· Private foundation
Ron and Ella Lee Lassiter Foundation
Its FY2019 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 FY2017–2019.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2019
- Under $10k8 grants · $7k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $312k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SpringSpirit | $105,394 |
| HOUSTON HOSPICE | $100,000 |
| TEXAS TECH FOUNDATION INC | $53,500 |
| THE PARISH SCHOOL | $53,500 |
| ESPONSOR NOW INC | $6,000 |
| HOUSTON HUMANE SOCIETY | $1,035 |
| UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON FOUNDATION | $100 |
| LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE | $50 |
| CAL FARLEY'S BOYS RANCH | $25 |
| DISABLED AMERICAN VETERANS | $25 |
| Veterans of Foreign Wars Foundation | $25 |
| AMERICAN RED CROSS | $25 |
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 (FY17–19, $150) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, 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.
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 +34% since the first grant, against +28% for the ones you funded once.
11 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2019, 7 since wound down; 7 grantees were first funded in FY2019 (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 FY2019, 33% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $213k 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
- SISpringSpirit Inc2× · 2018–2019 · $106k · revenue +55%
- MHMEMORIAL HIGH SCHOOL BOOSTER CLUB2× · 2017–2018 · $300 · revenue +30%
- UOUniversity of Houston Foundation2× · 2017–2019 · $200 · revenue +20%
Funded once
- WMWilliam Marsh Rice Universitygraduatedone grant, 2018 · $4k · revenue +63%
- GTGamma Tau Houseone grant, 2018 · $1k
- SMSocial Motion Incone grant, 2017 · $100 · revenue -62%
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.
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
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.
To generate superior long-term investment returns to support The University of Texas and Texas A&M University systems as they provide world-class teaching, push the boundaries of discovery, and achieve excellence in patient healthcare for…
To provide administrative services to university of virginia (university) entities, university associated organizations, or other entities involved in activities which support the university. to engage in matters pertaining to real…
The university of virginia investment management company (uvimco) is organized to invest funds on behalf of the rector and visitors of the university of virginia (the university or uva) and university-associated organizations (uaos).
The successful transition of u.s. military veterans and their families through the provision of housing, counseling, career development and comprehensive support.
The air & space forces association (afa) is a nonprofit, independent, professional military, and aerospace education association. the association's mission is to promote dominant u.s. air and space forces as the foundation of a strong…
To support, promote, and advance the mission of the naval academy.
Empowering the competitive excellence and well-being of team usa athletes, championing the power of sport, and inspiring the nation.
The organization provides professional investment management services for endowed gifts and financial assets entrusted to the ucsf foundation.
The mission of the uso foundation (foundation) is to support uso inc.'s (uso) mission to strengthen the well-being of the people serving in america's military and their families.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Wounded Warrior Project Inc and the most unlike its peers is William Marsh Rice University. 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 46 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 26% 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.
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 47 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 SpringSpirit Inc ↗
- Who funds Houston Hospice ↗
- Who funds TEXAS TECH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds William Marsh Rice University ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds MEMORIAL HIGH SCHOOL BOOSTER CLUB ↗
- Who funds University of Houston Foundation ↗
- Who funds VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COAST GUARD FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF FULTON MANSION ↗
- Who funds Social Motion Inc ↗
- Who funds COVENANT HOUSE ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds JUDICIAL WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds HARVARD MAGAZINE INC ↗
- Who funds PAWS FOR PURPLE HEARTS ↗
- Who funds Leadership Institute ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS OF TEXAS INC ↗
- Who funds Disabled American Veterans ↗
- Who funds STAR OF HOPE MISSION ↗
- Who funds Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund ↗
- Who funds MUTTS WITH A MISSION ↗
- Who funds UNITY CHILDREN'S HOME INC ↗
- Who funds Young America's Foundation ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS AND MORE INC ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
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: Greater Houston Community Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 Ron and Ella Lee Lassiter 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.
- Wounded Warrior 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.
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How do I get to Ron and Ella Lee Lassiter Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Ron and Ella Lee Lassiter 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.