· Private foundation
The Shepard Family Private 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 $10k4 grants · $20k
- $10k–50k19 grants · $254k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $656k
- $250k+1 grant · $252k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Memorial Hermann Foundation | $252,481 |
| Texas Public Policy Foundation | $130,162 |
| Catholic Charities | $112,205 |
| US Chamber of Commerce | $104,850 |
| Tunnels to Towers | $104,850 |
| Frontera Healthcare Network | $103,987 |
| SAN ANGELO AREA FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| FRIENDS OF MASON COUNTY SHERIFF | $50,000 |
| RURAL HEALTH INITIATIVE | $30,000 |
| UT MD Anderson Cancer Center | $25,999 |
| Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Ctr | $21,813 |
| Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation | $20,708 |
| George W Bush Presidential Center | $15,000 |
| Mason Food Bank | $10,000 |
| Borderlands Research Institute | $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 (FY17–25, $461k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 77% 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 +44% since the first grant, against +13% for the ones you funded once.
48 repeat relationships — 24 still active in FY2025, 24 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $136k 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
- MHMemorial Hermann Foundation8× · 2018–2025 · $700k · revenue +158%
- TPTEXAS PUBLIC POLICY FOUNDATION8× · 2018–2025 · $542k · revenue +110%
STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION4× · 2022–2025 · $361k · revenue +83%
Funded once
- CCCatholic Charites DAFone grant, 2022 · $351k
- CCCATHOLIC CHARITIES DAFone grant, 2023 · $150k
- GHGEORGE HW BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARYone grant, 2019 · $100k
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 mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland school of medicine, medical services are rendered by the members of the faculty on behalf of the school of medicine in connection with their duties to provide clinical…
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland school of medicine, medical services are rendered by the members of the faculty on behalf of the school of medicine in connection with their duties to provide clinical…
The Academy's mission is to enhance member career fulfillment and promote brain health for all.
The organization provides medical care to improve, maintain, and restore the health of the people in the communities we serve.
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland school of medicine, medical services are rendered by the members of the faculty on behalf of the school of medicine in connection with their duties to provide clinical…
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland school of medicine, medical services are rendered by the members of the faculty on behalf of the school of medicine in connection with their duties to provide clinical…
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland school of medicine, medical services are rendered by the members of the faculty on behalf of the school of medicine in connection with their duties to provide clinical…
To improve, maintain and restore the health of the people in the communities we serve.
The fsmb serves as the voice for state medical boards, supporting them through education, assessment, research and advocacy while providing services and initiatives that promote patient safety, quality health care and regulatory best…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is The Jensen Project Inc. 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 41 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 10% 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.
56 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. 56 of the 93 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 Memorial Hermann Foundation ↗
- Who funds TEXAS PUBLIC POLICY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ASSOCIATED CATHOLIC CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds Frontera Healthcare Network ↗
- Who funds US Chamber of Commerce Foundation ↗
- Who funds ZACH JOHNSON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE JENSEN PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds SOME INC ↗
- Who funds MARINE CORPS-LAW ENFORCEMENT FOUNDA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Delta Waterfowl Foundation ↗
- Who funds American Junior Golf Association Inc ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR FACIAL RECONSTRUCTION INC ↗
- Who funds MONTGOMERY COUNTY FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SAN ANGELO AREA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER CEDAR RAPIDS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ANGEL REACH ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds Mason Volunteer Fire Department Incorporated ↗
- Who funds THE GEORGE W BUSH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MASON TENNIS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds ST PAUL'S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS INC ↗
- Who funds THE GLOUCESTER INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds AUTISM SPEAKS 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: GreenState Credit Union · Baltimore Community Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · National Philanthropic Trust · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · Network for Good · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Charities Aid Foundation America
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 Shepard Family Private 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.
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- The Maryland Food Bank Inc — 11% of income from government
- Associated Catholic Charities Inc — 10% of income from government
- The Shriners' Hospital for Children — 6% of income from government
- Helping Up Mission Inc — 6% of income from government
- The American Visionary Art Museum Inc — 6% of income from government
- Baltimore Museum of Art — 4% of income from government
- Shriners Hospitals for Children — 0% 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.