· Private foundation
Vivian L Smith Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k9 grants · $35k
- $10k–50k102 grants · $2.0M
- $50k–250k30 grants · $2.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| EPISCOPAL HIGH SCHOOL DONOR BOX DEPT 313 | $200,000 |
| TIRR FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| HOUSTON HOSPICE | $100,000 |
| UT HEALTH | $100,000 |
| JONES GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS RICE UNIVERSITY | $100,000 |
| EPISCOPAL HIGH SCHOOL | $100,000 |
| BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE | $100,000 |
| COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS - HOUSTON | $100,000 |
| YES PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS INC | $100,000 |
| ANNUNCIATION ORTHODOX SCHOOL | $100,000 |
| UT MD ANDERSON CANCER CENTER | $100,000 |
| DEPELCHIN CHILDREN'S CENTER | $100,000 |
| TIRR FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| YMCA OF GREATER HOUSTON | $75,000 |
| MEMORIAL HERMANN FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $2.5M) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 97% 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 +28% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
175 repeat relationships — 111 still active in FY2024, 64 since wound down; 11 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $557k 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
- TFTIRR Foundation7× · 2017–2024 · $900k · revenue +63%
COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF HOUSTON INC8× · 2017–2024 · $884k · revenue +24%- HHHouston Hospice8× · 2017–2024 · $800k · revenue +22%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2019 · $100k
- CICOMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS INCone grant, 2017 · $100k
- BCBAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE OFFICE OF ADVANCEMENT MSC#800one grant, 2022 · $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.
Plant, protect and promote trees all over the greater Houston area.
The Houston Local Information Initiative, Inc. provides public service journalism that reflects the civic needs of the diverse communities comprising Greater Houston.
The HISD Foundation is dedicated to mobilizing the local community to support innovative priorities in HISD to improve outcomes for all students in the district. Our mission is to fund projects and programs of merit that fall outside of…
Our mission is to be the leading advocate for our member physicians, their patients and our community, in promoting the highest standards of ethical medical practice, access to quality medical care, medical education, research, and…
Rebuilding Together Houston is the only organization in Houston and Harris County providing free home repairs to hundreds of families each year. We employ licensed contractors to restore homes to safe, livable conditions, extending each…
The Heritage Society (THS) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1954 whose mission is to tell the stories of the diverse history of Houston and Texas through collections, exhibits, the arts, educational programs, film, video, and other…
As the Houston affiliate of the National Christian Foundation (NCF), our mission is to serve and encourage givers to grow as faithful stewards who give wisely to further the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
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.
The Health Museum is an innovative science center that provides an interactive and entertaining experience for all ages, promotes understanding and appreciation of the human body, mind, and spirit, and inspires a lifelong commitment to…
The Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Houston's mission is to inspire and enable all youth, especially those who need us most, to realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens.
See schedule ocentral houston champions a thriving downtown by connecting influential leaders through initiatives that advance the future of business and community for all.
American Leadership Forum (ALF) brings together, in classes, leaders with diverse perspectives so they can build relationships, learn to dialogue and respectfully differ, and work together for the good of our community.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Houston Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Ibc Network Foundation. 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 39 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 30% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 19% 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.
161 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. 161 of the 264 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 TIRR Foundation ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF HOUSTON INC ↗
- Who funds Houston Hospice ↗
- Who funds YES Prep Public Schools Inc ↗
- Who funds RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES GREATER HOUSTON INC ↗
- Who funds Stages ↗
- Who funds Menil Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds BakerRipley ↗
- Who funds Memorial Hermann Foundation ↗
- Who funds Baylor College of Medicine ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds Young Men's Christian Association of the Greater Houston Area ↗
- Who funds University of St Thomas ↗
- Who funds The Council on Recovery ↗
- Who funds Houston Botanic Garden ↗
- Who funds Camp For All Foundation ↗
- Who funds Houston Parks Board ↗
- Who funds THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON ↗
- Who funds KIDS' MEALS INC ↗
- Who funds Good Samaritan Foundation of Texas Inc ↗
- Who funds Joy Development School ↗
- Who funds DEPELCHIN CHILDREN'S CENTER ↗
- Who funds Houston Zoo Inc ↗
- Who funds THE METHODIST HOSPITALS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Kelsey Research Foundation ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds Texas Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds THE METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Christian Community Service Center Inc ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FOR JONES HALL ↗
- Who funds Hermann Park Conservancy ↗
- Who funds The Kinkaid School Inc ↗
- Who funds New Hope Housing 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: Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · The Brown Foundation Inc · The Elkins Foundation · Strake Foundation · Greater Houston Community Foundation · MD Anderson Foundation · The William Stamps Farish Fund · Houston Endowment Inc · The Powell Foundation · Harry S & Isabel C Cameron Foundation Sentinel Trust Company · The John M O'Quinn Foundation · John P McGovern 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 Vivian L Smith 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.
- 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Vivian L Smith Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Vivian L Smith 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.