How much does John Henry Dean III and Shirley Lawson Dean Foundation give?

John Henry Dean III and Shirley Lawson Dean Foundation reported 18 grants totaling $4,676,145 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 15 and 29 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

Who are John Henry Dean III and Shirley Lawson Dean Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: Cook Children's Medical Center ($8.7M), Fort Worth Museum of Science and History ($2.0M), Saving Hope Animal Rescue Fund ($155k).

Does John Henry Dean III and Shirley Lawson Dean Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 5% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does John Henry Dean III and Shirley Lawson Dean 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 John Henry Dean III and Shirley Lawson Dean Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Thomas M Helen McKee & John P Ryan Fo John P Ryan Foundation Inc, Garvey Texas Foundation Inc, Bnsf Railway Foundation.

John Henry Dean III and Shirley Lawson Dean Foundation

John Henry Dean III and Shirley Lawson Dean Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

John Henry Dean III and Shirley Lawson Dean Foundation

Q: What does John Henry Dean III and Shirley Lawson Dean Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Health (85%), Arts & Culture (11%), Animals (2%).

Q: Where is John Henry Dean III and Shirley Lawson Dean Foundation based?

John Henry Dean III and Shirley Lawson Dean Foundation is based in TX.

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.

$4.7M

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$2.5M

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 2025.

Health$17MArts & Culture$2.1MAnimals$394kHuman Services$227kPublic Safety & Disaster$107kPhilanthropy$38kFood & Nutrition$36kEducation$34kOther$0

02FY2025 · 18 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k11 grants · $32k
$10k–50k4 grants · $74k
$50k–250k1 grant · $105k
$250k+2 grants · $4.5M

$5,000

Median grant

States reached

$112M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
BAYLOR SCOTT & WHITE ALL SAINTS HEALTH FOUNDATION	$2,460,200
COOK CHILDRENS MEDICAL CENTER	$2,005,000
SAVING HOPE ANIMAL RESCUE	$105,000
ARIZONA HUMANE SOCIETY	$44,145
FORT WORTH DELTA DELTA DELTA ALUMNAE CHARITIES	$10,300
AMERICAN RED CROSS	$10,000
CHILDHELP INC	$10,000
AIRPOWER FOUNDATION	$5,000
JEWEL CHARITY BALL INCORPORATED	$5,000
TEXAS HEALTH RESOURCES FOUNDATION	$5,000
FORT WORTH MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND HISTORY	$5,000
HOLIDAYS & HEROES	$3,000
LES DAMES DASPEN LTD	$2,500
UNION GOSPEL MISSION	$2,000
TEXAS BALLET THEATER INC	$1,000

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 (FY17–25, $321k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 97% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

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.

99%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$19M · 34 repeat orgs$198k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +31% since the first grant, against +25% for those funded once.

34 repeat relationships: 18 still active in FY2025, 16 since wound down.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$19M

$198k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+31%

+25%

Still filing today

76%

78%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

Human ServicesHealthArts & CultureEducationAnimalsPhilanthropyOther

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

CC
Cook Children's Medical Center
9× · 2017–2025 · $8.7M · revenue +123%
AH
Arizona Humane Society
8× · 2017–2025 · $154k · revenue +137%
AN
American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches
9× · 2017–2025 · $105k · revenue +46%

Funded once

CF
CENTER FOR TRANSFORMING LIVES
one grant, 2023 · $100k · revenue +4%
IG
Individual grant recipient
one grant, 2023 · $25k
NM
NATIONAL MOUNTED WARFARE FOUNDATIONgraduated
one grant, 2022 · $25k · revenue +156%

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.

Baylor All Saints Medical Center

Founded as a Christian ministry of healing, Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH) promotes the well-being of all individuals, families and communities.

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

Baylor University Medical Center

Founded as a Christian ministry of healing, Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH) promotes the well-being of all individuals, families and communities.

Health

Baylor Health Care System Foundation

To foster and support the activities and purposes of Baylor Scott & White Health, to encourage broad-based public support of the health care system and its affiliated institutions, and to advance the medical objectives, including…

Health

Baylor Research Institute

To improve the care and well being of our community, nationally and internationally, through innovative clinically relevant research that is consistent with the mission, vision and values of Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH).

Health

Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council

The mission of the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council is to drive evidence-based improvement in patient care and health equity throughout the region.

—

Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth

A faith-based organization whose mission is to improve the health of the people in the communities it serves regardless of their ability to pay.

Health

All Saints Health Foundation

To foster and support the activities and purposes of Baylor Scott & White All Saints Medical Center-Fort Worth, to encourage broad-based public support, and to advance medical objectives, including sponsorship or patient care, research,…

Health

Baylor Scott & White Medical Center - Centennial

Founded as a Christian ministry of healing, Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH) promotes the well-being of all individuals, families and communities.

Health

Scott & White Memorial Hospital

Founded as a Christian ministry of healing, Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH) promotes the well-being of all individuals, families and communities.

Health

Baylor Regional Medical Center at Grapevine

Founded as a Christian ministry of healing, Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH) promotes the well-being of all individuals, families and communities.

Health

Baylor Scott & White Medical Centers - Greater North Texas

Founded as a Christian ministry of healing, Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH) promotes the well-being of all individuals, families and communities.

Health

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewel Charity Ball Incorporated; the most unlike its peers is Beautiful Feet Ministries. 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

47 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. 47 of the 61 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)

47/47

Grantees still filing

30/47

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Health$8,947,532Other$7,799,316Arts & Culture$2,057,250Animals$393,814Human Services$334,325Public Benefit$42,750Philanthropy$37,209

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.

Thomas M Helen McKee & John P Ryan Fo John P Ryan Foundation IncTX28.2× affinity11 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Thomas M Helen McKee & John P Ryan Fo John P Ryan Foundation Inc · Garvey Texas Foundation Inc · Bnsf Railway Foundation · Sid W Richardson Foundation · The Roach Foundation Inc · Amon G Carter Foundation · Virginia Hobbs Charitable Trust Simmons Bank Trustee · Leo Potishman Foundation Xxxxx3002 · Amon G Carter-Star Tele Emply Fund · Community Foundation of North Texas (Tax · Textron Charitable Trust Dtd 122353 · Winn-Dunaway Family Foundation

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 John Henry Dean III and Shirley Lawson Dean Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from John Henry Dean III and Shirley Lawson Dean Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

0get no government money at all

4report 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 John Henry Dean III and Shirley Lawson Dean Foundation?

Find your warmest path to John Henry Dean III and Shirley Lawson Dean 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 John Henry Dean III and Shirley Lawson Dean’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