· Private foundation
The Simmons Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k8 grants · $155k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $330k
- $250k+2 grants · $3.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Old Town Hot Springs | $2,000,000 |
| Yampa Valley Community Foundation | $1,000,000 |
| Houston Area Women's Center | $125,000 |
| Yampa Valley Community Foundation | $125,000 |
| The Women's Resource | $80,000 |
| Yampa Valley Autism Program | $40,000 |
| Yampa Valley Sustainability Council | $25,000 |
| Partners for Youth | $25,000 |
| LiftUp Routt County | $25,000 |
| Yampatika | $10,000 |
| United Way of the Yampa Valley | $10,000 |
| Rocky Mountain Youth Corps | $10,000 |
| Routt County Humane Society | $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 (FY21–24, $655k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 92% 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 6% of The Simmons 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.
84 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2024, 79 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 11% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2.1M 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
- HAHouston Area Women's Center2× · 2023–2024 · $250k · revenue +10%
- PPPlanned Parenthood Gulf Coast Inc3× · 2017–2021 · $170k · revenue +3%
- DIDaya Inc3× · 2017–2021 · $162k · revenue +412%
Funded once
- HIHouston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative c/o Greater Houston Community Foundationone grant, 2017 · $140k
- HIHouston Immigration Legal Services Collaborativeone grant, 2018 · $133k
- CHCOVENANT HOUSE TEXASone grant, 2023 · $125k · revenue -25%
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.
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…
The Houston Local Information Initiative, Inc. provides public service journalism that reflects the civic needs of the diverse communities comprising Greater Houston.
The mission of Breakthrough Houston (BTH) is to work with highly motivated students to achieve post-secondary success and empower aspiring leaders to become the next generation of educational advocates.
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 organization provides medical services in the form of primary and preventive care to underserved and underinsured residents of harris county.
The mission of Family Service Center of Houston and Harris County (Family Houston) is to create a stronger community for tomorrow by helping individuals and families meet the challenges they face today. We help others help themselves.
TexProtects advances public policy and local implementation to strenghten families to prevent child abuse and neglect.
The mission of Collaborative for Children is to meaningfully improve the quality of early childhood education and care for Greater Houston's children through those most influential in their lives.
Commission Shift is reforming oil and gas oversight by building public support to hold the Railroad Commission of Texas accountable to its mission in a shifting energy landscape.
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.…
Tarrant County Homeless Coalition leads the community solution to homelessness in greater Tarrant and Parker counties by serving as a catalyst for community transformation.
It is the mission of the Texas Immigration Law Council to protect and promote the basic rights of immigrants and refugees of all nationalities within Texas.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Houston Community Health Centers Inc and the most unlike its peers is Avow Inc. 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 29 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
119 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 119 of the 233 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 YAMPA VALLEY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Houston Area Women's Center ↗
- Who funds Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast Inc ↗
- Who funds Daya Inc ↗
- Who funds The Women's Resource of Greater Houston ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds COVENANT HOUSE TEXAS ↗
- Who funds AVDA ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY AGRICULTURE ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds EL CENTRO DE CORAZON ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL LATINA INSTITUTE FOR REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds LONE STAR COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER ↗
- Who funds Mental Health America of Greater Houston Inc ↗
- Who funds HEALTHY FUTURES OF TEXAS ↗
- Who funds Women's Health and Family Planning Association of Texas dba Every Body TX ↗
- Who funds FIFTH WARD COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds EARL CARL INSTITUTE FOR LEGAL AND SOCIAL POLICY INC ↗
- Who funds MONTGOMERY COUNTY YOUTH SERVICES ↗
- Who funds KIND INC ↗
- Who funds Texas Low-Income Housing Information Service ↗
- Who funds BONDING AGAINST ADVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds HYPE FREEDOM SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds MONTROSE GRACE PLACE ↗
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: United Way of Greater Houston · Houston Endowment Inc · Greater Houston Community Foundation · The Brown Foundation Inc · Episcopal Health Foundation · Rockwell Fund Inc · The Methodist Hospital · Baxter Trust Co Private Foundation Services · Strake Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · The Powell Foundation · Houston Immigration Legal ServicesCollab
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 Simmons 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.