Astros Foundation Snapshot

The spike that pulled me into a rabbit hole

The Astros rate well on IMPACT+ — a 104.3, slightly above league average, good for #12 of 29. But that's not what drew my attention when I pulled this one together. Take a look and see what question you land on first.

If you're like me, the first thing you ask is: what happened with grants in 2019? Nearly $11.8 and 2-3x more than any other year in the six-year window (and for 2018 as well, which was $3.2M, so similar to all other years), and a complete anomaly against everything around it.

So I went to the 990. Except the 2019 filing was paper-filed, not e-filed. And on the scan, the schedule of grants paid is missing entirely except for a single, stray line: Astros Golf Foundation, with no dollar amount attached.

I'd seen that name before listed as a donor to the Astros Foundation in a later year (since they file as a Private Foundation, they itemize donors of $5K+), something I'd noted in passing but never dug into.

So I went back. Jim Crane was instrumental in keeping the PGA Tour's Houston Open in Houston. When the deal was first announced in June 2018, it was the Astros Foundation that was named as the host organization, with the tournament to be backed by "a consortium of local sponsors for financial support."

Then in January 2019, a newly branded Astros Golf Foundation appeared publicly for the first time, unveiled alongside the 2019 tournament dates. And that same month, the Astros Golf Foundation broke ground on a $34 million renovation of Memorial Park Golf Course. A project that size needed to be capitalized fast, and the Astros Foundation appears to have been a source of early funding. While we can't say how much, because the one line item that would tell us is the one line the scan doesn't show, it's possible it was a significant contribution, leading to the spike in outgoing grants in 2019.

The golf tournament seems to have been a success. It is now the Texas Children's Houston Open, and in 2025 and 2026, it drove $5M and $5.7M in proceeds to the Astros Foundation, up from $2.5M in 2024. So as the 2025 and 2026 filings become available, we should see greatly increased revenue, grants, and overall expenses. I'll be looking to see how quickly they are able to deploy this funding or if we see an increase in their net assets.

Many teams have events like golf tournaments to raise money for their foundation. However, this is the first time I've found a separate entity that was formed to run an event with the majority of the proceeds going to the team's foundation ($2.5M of the $4.78M grants made by the Astros Golf Foundation in 2024).

I'll finish by noting how their community investments are a true hybrid with 50% going out as grants and 50% being used to run their own programs, which is something they've appeared to make a concerted effort to accomplish as the direct program expenses have scaled over the past 6 years to now match their grantmaking.