· Private foundation
Lillis 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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k93 grants · $282k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $90k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COLORADO WOMEN'S EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| HANDS OF THE CARPENTER AUTOMOTIVE REPAIR | $15,000 |
| DENVER ASSET BUILDING COALITION | $10,000 |
| WELLSPRING COMMUNITY | $10,000 |
| FRIENDS FOUNDATION DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY | $10,000 |
| CLOTHES TO KIDS OF DENVER | $10,000 |
| EDUCATION THROUGH MUSIC COLORADO | $10,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF PUEBLO | $10,000 |
| LAGUNA COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN | $9,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING | $9,000 |
| BELMONT UNIVERSITY | $8,000 |
| STETSON UNIVERSITY | $8,000 |
| COLORADO SCHOOL OF MINES | $8,000 |
| REGIS UNIVERSITY | $8,000 |
| WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY | $8,000 |
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.
Your human-services grants (FY19–24, $212k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 43% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 13% of Lillis Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 65% of the giving stays in CO; read by stated purpose it is 61% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +36% since the first grant, against +23% for the ones you funded once.
100 repeat relationships — 60 still active in FY2024, 40 since wound down; 17 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $80k 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
- SASparkHope Automotive4× · 2021–2024 · $35k · revenue +81%
- KFKIDS FIRST HEALTH CARE2× · 2022–2023 · $29k · revenue +42%
- LCLAGUNA COLLEGE OF ART & DESIGN4× · 2021–2024 · $29k · revenue +173%
Funded once
- CRCASTLE ROCK PARKS AND TRAILS FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $30k · revenue -87%
- CSCOLORADO SPRINGS CHILD NURSERY CENTERS INCone grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue +21%
- TVTHE VALLEY SENIOR CENTERone grant, 2019 · $15k
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.
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
To provide meaningful access to high quality, civil legal services in the pursuit of justice for as many low income persons and members of vulnerable populations throughout colorado as possible.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
Columbia college improves lives by providing quality education to both traditional and nontraditional students, helping them achieve their true potential.
To support college students in innovative, affordable paths to in-demand careers and financial freedom.
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
Colorado center on law and policy is an antipoverty organization advancing the rights of every coloradan.
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…
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
Goodwill's mission is to provide education, career development, and employment opportunities to help coloradans in need achieve self-sufficiency, dignity, and hope through the power of work.
Assist banner health complete its mission to make health care easier so life can be better by providing integrated & coordinated care & population health management.
AIA Colorado,is the voice of the architecture profession in Colorado. Through advocacy, leadership development, education and resources for architects, the organization supports architecture professionals in designing a better world where…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Denver Dumb Friends League and the most unlike its peers is Golf 4 the Disabled. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 38 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
77 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. 77 of the 190 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.
- Who funds THE INDEPENDENT CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ↗
- Who funds REGIS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds SparkHope Automotive ↗
- Who funds CASTLE ROCK PARKS AND TRAILS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds KIDS FIRST HEALTH CARE ↗
- Who funds LAGUNA COLLEGE OF ART & DESIGN ↗
- Who funds A LITTLE HELP ↗
- Who funds BAYLOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Belmont University ↗
- Who funds CANOPY VILLAGE INC ↗
- Who funds WELLSPRING COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds COLORADO WOMEN'S EDUCATION FOUNDATI ↗
- Who funds TRI-LAKES CARES ↗
- Who funds CLOTHES TO KIDS OF DENVER INC ↗
- Who funds COLORADO SPRINGS CHILD NURSERY CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds THE COLORADO COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF DENVER ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND ↗
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: Colorado Gives Foundation · The Denver Foundation · Anschutz Family Foundation · Mile High United Way Inc · Rose Community Foundation · El Pomar Foundation · The Janus Henderson Foundation · The Colorado Health Foundation · Xcel Energy Foundation · Nextfifty Initiative · Daniels Fund · Western Union 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 Lillis 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.
- The Trustees of Princeton University — 11% of income from government
- University of New Haven — 2% of income from government
- Stetson University Inc — 0% of income from government
- Oliver Patch Project Inc — 0% 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.