· Private foundation
Four Lee 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k18 grants · $290k
- $50k–250k10 grants · $1.0M
- $250k+3 grants · $2.4M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BROTHER WOLF ANIMAL RESCUE | $1,150,000 |
| MEMORIAL HERMAN FOUNDATION | $902,080 |
| Individual grant recipient | $375,000 |
| COUNCIL OF RECOVERY | $200,000 |
| LEGIONARIES OF CHRIST | $150,000 |
| UNBROKEN SPIRIT | $100,000 |
| HOUSTON ZOO | $100,000 |
| UNITED WAY | $100,000 |
| MARCH OF DIMES | $100,000 |
| HOUSTON ARBORETUM & NATURE CENTER | $90,000 |
| TEXAS BUSINESS HALL OF FAME | $75,000 |
| NORTH CAROLINA ABORETUM SOCIETY | $60,000 |
| MEMORIAL PARK CONSERVANCY | $50,000 |
| SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY | $30,000 |
| HERMANN PARK CONSERVANCY | $30,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $94k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 48% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
41 repeat relationships — 27 still active in FY2024, 14 since wound down; 5 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; $60k 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
- MHMemorial Hermann Foundation4× · 2021–2024 · $1.5M · revenue +13%
- BWBrother Wolf Animal Rescue Inc4× · 2020–2024 · $1.3M · revenue +583%
Houston Zoo Inc6× · 2019–2024 · $453k · revenue +12%
Funded once
- FFFOUNDATION FOR THE COUNCIL ON ALCOHOL & DRUG ABUSEone grant, 2020 · $255k
- MAMD ANDERSONone grant, 2022 · $25k
- NSNAVY SEAL FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $25k
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.
Memorial hermann health system is a nonprofit, values-driven, community-owned health system dedicated to improving health. our vision is to create healthier communities, now and for generations to come. our values are community,…
Memorial hermann health system is a nonprofit, values-driven, community-owned health system dedicated to improving health. our vision is to create healthier communities, now and for generations to come. our values are community,…
The Academy's mission is to enhance member career fulfillment and promote brain health for all.
Plant, protect and promote trees all over the greater Houston area.
City of Hope's mission is to make hope a reality for all touched by cancer and diabetes. PLEASE SEE SCHEDULE O FOR A CONTINUATION OF OUR MISSION
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
Assist banner health complete its mission to make health care easier so life can be better by providing integrated & coordinated care & population health management.
With more than 1 million patient visits each year, Children's Health is North Texas' leading pediatric health system and among the largest in the nation. For more than a century, our mission has been clear: make life better for children.…
To enrich life through discovery, education, and the conservation of plants and the natural environment.
The organization provides medical care to improve, maintain, and restore the health of the people in the communities we serve.
Memorial hermann health system is a nonprofit, values-driven, community-owned health system dedicated to improving health. our vision is to create healthier communities, now and for generations to come. our values are community,…
To advance the conservation of birds and their habitats in the Greater Houston Gulf Coast region by acquiring and maintaining critical habitat as bird sanctuaries, providing education programs and nature experiences, and advocating policy…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Memorial Hermann Foundation and the most unlike its peers is William Marsh Rice University. 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 42 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
45 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. 45 of the 63 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 Memorial Hermann Foundation ↗
- Who funds Brother Wolf Animal Rescue Inc ↗
- Who funds The Council on Recovery ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Houston Zoo Inc ↗
- Who funds United Way Inc ↗
- Who funds THE UNITED WAY INC ↗
- Who funds MARCH OF DIMES INC ↗
- Who funds Houston Arboretum & Nature Center ↗
- Who funds The North Carolina Arboretum Society ↗
- Who funds Texas Business Hall of Fame Foundation ↗
- Who funds Memorial Park Conservancy Inc ↗
- Who funds CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNBROKEN SPIRIT ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR HEARING AND SPEECH ↗
- Who funds Small Steps Nurturing Center ↗
- Who funds Hermann Park Conservancy ↗
- Who funds NO BARRIERS USA ↗
- Who funds BEST FRIENDS ANIMAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds THE METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Southern Methodist University ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN STROKE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds ALLEY THEATRE ↗
- Who funds Junior Achievement of Southeast Texas Inc ↗
- Who funds COVENANT HOUSE TEXAS ↗
- Who funds Boy Scouts of America Sam Houston Area Council ↗
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: Greater Houston Community Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Vivian L Smith Foundation · The William Stamps Farish Fund · The John M O'Quinn Foundation · MD Anderson Foundation · Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation · The Brown Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · National Philanthropic Trust
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 Four Lee 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.
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 0% of income from government
- 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.