· Private foundation
John and Deborah Gillis 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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k31 grants · $159k
- $10k–50k17 grants · $227k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $18,598 |
| Individual grant recipient | $18,175 |
| Individual grant recipient | $16,062 |
| Individual grant recipient | $15,966 |
| Individual grant recipient | $15,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $14,853 |
| Individual grant recipient | $14,448 |
| Individual grant recipient | $13,905 |
| Individual grant recipient | $12,740 |
| Individual grant recipient | $12,011 |
| Individual grant recipient | $11,878 |
| Individual grant recipient | $11,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $11,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,763 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,706 |
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 (FY19–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 99% 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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +15% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
30 repeat relationships — 0 still active in FY2025, 30 since wound down; 48 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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $386k 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
Southern Methodist University4× · 2021–2024 · $37k · revenue +18%- COCOLLEGE OF THE OZARKS4× · 2021–2024 · $32k · revenue +45%
BAYLOR UNIVERSITY4× · 2021–2024 · $31k · revenue +15%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $87k
- MUMIDTOWN URBAN STUDENT HOUSINGone grant, 2022 · $53k
- OSOkahoma State Universityone grant, 2023 · $30k
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.
Florida southern college (florida southern or the college) is committed to educational excellence and is a selective comprehensive, private, united methodist affiliated college with a strong liberal arts core and signature programs. (see…
As a leading research university with a distinctive commitment to undergraduate education, Rice University aspires to path breaking research, unsurpassed teaching, and contributions to the betterment of our world. It seeks to fulfill this…
Howard payne university is a christ-centered academic community dedicated to excellence by developing and equipping the whole person for intellectual inquiry, personal and professional integrity, and service to god and humanity.
Charleston southern university (csu) is a private, four-year co-educational institution organized under the laws of the state of south carolina as a non-profit organization and sponsored by the south carolina baptist convention. the…
Coker university is a student-centered, comprehensive university. it is dedicated to providing every student an academic curriculum based upon a uniformly excellent liberal arts core that enhances the structured development of key personal…
In partnership with the church, the purpose of william jessup university is to educate transformational leaders for the glory of god.
John brown university (jbu) provides christ-centered education that prepares students to honor god and serve others by developing their intellectual, spiritual, and professional lives. (continued on schedule o)jbu serves traditional…
Wake Forest University, a 501(c)(3) institution of higher education, is dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in the liberal arts and in graduate and professional education. The organization is comprised of seven constituent parts: Wake…
Belhaven university prepares students academically and spiritually to serve jesus christ in their careers, in human relationships, and in the world of ideas.
Regent University serves as a center of Christian thought and action to provide excellent education through a Biblical perspective and global context equipping Christian leaders to change the world.
Lubbock christian university is a christ-centered, academic community of learners, transforming the hearts, minds, and hands of students for lives of purpose and service.
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is University of Mary Hardin-Baylor and the most unlike its peers is Hopkins County Chamber of Commerce Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
13 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. 13 of the 139 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.
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: Folds of Honor Foundation · Tulsa Community Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 John and Deborah Gillis 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.
- Southern Nazarene University — 1% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to John and Deborah Gillis Foundation?
Find your warmest path to John and Deborah Gillis 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.