· Private foundation
Willard And Ruth Johnson Charitable 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 51% of Willard And Ruth Johnson Charitable Foundation’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k7 grants · $38k
- $10k–50k37 grants · $856k
- $50k–250k10 grants · $879k
- $250k+1 grant · $650k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| St Lukes United Methodist Church | $650,000 |
| Vanderbilt University | $157,500 |
| Massachusetts General Hospital | $150,000 |
| Cassie's Place | $137,500 |
| The University of The South | $100,000 |
| Maryville College | $75,000 |
| Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Insitutute | $55,000 |
| Cardigan Mountain School | $54,166 |
| Brookwood Community | $50,000 |
| Avon Old Farms School | $50,000 |
| Kinkaid School | $50,000 |
| Edwin L Cox School of Business | $40,000 |
| Houston Botanic Garden | $40,000 |
| University of St Thomas | $35,000 |
| St Thomas High School | $35,000 |
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, $249k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
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 +21% for the ones you funded once.
109 repeat relationships — 45 still active in FY2024, 64 since wound down; 10 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $295k 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
- CPCASSIES PLACE8× · 2017–2024 · $683k · revenue +216%
- MCMARYVILLE COLLEGE8× · 2017–2024 · $600k · revenue +11%
Vanderbilt University7× · 2017–2024 · $529k · revenue +74%
Funded once
- NGNora's Gift Foundation Incgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $50k · revenue +59%
- CKCaesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Instituteone grant, 2020 · $30k
- TCTEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITYgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $30k · revenue +31%
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.
Family, School, and Church united in the education and support of each child - this is the founding premise upon which Presbyterian School nurtures and challenges its students. The school provides an educational program of the highest…
TWCA is an independent, Christ-centered college preparatory school that integrates learning with biblical faith and challenges our students to reach their highest potential - intellectually, creatively, physically, and socially - for the…
See Schedule OThe purpose of Awty International School (Awty) is to create an environment where students experience excellence every day to make their mark on the world alongside their community, in a spirit of curiosity, courage and…
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…
To create transformative learning experiences that empower a diverse community of students to lead lives of intellectual curiosity, personal integrity, and compassionate contribution to a more just world.
Provide quality education for students from pre school through middle school using the Montessori method of learning and teaching.
St. Peter Catholic High School empowers students to be models of faith through Catholic spiritual formation, while providing a creative and comprehensive education in career and technical pathways.
See Schedule O. The Fay School ("the School") is a nonsectarian, not-for-profit, co-educational school in which children of diverse talents and backgrounds with strong academic abilities are offered a high-quality education in a secure,…
To ensure that the student body experiences balanced intellectual, psychological, social and spiritual development, aimed at enabling them to become active productive members of society where they live and work.
The mission of Royal Public Schools is to spark students' natural curiosity and love of learning while providing the knowledge and skills they need to lead successful and fulfilling lives.
To recognize the accomplishments and contributions of our outstanding Texas business leaders and to perpetuate and inspire the values of entrepreneurial spirit, personal integrity, and community leadership in all generations of Texans.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Houston Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Round Top-Warrenton Volunteer Fire Dept. 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 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 28% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
93 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. 93 of the 170 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 CASSIES PLACE ↗
- Who funds MARYVILLE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH ↗
- Who funds THE METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE PRESIDIO LA BAHIA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CARDIGAN MOUNTAIN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds The Kinkaid School Inc ↗
- Who funds THE GEORGE W BUSH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MIDLAND COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Houston Botanic Garden ↗
- Who funds St John's School ↗
- Who funds STAR OF HOPE MISSION ↗
- Who funds Hillcrest School Inc ↗
- Who funds AVON OLD FARMS SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds GIRLS PREPARATORY SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds Good Samaritan Foundation of Texas Inc ↗
- Who funds The W Oscar Neuhaus Memorial Foundation ↗
- Who funds WOMEN OF PADER UGANDA ↗
- Who funds My Connect Community ↗
- Who funds MENTORING ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds The Brookwood Community Inc ↗
- Who funds 'SCONSET TRUST 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: J Squared Family Foundation · Greater Houston Community Foundation · The Brown Foundation Inc · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · The William Stamps Farish Fund · Shell USA Company Foundation · Vivian L Smith Foundation · Abell-Hanger Foundation · The Elkins Foundation · Strake Foundation · Beal Foundation · MD Anderson 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 Willard And Ruth Johnson Charitable 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.
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Find your warmest path to Willard And Ruth Johnson Charitable 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.