How much does Four Lee Foundation give?

Four Lee Foundation reported 32 grants totaling $3,747,080 in its FY2024 IRS filing. It funded between 11 and 31 organizations a year over FY2017 to FY2023.

What does Four Lee Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2024, its largest causes are Health (43%), Animals (16%), Religion (8%).

Who are Four Lee Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2024: Memorial Hermann Foundation ($1.5M), Brother Wolf Animal Rescue Inc ($1.3M), The Council on Recovery ($1.2M).

Does Four Lee Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2023, 23% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does Four Lee Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and does not take unsolicited requests. Check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

Which funders back the same organizations as Four Lee Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Greater Houston Community Foundation, Shell USA Company Foundation, The Ayco Charitable Foundation.

Where is Four Lee Foundation based?

Four Lee Foundation is based in TX.

Four Lee Foundation

Four Lee Foundation at a glance

· 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.

$3.7M

Granted FY2024still arriving

Grants FY2024still arriving

States reached

$1.1M

Largest

01What it funds

0197% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2024.

Health$4.9MAnimals$1.8MReligion$925kPhilanthropy$695kEnvironment$565kEducation$212kCommunity Improvement$188kHuman Services$170kOther$0

02FY2024 · 32 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2024

Under $10k1 grant · $5k
$10k–50k18 grants · $290k
$50k–250k10 grants · $1.0M
$250k+3 grants · $2.4M

$25,000

Median grant

States reached

$35M

Total assets

Largest grants
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
HOUSTON ZOO	$100,000
UNITED WAY	$100,000
UNBROKEN SPIRIT	$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

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its 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. Its grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

96%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$11M · 41 repeat orgs$510k to everyone else

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

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$11M

$450k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+21%

+43%

Still filing today

80%

44%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $60k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

HealthEducationEnvironmentAnimalsHuman ServicesInternationalOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

MH
Memorial Hermann Foundation
4× · 2021–2024 · $1.5M · revenue +13%
BW
Brother Wolf Animal Rescue Inc
4× · 2020–2024 · $1.3M · revenue +583%
Houston Zoo Inc
6× · 2019–2024 · $453k · revenue +12%

Funded once

FF
FOUNDATION FOR THE COUNCIL ON ALCOHOL & DRUG ABUSE
one grant, 2020 · $255k
BW
BROTHER WOLF ANIMAL RESCUCE
one grant, 2021 · $25k
NS
NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION
one grant, 2023 · $25k

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Memorial Hermann Medical Group

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,…

Health

Mhs Physicians of Texas

Health

American Academy of Neurology

The Academy's mission is to enhance member career fulfillment and promote brain health for all.

Community Improvement

Trees for Houston

Plant, protect and promote trees all over the greater Houston area.

—

City of Hope

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

Health

Children's Hospital Corporation

Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service

Health

Banner -University Medical Group

Assist banner health complete its mission to make health care easier so life can be better by providing integrated & coordinated care & population health management.

Health

Children's Health System of Texas

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.…

Health

Houston Botanic Garden

To enrich life through discovery, education, and the conservation of plants and the natural environment.

Environment

University Hospital & Clinics Inc

The organization provides medical care to improve, maintain, and restore the health of the people in the communities we serve.

Health

Memorial Hermann Health System

Health

The Houston Audubon Society

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…

Environment

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Memorial Hermann Foundation; 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.

04the grantee network

45 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 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.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

45/45

Grantees still filing

28/45

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Health$4,443,346Other$3,583,937Animals$1,811,334Environment$690,000Philanthropy$385,000Education$264,700Community Improvement$187,500

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Greater Houston Community FoundationTX21.1× affinity9 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

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

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Four Lee Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Four Lee Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

2get no government money at all

10report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–60%

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

Play a game based on Four Lee’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home