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· Private foundation

The Carol and Rebecca Pennell Foundation

Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

$80k
Granted FY2025still arriving
6
Grants FY2025still arriving
4
States reached
$23k
Largest
01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Religion$993kHuman Services$420kFood & Nutrition$41kEducation$22k
02FY2025 · 6 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

  • Under $10k2 grants · $6k
  • $10k–50k4 grants · $74k
$20,000
Median grant
4
States reached
$16k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
Mexico Outreach$23,300
MEXICO MINISTRIES INC$21,000
Individual grant recipient$20,000
BBFI - World Mission Service Center$10,000
Denison Soup Kitchen$4,000
Lighthouse Children's Home$1,500
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

US giving: 88% of grant dollars ($1.3M). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 13% that went abroad ($185k) is mapped below.

show:

Its human-services grants (FY17–25, $275k) land where the poverty rate runs at 21%, against an area that typically sits at 14%. 85% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 14%Lighthouse Children's Home: $167k → 23%Lighthouse Children's Home: $35k → 23%Lighthouse Children's Home: $23k → 23%Lighthouse Children's Home: $6k → 23%Lighthouse Children's Home: $2k → 23%Lighthouse Children's Home: $2k → 23%Denison Soup Kitchen: $10k → 11%Denison Soup Kitchen: $6k → 11%Denison Soup Kitchen: $6k → 11%Denison Soup Kitchen: $4k → 11%Denison Soup Kitchen: $4k → 11%Denison Soup Kitchen: $4k → 11%Denison Soup Kitchen: $4k → 11%Denison Soup Kitchen: $3k → 11%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Beyond the US: 13% of all-years giving ($185k)

1 country, by the recipient’s country on the filing.

grant dollars sentlessmore
Mexico$185k · 6 grants
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving. International giving is mapped by the recipient’s country from the same 990 filings; comparable need data isn’t available at that grain.
04

Where the work is directed

The same grants placed two ways: where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose sends the money.

About 32% of The Carol and Rebecca Pennell Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked for a different county than the recipient’s own address. By recipient address, 29% of the giving stays in TX; by stated purpose, 42%.

The Carol and Rebecca Pennell Foundationlessmore of its giving
Placed by recipient address · 19% directed abroad (not shown)
How this is measured
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 funder’s own 990 grant descriptions.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

100%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$1.5M · 10 repeat orgs$3k to everyone else

10 repeat relationships: 6 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

10
2

Total granted

$1.5M
$3k

Still filing today

40%
0%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25
Human ServicesReligionInternationalOther
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

  • BW
    BBFI - World Mission Service Center
    7× · 2017–2025 · $295k
  • MO
    MEXICO OUTREACH INC
    9× · 2017–2025 · $284k · revenue +33%
  • MM
    MEXICO MINISTRIES INC
    8× · 2017–2025 · $248k · revenue -52%

Funded once

  • FB
    FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH SHERMAN
    one grant, 2018 · $2k
  • CF
    CAL FARLEY'S
    one grant, 2017 · $1k
How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field
05the grantee network

4 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 4 of the 12 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

1
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
0
Early backer (in before they grew)
4/4
Grantees still filing
2/4
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

BBFI - World Mission Service Center: $294,700 · OtherBBFI - World Mission Service CenterIndividual grant recipient: $184,500 · OtherIndividual grant recipientPogue Family Missions: $135,000 · OtherPogue Family MissionsFundamental Baptist Missions Intern: $27,000 · Other+4 more: $27,100 · OtherMEXICO OUTREACH INC: $284,382 · ReligionMEXICO OUTREACH INCLIGHTHOUSE CHILDRENS HOMES INC: $234,576 · Human ServicesLIGHTHOUSE CHILDRENS …DENISON SOUP KITCHEN: $40,650 · Human ServicesDENISON SOUP KITCHENMEXICO MINISTRIES INC: $247,713 · InternationalMEXICO MINISTRIES I…
Other$668,300Religion$284,382Human Services$275,226International$247,713

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$100k$1.0Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetMEXICO OUTREACH INC: $284,382 over 9y, 21% of budgetMEXICO MINISTRIES INC: $247,713 over 8y, 22% of budgetLIGHTHOUSE CHILDRENS HOMES INC: $234,576 over 6y, 17% of budgetDENISON SOUP KITCHEN: $40,650 over 8y, 33% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

  • Who funds MEXICO OUTREACH INC ↗
  • Who funds MEXICO MINISTRIES INC ↗
  • Who funds LIGHTHOUSE CHILDRENS HOMES INC ↗
  • Who funds DENISON SOUP KITCHEN ↗

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a set of overlaps that mostly run through this funder rather than between each other.

Amazonsmile FoundationWA2.7× affinity4 shared granteesties to 0 of 0Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Amazonsmile Foundation

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization The Carol and Rebecca Pennell Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from The Carol and Rebecca Pennell Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%3%10%23%40%funder's share of their income ↑0%1%3%4%5%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%
    typical government reliance, FY20–25
    How this is measured
    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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.
    05Through Plinth

    Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

    How do I get to The Carol and Rebecca Pennell Foundation?

    Find your warmest path to The Carol and Rebecca Pennell 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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 12 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

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