗
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: Austin Community Foundation Inc · Better Business Bureau · Shield-Ayres Foundation · Topfer Family Foundation · The Applied Materials Foundation · St David's Foundation · The Moody Foundation · United Way for Greater Austin · Alice Kleberg Reynolds Meyer Foundat A0479800 · The Powell Foundation · The Webber Family Foundation · Impact Austin 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 Seawell Elam 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.