· Private foundation
Vin and Caren Prothro 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k21 grants · $52k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $53k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $71k
- $250k+1 grant · $283k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Yale University | $283,000 |
| Southern Methodist University | $71,430 |
| Southern Methodist University | $20,000 |
| UT Southwestern Medical Center | $20,000 |
| Uplift Education | $12,500 |
| ATT Performing Arts Center | $5,834 |
| Southwestern Medical Foundation | $5,000 |
| Southern Methodist University | $5,000 |
| SM Wright Foundation | $5,000 |
| Dallas Symphony Association Inc | $4,167 |
| United Way of Metropolitan Dallas | $3,334 |
| George W Bush Foundation | $3,334 |
| Letot Center Capital Foundation | $2,500 |
| Wake Forest University | $2,500 |
| Southern Methodist University | $2,500 |
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 (FY20–24, $39k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 11% of Vin and Caren Prothro 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. Read by recipient address, 66% of the giving stays in TX; read by stated purpose it is 36% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 +26% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.
35 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2024, 18 since wound down; 3 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $8k 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
Southern Methodist University5× · 2020–2024 · $532k · revenue +26%- PFPARKLAND FOUNDATION3× · 2020–2022 · $60k · revenue +30%
- SWSM Wright Foundation5× · 2020–2024 · $36k · revenue +17%
Funded once
- SMSt Michaels and All Angles Episcopaone grant, 2022 · $8k
- SMSaint Michael and All Angels Episcoone grant, 2021 · $8k
- ASAUSTIN STREET CENTERone grant, 2021 · $5k · revenue -60%
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.
Using Shakespeare's works as a cornerstone, Shakespeare Dallas serves the Southwest region with fun and accessible indoor and outdoor theatre, integrated school programs, and cultural enrichment for people of all ages and backgrounds.
To generate superior long-term investment returns to support The University of Texas and Texas A&M University systems as they provide world-class teaching, push the boundaries of discovery, and achieve excellence in patient healthcare for…
To lead and serve in the moments that matter the most for the people of dallas.
Dallas contemporary presents art in a forum that cultivates artists, ignites learning and inspires the community. dallas contemporary is a non-collecting art museum presenting new and challenging ideas from regional, national and…
The mission of the dallas county medical society is to promote public health and advocate for physicians and their relationship with patients, while upholding professionalism in the practice of medicine.
The witte museum inspires people to shape the future of texas through transformative and relevant experiences in nature, science and culture.
Together, with our business leaders and community partners, we will help lead the dallas region to become the best place in the united states for all people to live, work, and do business.
Downtown Dallas, Inc. (DDI), is the champion of a clean and safe Downtown and of the economic development and vibrancy of this community of diverse, unique neighborhoods. DDI: Mobilizes and amplifies the services of public agencies.…
Dallas college foundation enhances the level of achievement and excellence of dallas college by providing scholarships, eliminating barriers that prevent students from attending and graduating, and supporting innovation.
As a christian university, we provide education and research opportunities preparing global leaders to partner with local communities.
The mission of texas trees foundation is to improve the health of cities and people through the transformative power of trees.
The Dallas Bar Association is a nonprofit corporation chartered by the State of Texas to protect and advance the professional interests of persons licensed to practice law in the Dallas area, to improve the relations between the Bench, the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Dallas Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Wake Forest University. 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 45 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 18% 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.
47 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. 47 of the 65 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 Southern Methodist University ↗
- Who funds THE GEORGE W BUSH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF METROPOLITAN DALLAS INC ↗
- Who funds PARKLAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SM Wright Foundation ↗
- Who funds Ronald McDonald House of Dallas Inc ↗
- Who funds UPLIFT EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR LEAGUE OF DALLAS INC ↗
- Who funds The Dallas Opera ↗
- Who funds NOMI NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds THE NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER ↗
- Who funds DALLAS SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE EPISCOPAL SCHOOL OF DALLAS INC ↗
- Who funds GEORGIA O'KEEFFE MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds LETOT CENTER CAPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LUMIN EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds THE SANTA FE OPERA ↗
- Who funds Dallas Museum of Art ↗
- Who funds AUSTIN STREET CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE DALLAS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NEW FRIENDS NEW LIFE ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWESTERN MEDICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TACA INC ↗
- Who funds MILLS COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds MEADOWS MENTAL HEALTH POLICY INSTITUTE FOR TEXAS ↗
- Who funds SENIOR CITIZENS OF GREATER DALLAS INC ↗
- Who funds BIG THOUGHT ↗
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: Perkins-Prothro Foundation · The Addy Foundation · Texas Instruments Foundation · The Dallas Foundation · The Perot Foundation · The Eugene McDermott Foundation · Communities Foundation of Texas Inc · Kline Family Foundation · Meadows Foundation Inc · The Baldridge Foundation · Ben E Keith Foundation Trust Xxxxx0005 · The Rosewood 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 Vin and Caren Prothro 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 Vin and Caren Prothro Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Vin and Caren Prothro 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.