· Private foundation
The Kevin and Lesley Lilly Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k8 grants · $28k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $150k
- $250k+1 grant · $330k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LIFEHOUSE | $330,000 |
| THE STORY CHURCH HOUSTON | $100,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,000 |
| MAINSTREET MINISTRIES | $10,000 |
| JUNIOR LEAGUE OF HOUSTON | $10,000 |
| TEXAS WRANGLERS | $9,000 |
| PARTNERSHIP FOR RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT | $5,000 |
| CORNERSTONE CHRISTIAN CENTER | $5,000 |
| CREEDE REPERTORY THEATRE | $5,000 |
| TREXO | $1,500 |
| THE 100 CLUB | $1,000 |
| CITY RISE CHURCH | $500 |
| PROVERBS 31 MINISTRIES | $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 (FY18–24, $15k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 66% 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.
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 +43% since the first grant, against +4% for the ones you funded once.
34 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 26 since wound down; 5 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $13k 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
- LHLife House9× · 2017–2025 · $409k · revenue ×12 · 67% of their budget
- CSCHRIST SCHOOL INC3× · 2018–2021 · $88k · revenue +141%
- MSMain Street Ministries Inc7× · 2019–2025 · $83k · revenue +29%
Funded once
- EHEPISCOPAL HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2017 · $34k
- SGSTATE GUARD ASSOCIATION OF TEXASone grant, 2024 · $12k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $10k
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.
Plant, protect and promote trees all over the greater Houston area.
To recognize the accomplishments and contributions of our outstanding Texas business leaders and to perpetuate and inspire the values of entrepreneurial spirit, personal integrity, and community leadership in all generations of Texans.
To collect and preserve significant historical materials that relate to the early history and culture of Texas and to promote the study of the history of Texas through exhibits, publications, and educational programs.
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…
Texas christian university is an institution of higher education which includes nine major academic units: liberal arts, science and engineering, business, education, fine arts, communication, honors, nursing and health sciences, and the…
As the Houston affiliate of the National Christian Foundation (NCF), our mission is to serve and encourage givers to grow as faithful stewards who give wisely to further the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The witte museum inspires people to shape the future of texas through transformative and relevant experiences in nature, science and culture.
See Schedule OThe Women's Resource of Greater Houston helps women and girls make choices toward becoming independent, productive, and financially stable. We fulfill our mission by recruiting volunteer instructors to deliver our programs in…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The 100 Club Inc and the most unlike its peers is HeartStone Pictures. 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 25 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) — 11% of your grantees by number, and just 70% 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.
36 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. 36 of the 73 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 Life House ↗
- Who funds CHRIST SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds Main Street Ministries Inc ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE NATIONAL WORLD WAR II MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds The Junior League of Houston Inc ↗
- Who funds MICAH PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds THE A PARTNERS DBA THE ANTIOCH PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds Houston Botanic Garden ↗
- Who funds Memorial Hermann Foundation ↗
- Who funds AUSTIN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Houston Museum of Natural Science ↗
- Who funds TEXAS WRANGLERS ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL WESTERN ART FOUNDATION BRISCOE WESTERN ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds PARTNERSHIP FOR RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT INC ↗
- Who funds ASTROS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Elijah Rising ↗
- Who funds South Texas Charity Weekend Inc ↗
- Who funds THE CHURCHILL CENTRE ↗
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 · The Brown Foundation Inc · The Holthouse Foundation for Kids · Jack H & William M Light Charitable Trust · ESB3 Foundation · Strake Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · Texas Instruments Foundation · The Elkins Foundation · Baxter Trust Co Private Foundation Services · Stoller Foundation · Baker Hughes 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 The Kevin and Lesley Lilly 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.