· Private foundation
Lyon Dennis & Janis 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE ART OF YOGA | $7,500 |
| WOMENS BOARD PROJECT | $5,050 |
| RUSS LYON FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| CIRCLE THE CITY | $2,500 |
| NOT MY KID | $2,500 |
| TEEN LIFELINE | $2,500 |
| HUSHABYE NURSERY | $2,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| THE FIT KID FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| KAMUKAMU FOUNDATION | $750 |
| DILLON HENRY FOUNDATION | $750 |
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 (FY18–24, $19k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 48% 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.
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 +48% since the first grant, against +18% for the ones you funded once.
47 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2024, 46 since wound down; 10 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, 3% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $30k 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
- THTHE HEARD MUSEUM7× · 2017–2023 · $329k · revenue +59%
- PAPHOENIX ART MUSEUM2× · 2017–2018 · $59k · revenue +19%
- SDSANDRA DAY O'CONNOR INSTITUTE FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY5× · 2017–2023 · $12k · revenue +195%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $26k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $10k
- NMNeighborhood Ministries Incgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $10k · revenue +311%
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.
We inspire people to live in harmony with the natural world by fostering love, appreciation, and understanding of the sonoran desert.
Inspiring communities to save wildlife for future generations.
Assist banner health complete its mission to make health care easier so life can be better by providing integrated & coordinated care & population health management.
We work to connect people, wildlife, and lands across the u.s.-mexico border through the use of science, advocacy, educational activities, community engagement, and on-the-ground conservation initiatives. our main activities include…
We work towards a future where birds thrive across the americas because audubon is a powerful, diverse, and ever-growing force for conservation. (continued on schedule o).
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
Nia tero works alongside indigenous peoples to secure their guardianship of vital ecosystems. indigenous peoples are guardians of earth.(see schedule o)
Project drawdown's mission is to drive meaningful climate action by advancing science-based solutions and strategies. project drawdown's work is focused on three pillars: science - advancing science-based climate solutions and strategies;…
To assist member firms in achieving higher professional, ethical business and economic standards, enabling member firms to provide quality consulting and engineering services for their clients and the public.
Friends of the earth strives for a more healthy and just world by defendng the environment and human health while advancing social and economic justice by conducting research and education, transforming the economy so it protects the…
United Food Bank unites communities to alleviate hunger.
Heal utah's mission is to protect utah's environment and its people by promoting clean air, clean energy, and comprehensive solutions to radioactive and toxic waste.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is National Park Foundation and the most unlike its peers is The Dillon Henry Foundation. 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 36 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 28% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 16% 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.
54 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. 54 of the 101 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 HEARD MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds PHOENIX ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA WOMEN'S BOARD ↗
- Who funds SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR INSTITUTE FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF PUBLIC RADIO ARIZONA ↗
- Who funds DESERT BOTANICAL GARDEN INC ↗
- Who funds Neighborhood Ministries Inc ↗
- Who funds THE ART OF YOGA PROJECT ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION FOR A NEW AMERICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF NEW MEXICO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF VISITORS ↗
- Who funds MESA VERDE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMERS RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ST MARY'S FOOD BANK ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds RUSS LYON FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BRING CHANGE 2 MIND ↗
- Who funds GEORGIA O'KEEFFE MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds MILLICENT ROGERS MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds National Kidney Foundation of Arizona ↗
- Who funds Teen Lifeline Inc ↗
- Who funds CIRCLE THE CITY ↗
- Who funds NOTMYKID ↗
- Who funds HUSHABYE NURSERY ↗
- Who funds PHOENIX GOSPEL MISSION ↗
- Who funds DIOCESAN COUNCIL FOR THE SOCIETY OF ST VINCENT DE PAUL DIOCESE PHOENIX ↗
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: Virginia G Piper Charitable Trust · Arizona Community Foundation · Thunderbirds Charities · Moreno Family Foundation · The Foundation for Community and Health Advancement · Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Phoenix · Tw Lewis Foundation · American Express Foundation · Robert H McKee and Mary Ellen McKee Charitable Family Foundation · Garcia Family Foundation · Dorrance Family Foundation · The Board of Visitors
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 Lyon Dennis & Janis 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.
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 Lyon Dennis & Janis Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Lyon Dennis & Janis 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.