· Private foundation
Bess L Rayford Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k11 grants · $53k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $72k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BOYS GIRLS CLUB OF RUSK COUNTY | $45,000 |
| HENDERSON INTERCHURCH MINISTRY | $17,000 |
| HENDERSON CIVIC THEATRE | $10,000 |
| RUSK COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION | $6,000 |
| RUSK COUNTY CHILDREN'S ADVOCACY CEN | $5,000 |
| SPCA OF EAST TEXAS | $5,000 |
| RUSK COUNTY CHILD WELFARE BOARD | $5,000 |
| RUSK COUNTY FRIENDS HELPING FRIENDS | $5,000 |
| HENDERSON FOOD BANK | $5,000 |
| RUSK COUNTY UNITED WAY | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| ONE STEP AT A TIME INC | $5,000 |
| RUSK COUNTY HERITAGE ASSOCIATION | $5,000 |
| MOSAIC COUNSELING CENTERS | $2,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 96% of your 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.
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.
20 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k 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
- BABOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF RUSK COUNTY9× · 2017–2025 · $255k · revenue +10%
- HFHENDERSON FOOD BANK9× · 2017–2025 · $55k · revenue +46%
- RCRUSK COUNTY CHILDRENS ADVOCACY CENTER INC7× · 2019–2025 · $30k · revenue +36%
Funded once
- RCRUSK COUNTY PETS ALIVEgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $5k · revenue +71%
- WCWiley Collegeone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue -21%
- FOFRIENDS OF RUSK COUNTY MEMORIAL LIBone grant, 2023 · $3k
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.
To improve the qulity of life for companion animals, to place homeless cats & dogs in suitable homes, & to provide programs to reduce the overpopulation and euthanasia of companion animals.
Provide funds for animal care
Animal protection and control-provides care for more than 2400 animals each year, finds responsible, loving homes for 1500 annually and reunites more than 200 lost animals with their guardians every year.
Humane animal shelter
To provide shelter for animals.
Animal protection and welfare
Humane education:care of stray & unwanted dogs & cats: spay/neuter services serving a county population of over 10,000.
Our mission is to advocate and compassionately care for the abandoned, abused, and neglected animals in our community, and to find them loving homes.
Rescue and place abandoned and unwanted pets. Provide low cost spay / neuter. Provide low-cost microchips. Provide community education.
Provide a safe environment for stray, injured and abandoned animals in wilson county, texas until they can be adopted.
The society runs an animal shelter that offers pet adoption, veterinary services, burials, etc.
Animal shelter and animal rescue
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Henderson Interchurch Ministry and the most unlike its peers is Wiley College. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
12 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. 12 of the 25 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 BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF RUSK COUNTY ↗
- Who funds KEEP HENDERSON BEAUTIFUL INC ↗
- Who funds HENDERSON INTERCHURCH MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds HENDERSON FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds HENDERSON ISD EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds RUSK COUNTY CHILDRENS ADVOCACY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds RUSK COUNTY CHILD WELFARE BOARD INC ↗
- Who funds THINK PAWS-ITIVE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SPCA OF EAST TEXAS INC ↗
- Who funds Henderson Civic Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds RUSK COUNTY PETS ALIVE ↗
- Who funds Wiley College ↗
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: Henderson Memorial Hospital Foundation · East Texas Communities Foundation · John & Susan Landon Alford Foundation · United Way of Rusk County Inc · American Electric Power Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Amazonsmile 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 Bess L Rayford 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.