How much does Legal Services Corporation give?

Legal Services Corporation reported 133 grants totaling $538,096,402 in its FY2024 IRS filing. It funded between 128 and 134 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2023.

What does Legal Services Corporation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2018 to FY2024, its largest causes are Crime & Legal (100%).

Who are Legal Services Corporation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2018 to FY2024: Texas Riogrande Legal Aid Inc ($113M), Legal Aid of North Carolina Inc ($109M), Lone Star Legal Aid ($103M).

Does Legal Services Corporation fund new organizations?

In FY2023, 0% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Which funders back the same organizations as Legal Services Corporation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Equal Justice Works, American College of Bankruptcy Foundation, The Skadden Foundation.

Where is Legal Services Corporation based?

Legal Services Corporation is based in DC.

Legal Services Corporation

Legal Services Corporation at a glance Also receives grants: funding profile →

· Public charity

Legal Services Corporation

The congress of the united states of america, in the declaration of purpose of the LEGAL SERVICES CORPORATION act (lsc act), found that "there is a need to provide equal access to the system of justice in our nation for individuals who seek redress of grievances; "that there is a need to provide high quality legal assistance to those who…

$538M

Granted FY2024still arriving

133

Grants FY2024still arriving

States reached

$20M

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, FY2018 to 2024.

Crime & Legal$3.2B

02FY2024 · 133 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

$2,958,768

Median grant

States reached

$191M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
TEXAS RIOGRANDE LEGAL AID INC	$19,591,588
LEGAL AID OF NORTH CAROLINA INC	$18,776,547
LONE STAR LEGAL AID	$17,134,910
PUERTO RICO LEGAL SERVICES INC	$16,696,749
LEGAL SERVICES NYC	$16,091,153
LEGAL AID OF NORTHWEST TEXAS	$13,598,015
GEORGIA LEGAL SERVICES PROGRAM	$11,978,349
CALIFORNIA RURAL LEGAL ASSISTANCE INC	$11,222,659
INDIANA LEGAL SERVICES INC	$9,460,202
NORTHWEST JUSTICE PROJECT	$9,411,518
LEGAL SERVICES ALABAMA INC	$8,681,644
LEGAL AID CHICAGO	$8,543,968
SOUTH CAROLINA LEGAL SERVICES INC	$8,480,917
LEGAL AID FOUNDATION OF LOS ANGELES	$8,136,150
COMMUNITY LEGAL SERVICES INC	$8,014,877

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:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY18–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 80% of its 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.

100%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$3.2B · 136 repeat orgs$1.7M to everyone else

136 repeat relationships: 131 still active in FY2024, 5 since wound down.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

136

Total granted

$3.2B

$1.7M

Still filing today

99%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 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

Crime & LegalPublic BenefitInternationalHuman ServicesEducationOther

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

TR
TEXAS RIOGRANDE LEGAL AID INC
7× · 2018–2024 · $113M · revenue +30% · 39% of their budget
LEGAL AID OF NORTH CAROLINA INC
7× · 2018–2024 · $109M · revenue +78% · 52% of their budget
LS
LONE STAR LEGAL AID
7× · 2018–2024 · $103M · revenue +43% · 53% of their budget

Funded once

LS
LEGAL SERVICES OF NORTHERN VA INC
one grant, 2019 · $1.5M
LS
LEGAL SERVICES OF THE VIRGIN ISLAND
one grant, 2018 · $172k

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.

Legal Aid Justice Center

The legal aid justice center partners with communities and clients to achieve justice by dismantling systems that create and perpetuate poverty.

Crime & Legal

Lakeshore Legal Aid

Standing with our neighbors, Lakeshore Legal Aid fights poverty and injustice through advocacy and by providing meaningful and dignified access to the legal system.

Crime & Legal

Texas Legal Services Center Inc

Texas Legal Services Center is a nonprofit legal aid organization whose mission is to serve the undeserved by making civil justice accessible to every Texan--no matter their ability to earn. We're a coalition of attorneys, paralegals, pro…

Crime & Legal

Volunteer Legal Services of Central Texas

To help low-income clients access the civil justice system by providing volunteer attorneys who donate free legal advice and representation, and by supporting and training those attorneys.

Crime & Legal

The Toledo Legal Aid Society

Toledo Legal Aid Society provides legal representation for indigent clients that are charged with criminal, traffic, or juvenile offenses for which the penalty or any possible adjudication includes the potential loss of liberty.

—

Legal Aid of Manasota Inc

Legal aid of manasota provides legal services at no or low cost to those in need by partnering with local lawyers.

Crime & Legal

Florida Legal Services Inc

To provide and serve as a leader in the state of florida, to encourage the provision of high quality legal services for the poor and provide support and assistance to all providers of legal assistance to the poor throughout the state.

—

Legal Services of New Jersey Inc

To provide and promote free and affordable civil legal assistance, advocacy and justice for low-income people and communities in new jersey.

Crime & Legal

Legal Aid Society of Story County

Legal assistance to low-income people

—

Linn County Advocate Inc

Linn County Advocate, Inc., provides quality legal representation for indigent clients in criminal and juvenile cases at the state court level in Linn, Johnson, Benton, and Jones Counties in the state of Iowa.

—

Law Access New Mexico

Provide respectful high quality legal advice, counsel, brief services and referral to low-income New Mexicans and help remove barriers to the civil justice system.

—

Legal Aid Society of San Bernardino Inc

Legal aid society of san bernardino improves the lives of those in need in san bernardino and riverside county by providing representation, counseling, education, and legal services regardless of ability to pay.

—

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Legal Services Alabama Inc; the most unlike its peers is Oclc Inc. 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

135 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. 135 of the 138 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.

112

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

135/135

Grantees still filing

130/135

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Crime & Legal$2,448,205,167Other$679,109,029Public Benefit$20,407,610International$15,740,410Human Services$279,229Education$191,004

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.

Equal Justice WorksDC172.9× affinity88 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Equal Justice Works · American College of Bankruptcy Foundation · The Skadden Foundation · Native American Rights Fund Inc · Montana Legal Services Association · West Tennessee Legal Services INC · National Legal Aid and Defender Association · AARP Foundation · Equal Justice America Inc · National Health Law Program Inc · California Changelawyers · California Access to Justice Commission

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 Legal Services Corporation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Legal Services Corporation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

0get no government money at all

40report 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.

Play a game based on Legal Services’ 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