· Private foundation
Lucas Foundation for Better Living
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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ELEVATE BIRMINGHAM | $4,000 |
| GREATER BIRMINGHAM MINISTRIES | $4,000 |
| MISSISSIPPI FOOD NETWORK | $4,000 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES | $2,400 |
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 (FY17–24, $17k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 14%. 100% 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
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 +74% since the first grant, against +24% for the ones you funded once.
7 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2024, 6 since wound down; 3 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, 28% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k 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
MISSISSIPPI FOOD NETWORK INC8× · 2017–2024 · $86k · revenue +74%
UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF3× · 2021–2023 · $13k · revenue +64%- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches3× · 2017–2021 · $11k · revenue +46%
Funded once
- SCSTEWPOT COMMUNITY SERVICES INCone grant, 2022 · $7k · revenue -10%
- CRCATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICESone grant, 2022 · $5k
- DODOORS OF HOPEone grant, 2021 · $5k
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.
Feeding the spiritual and physical hunger, especially in at-risk children.
Miracle hill ministries is committed to life transformation for children and adults experiencing homelessness. more information and program outcomes may be found at www.miraclehill.org.
Our mission is to feed the hungry in baton rouge and the surrounding parishes by providing food and educational outreach through faith-based and other community partners.
To lead a unified effort for a hunger-free texas.
collect warehouse & distribute food to needy organizations
United Food Bank unites communities to alleviate hunger.
The mission of the alabama casa network, inc. is to equip and empower casa programs to advocate for all of alabama's abused and neglected children.
Food service for the poor, economically disadvantaged, and elderly.
Food bank of central new york is a not-for-profit organization: our mission is to lead the effort to eliminate hunger in our region, through partnerships with others in our community, through education, advocacy, and distribution of…
Rise against hunger, inc. is an international hunger relief non-profit organization that is driven by a vision of a world without hunger and a mission to end hunger in our lifetime. rise against hunger distributes food and other…
Assistance to homeless and needy persons.
Aid For Starving Children provides assistance around the world to children and their families by providing food, shelter, clean water, financial assistance, education, and emergency relief to victims of famine, natural disasters, and war.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Action Against Hunger - Usa and the most unlike its peers is Over the Mountain Miracle League. 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 41 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 39 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 MISSISSIPPI FOOD NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOOD BANK OF CENTRAL ALABAMA ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR MISSISSIPPI ↗
- Who funds STEWPOT COMMUNITY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds GRACE HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD & FRIENDS INC ↗
- Who funds ELEVATE BIRMINGHAM ↗
- Who funds THE EXCEPTIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Greater Birmingham Ministries ↗
- Who funds THE BELL CENTER FOR EARLY INTERVENTION PROGRAMS ↗
- Who funds FIRST LIGHT INC ↗
- Who funds DIABETES FOUNDATION OF MISSISSIPPI INC ↗
- Who funds ACTION AGAINST HUNGER - USA ↗
- Who funds FAITH HOME INC ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN JIMMIE HALE MISSION ↗
- Who funds MAUI FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds VOICES for Alabama's Children ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL EMPOWERMENT MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds Kids Alive International Inc ↗
- Who funds FRENCH CAMP ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds OVER THE MOUNTAIN MIRACLE LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds Christian Service Mission 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 tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham · Navigate Affordable Housing Partners Inc · The Daniel Foundation of Alabama · Alabama Power Foundation Inc · Enterprise Holdings Foundation · Selby and Richard McRae Foundation · The Joseph S Bruno Charitable Foundation · Orlean & Ralph W Beeson Fund · Ergon Foundation Inc · Mike and Gillian Goodrich Foundation · Protective Life Foundation · The Faulkner Family 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 Lucas Foundation for Better Living 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.
- Global Empowerment Mission 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Lucas Foundation for Better Living?
Find your warmest path to Lucas Foundation for Better Living 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.