· Public charity
Lyra
LYRA incubates and accelerates high-impact education initiatives that tackle some of the biggest challenges facing education, deeply rooted in diverse and inclusive community voices.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 6 grants below total $377,500 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $408,600 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $31,100 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 · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $23k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $55k
- $250k+1 grant · $300k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LUMINARY LEARNING NETWORK | $300,000 |
| EMPOWER SCHOOLS | $45,000 |
| DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $10,000 |
| BOULDER VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT | $7,500 |
| POUDRE SCHOOL DISTRICT R-1 | $7,500 |
| THE STEAD SCHOOL | $7,500 |
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 (FY20–20, $1k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
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 37% of Lyra’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, 57% of the giving stays in CO; read by stated purpose it is 86% — more 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 +101% since the first grant, against +57% for the ones you funded once.
3 repeat relationships — 0 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down; 6 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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $378k 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
EMPOWER SCHOOLS INC3× · 2020–2022 · $928k · revenue +53%- IGIndividual grant recipient2× · 2020–2021 · $54k
- YVYAMPA VALLEY SUSTAINABILITY COUNCIL2× · 2021–2022 · $50k · revenue +101%
Funded once
THE COLORADO NONPROFIT DEVELOPMENT CENTERgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $70k · revenue +26%- TCTHE COLORADO EDUCATION INITIATIVEgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $40k · revenue +41%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $39k
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.
Ascend College Prep is a public high school for 10-12th grade students in Colorado Springs and the surrounding area. Our Mission is to "Prepare and inspire students to become lifelong learners and responsible citizens through rigorous…
Provide education for students in Pre-K through 8th grade, benefitting approximately 415 students.
To provide innovative career exploration and work-based learning opportunities that prepare youth to enter tomorrow's workforce and build fulfilling lives.
Empower colorado education leaders through advocacy, professional learning and networking to deliver on the promise of public education
Through individualized learning and responsive mentoring, we inspire, guide and empower students and families.
Our mission is to provide individualized educational options where students and teachers engage in playful, exploratory learning by creating a culture of collaboration in a safe, diverse, multi-age environment. Our students are encouraged…
Education for youth throughout mesa county, co
The mission of New Legacy Charter School is to provide parenting students with the skills needed to raise healthy children and to engage all students in personalized projects and experiences that develop college and career awareness and…
Great education colorado harnesses the power of grassroots activism and diverse, inclusive networks to guarantee that public schools in every colorado community are welcoming and adequately, equitably, and sustainably funded
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…
The peak school seeks to ignite a passion for learning, to develop students of diverse talents and backgrounds who think critically and act with integrity, and to graduate compassionate, confident, capable students who will embrace their…
Our mission is to challenge encourage and empower students everyday to persevere on their journey to becoming lifelong learners.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Rise Colorado and the most unlike its peers is Grand Mesa Arts & Events Center Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 14 years old; the field is 14. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
35 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. 35 of the 57 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 EMPOWER SCHOOLS INC ↗
- Who funds LUMINARY LEARNING NETWORK ↗
- Who funds YAMPA VALLEY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE COLORADO NONPROFIT DEVELOPMENT CENTER ↗
- Who funds YAMPA VALLEY SUSTAINABILITY COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds THE COLORADO EDUCATION INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds RESCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Moonshot edVentures ↗
- Who funds EDUCATION REFORM NOW INC ↗
- Who funds RISE COLORADO ↗
- Who funds KEYSTONE CENTER ↗
- Who funds INSPIRE ↗
- Who funds COLORADO LEAGUE OF CHARTER SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds Young African Americans for Social and Political Activism ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF THE SAN LUIS VALLEY INC ↗
- Who funds Empower Community High School ↗
- Who funds LAUNCH NETWORK ↗
- Who funds THE KEYSTONE SCIENCE SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds HEART AND HAND CENTER ↗
- Who funds CLIMB HIGHER COLORADO ↗
- Who funds Wyatt Academy ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDRENS KIVA MONTESSORI CHARTER SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Youth Empowerment Broadcasting Org ↗
- Who funds The STEAD School ↗
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: Rose Community Foundation · The Denver Foundation · The Colorado Health Foundation · Gates Family Foundation · Colorado Gives Foundation · Rooted · Wend II Inc · Donnell-Kay Foundation Inc · Margulf Foundation · Mile High United Way Inc · Daniels Fund · El Pomar 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 Lyra 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 Lyra?
Find your warmest path to Lyra 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.