How much does Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation give?

Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation reported 174 grants totaling $6,844,100 in its FY2024 IRS filing. It funded between 64 and 134 organizations a year over FY2019 to FY2023.

What does Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2019 to FY2024, its largest causes are Environment (48%), Philanthropy (9%), Animals (8%).

Who are Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2019 to FY2024: The Center for Reproductive Rights Inc ($652k), Texas Southern University Foundatio ($501k), Parks and Wildlife Foundation of Texas ($477k).

Does Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2023, 28% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it accepts unsolicited grant applications.

Which funders back the same organizations as Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Houston Endowment Inc, The Cynthia & George Mitchell Foundation, Shield-Ayres Foundation.

Where is Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation based?

Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation is based in TX.

Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation

Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation

Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$6.8M

Granted FY2024still arriving

174

Grants FY2024still arriving

States reached

$455k

Largest

01What it funds

01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2019 to 2024.

Environment$15MPhilanthropy$2.8MAnimals$2.5MPublic Benefit$2.0MCivil Rights$1.9MEducation$1.2MRecreation & Sports$1.2MCommunity Improvement$1.0MOther$0

02FY2024 · 174 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2024

Under $10k28 grants · $135k
$10k–50k88 grants · $2.1M
$50k–250k55 grants · $3.6M
$250k+3 grants · $955k

$30,000

Median grant

States reached

$107M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
Vanguard Charitable	$455,000
Parks and Wildlife Foundation of Texas Inc	$250,000
Rockefeller Family Fund Inc	$250,000
Public Citizen Foundation Inc	$175,000
Center for Reproductive Rights	$150,000
Air Alliance Houston	$120,000
Healthy Gulf	$100,000
Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc	$100,000
Nuclear Information & Resource Service	$90,000
Bayou City Waterkeeper	$80,000
LINK Houston	$77,000
Commission Shift	$76,000
Calhoun County Resource Watch	$75,000
Inside Climate News	$75,000
SPARK	$75,000

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 (FY19–24, $413k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 42% 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.

Where the work is directed

The same grants placed two ways: where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose sends the money.

About 9% of Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked for a different county than the recipient’s own address. By recipient address, 68% of the giving stays in TX; by stated purpose, 79%.

Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundationlessmore of its giving

Placed by recipient address · 2.6% directed abroad (not shown)

How this is measured

Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the funder’s own 990 grant descriptions.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

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

82%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$23M · 163 repeat orgs$5.0M to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +29% since the first grant, against +19% for those funded once.

163 repeat relationships: 102 still active in FY2024, 61 since wound down; 36 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

163

116

Total granted

$23M

$4.2M

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+29%

+19%

Still filing today

90%

52%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $789k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

EnvironmentAnimalsCivil RightsArts & CultureCommunity ImprovementEducationOther

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

THE CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS INC
5× · 2020–2024 · $652k · revenue +69%
PARKS AND WILDLIFE FOUNDATION OF TEXAS
4× · 2020–2024 · $477k · revenue +95%
ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED
6× · 2019–2024 · $445k · revenue +139%

Funded once

TS
TEXAS SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY FOUNDATIO
one grant, 2022 · $501k · revenue +21%
CE
CLEAN ENERGY FUND OF TEXASgraduated
one grant, 2023 · $250k · revenue +241% · 50% of their budget
PC
Public Citizen
one grant, 2021 · $175k

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.

Texas Campaign for the Environment

Empowering Texans to fight pollution through sustained grassroots organizing campaigns that shift corporate and governmental policy.

Environment

Texas Clean Energy Coalition

—

Texas Foundation for Conservation

Fish and wildlife conservation and outreach including public awareness. Fifteen public relations campaign on social media with over 7.5 million impressions. Twenty plus speaking engagements to a variety of conservation organizations…

Animals

Bexar Land Trust Inc dba Green Spaces Alliance of South Texas

The mission of Bexar Land Trust (Green Spaces) is to sustain the natural environment and enhance urban spaces through land conservation, community engagement, and education.

Environment

Big Thicket Natural Heritage Trust

We acquire properties to be donated to the National Park Service and state entities and advocate for protection of Big Thicket natural resources.

Environment

Guadalupe River Park Conservancy

Guadalupe River Park Conservancy provides community leadership for the development and active use of Guadalupe River Park & Garden through education, advocacy and stewardship.

Environment

Farm and City

Farm&City is an independent 501c3 think & do tank dedicated to high quality urban & rural human habitat in Texas in perpetuity. We improve public policies to improve millions of Texans lives in ways that preserve and enhance Texas land,…

Education

Trinity Park Conservancy

Trinity Park Conservancy champions the transformation of the Trinity River to become the heart of Dallas. With the community, the Conservancy will design public spaces that unite us, enrich people's lives through access to nature, create…

Community Improvement

Native Plant Society of Texas

The mission of the native plant society of texas is promote conservation, research and utilization of native plants and planthabitats of texas through education, outreach and example.

Environment

Willow Waterhole Greenspace Conservancy

The Willow Waterhole Greenspace Conservancy ("Willow Waterhole") serves as the leading advocate for public greenspace improvements and nature preservation at the 291-acre Willow Waterhole Greenway. (See Schedule O)Willow Waterhole partners…

Environment

Progress Texas Institute

The Progress Texas Institute provides research and strategic communications on issues with the ultimate goal of increasing civic engagement.

Civil Rights

Houston Botanic Garden

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

Environment

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Parks and Wildlife Foundation of Texas; the most unlike its peers is The Cynthia & George Mitchell Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

05the grantee network

251 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.

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 2026, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 251 of the 323 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)

246/251

Grantees still filing

166/251

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Environment$10,292,925Other$9,099,864Philanthropy$2,658,550Civil Rights$2,155,250Animals$2,012,521Education$1,352,875Recreation & Sports$959,160

Showing the 200 largest grantees by grant value.

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.

Houston Endowment IncTX93.5× affinity51 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Houston Endowment Inc · The Cynthia & George Mitchell Foundation · Shield-Ayres Foundation · Meadows Foundation Inc · Alice Kleberg Reynolds Meyer Foundat A0479800 · Windward Fund · Austin Community Foundation Inc · The Powell Foundation · The Brown Foundation Inc · Still Water Foundation · United States Energy Foundation · Environmental Defense Fund Incorporated

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 Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

3get no government money at all

46report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

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.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation?

Find your warmest path to Jacob and Terese Hershey 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.

Play a game based on Jacob and Terese Hershey’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