· Public charity
Lions Clubs International Foundation
To empower Lions Clubs, volunteers, and partners to improve health and well-being, strengthen communities, and support those in need through humanitarian services and grants that impact lives globally, and encourage peace and international understanding.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 139 grants below total $5,738,251 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $36,869,007 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $31,130,756 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k25 grants · $174k
- $10k–50k91 grants · $1.5M
- $50k–250k22 grants · $2.2M
- $250k+1 grant · $1.9M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Special Olympics | $1,916,000 |
| NA Lions Quest Community Partnership Grants | $225,000 |
| District 34 A | $150,000 |
| Multiple District 34 | $150,000 |
| District 19 N | $107,114 |
| District 11 A2 | $100,000 |
| District 5M 2 | $100,000 |
| District 12 L | $100,000 |
| District 34 C | $100,000 |
| Multiple District 31 | $100,000 |
| Multiple District 4 | $100,000 |
| Multiple District 33 | $100,000 |
| Multiple District 35 | $100,000 |
| District 12 L | $99,500 |
| District 24 C | $93,729 |
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 (FY18–25, $685k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 98% of those 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
Grants abroad, by region — $29M on the FY2025 return
Schedule F, as filed: 9 regions. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.
Stated purpose: Equip Fire Brigade with Firefighting Gear · Purchase Thermal Imaging Cameras for Fire Brigade · Donate Food Supplies to the Needy
Stated purpose: Provide Mobility Equipment for New Autism Center · Equip Center for Disabled · Renovate Garden for Palazzolo Institute Nursing Home
Stated purpose: Flood Relief · Food & Basic Need Items for Refugees · Diabetes Campaign in Fonseca, La Guajira
Stated purpose: Flood Relief · Equip Lions Women's Vocational Training Center · Equip Lions Charitable Eye Hospital in Chittagong
Stated purpose: Flood Relief Niger · Flood Relief · Cyclone Relief Madagascar
Stated purpose: Internally Displaced Persons Relief - Stoves · Lions Quest Program
Stated purpose: Wildfire Relief · Construct National Dog Guide Training School (local match) · DGE Humanitarian Causes 2025
Stated purpose: WASH Initiative in Gaza · Furnish Homes for Gaza's Children in Bethlehem · DGE Humanitarian Causes 2025
Stated purpose: AAOT and Special Olympics Caribbean 2024 · Bevelling Machine for Lions Eye Clinic · Equipment for Children's Hospital
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. Grants abroad on Schedule F are filed by region, purpose and amount with no recipient name, so they are shown by region and cannot be placed on the country map or matched to a grantee.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 9% of Lions Clubs International 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.
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.
204 repeat relationships — 93 still active in FY2025, 111 since wound down; 20 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $706k 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
- SOSPECIAL OLYMPICS INC9× · 2017–2025 · $16M · revenue +44%
- TCTexas Children's Hospital4× · 2020–2024 · $3.6M · revenue +69%
- RTRESEARCH TO PREVENT BLINDNESS ENDOWMENT FUND INC4× · 2019–2024 · $900k · revenue +34%
Funded once
- TGThe GAVI Campaignone grant, 2017 · $2.5M
- WFWorld Food Program USAone grant, 2024 · $1.0M
- TCTHE CARTER CENTER INCone grant, 2020 · $856k · revenue +25%
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.
Non-profit community service group.
Raising Money to Help Community
The primary exempt purpose of the Lions Club is to promote the civic, cultural, social, and moral welfare of the community and to encourage service-minded people to serve their community without personal financial reward. While its…
Volunteers serve their communities, meet humanitarian needs, primarily focus on helping to aid the blind and visually impaired.
Grants
To foster a spirit of understanding among all people for humanitarian needs by providing services thru community involvement.
Health, Civic and Health Services
Support benevolent programs of Lions Club International.
To maintain and promote lionism throughout georgia
To create and foster a spirit of understanding among all people for humanitarian needs by providing voluntary services through community involvement and international cooperation.
Civic activities & donations
Provide voluntary services
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is International Association of Lions and the most unlike its peers is Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation. 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 60 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% 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.
110 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 110 of the 313 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 SPECIAL OLYMPICS INC ↗
- Who funds Texas Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds LIONS INTERNATIONAL MD-2 ↗
- Who funds MULTIPLE DISTRICT NO 33 LIONS CLUBS INT ↗
- Who funds RESEARCH TO PREVENT BLINDNESS ENDOWMENT FUND INC ↗
- Who funds THE CARTER CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Lions Foundation of District 35-N Inc ↗
- Who funds District 37 INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF LIONS CLUBS ↗
- Who funds Lions Clubs of New York State & Bermuda Lions Clubs International Inc ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL OF GOVERNORS - DISTRICT 30 LIONS OF MISSISSIPPI ↗
- Who funds LIONS INTERNATIONAL FLORIDA MULTIPLE DISTRICT 35 INC ↗
- Who funds MULTIPLE DISTRICT 5M INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF LIONS INC ↗
- Who funds LIONS CLUBS- MD-31 - N C LIONS ↗
- Who funds LOUISIANA LIONS EYE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds International Association of Lions Clubs 4C6 District ↗
- Who funds Lions International Multiple District 2-S5 ↗
- Who funds LIONS INTERNATIONAL DISTRICT 5M-2 ↗
- Who funds THE MIRACLE LEAGUE OF COASTAL ALABAMA INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF LIONS 25B DISTRICT ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS OF LIONS CLUBS ↗
- Who funds SURGICAL EYE EXPEDITIONS INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds REMOTE AREA MEDICAL ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds LIONS OF MI MULTIPLEDIS 11 INC ↗
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 set of overlaps that mostly run through you, not between each other.
Open a dossier: The International Association of Lions Clubs · 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 Lions Clubs International 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.
- Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation — 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.
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Find your warmest path to Lions Clubs International 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.