· Private foundation
The Legett Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k58 grants · $187k
- $10k–50k58 grants · $1.1M
- $50k–250k11 grants · $1.3M
- $250k+9 grants · $9.9M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF ABILENE | $2,500,000 |
| AMARILLO AREA FOUNDATION | $2,100,000 |
| WEST TEXAS REHABILITATION CENTER FOUNDATION | $1,683,667 |
| HARDIN-SIMMONS UNIVERSITY | $1,000,000 |
| M D ANDERSON CANCER CENTER | $1,000,000 |
| HENDRICK MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION | $600,000 |
| TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY | $449,444 |
| TEXAS TECH FOUNDATION | $310,000 |
| ABILENE RESTORATION MINISTRIES | $250,000 |
| ABILENE IMPROVEMENT CORPORATION | $237,500 |
| UNITED WAY OF ABILENE | $185,000 |
| THE GLOBAL ORPHAN PROJECT | $150,000 |
| BCFS HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES | $150,000 |
| ABILENE ARTS ALLIANCE | $150,000 |
| ANGELO STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $125,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $738k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 76% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 18% of The Legett Foundation’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, 96% of the giving stays in TX; read by stated purpose it is 85% — less 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 +24% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
152 repeat relationships — 61 still active in FY2024, 91 since wound down; 65 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, 59% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3.3M 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
- TCTEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY5× · 2020–2024 · $8.5M · revenue +40%
- TTTEXAS TECH FOUNDATION INC4× · 2021–2024 · $2.7M · revenue +68%
- AZAbilene Zoological Society4× · 2021–2024 · $1.5M · revenue +18% · 38% of their budget
Funded once
- WTWEST TEXAS A&M UNIV FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $910k · revenue -40%
- TGTHE GEORGE W BUSH FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $750k · revenue -15%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $600k
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.
The Progress Texas Institute provides research and strategic communications on issues with the ultimate goal of increasing civic engagement.
The texas tribune promotes civic engagement and public education across the state by producing and sharing for free public data interactives, statewide events and intensive and daily reporting on texas public policy, politics and current…
To facilitate research and development within the texas a&m university system and selected other entities.
The ACLU Foundation of Texas is the unyielding guardian and promoter of freedom, justice, equality and dignity of all people, particularly for those who are still fighting to secure the full exercise of their civil rights and liberties.…
Uatx is a nonprofit dedicated to building a liberal arts university committed to freedom of inquiry, freedom of conscience, and civil discourse. to maintain these principles, the university will be fiercely independent financially,…
Glasstire is a website about visual art in Texas. Our mission is to expand the conversation about visual art in Texas.
The witte museum inspires people to shape the future of texas through transformative and relevant experiences in nature, science and culture.
At the Every Texan, we believe in a Texas that offers everyone the chance to compete and succeed in life. We envision a Texas where everyone is healthy, well educated, and financially secure. We want the best Texas, a proud state that sets…
As a christian university, we provide education and research opportunities preparing global leaders to partner with local communities.
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…
The ACLU of Texas works with communities, at the State Capitol, and in the courts to protect and advance civil rights and civil liberties for every Texan, no exceptions.
To strengthen the association of former students, promote the interests and welfare of texas a&m university, perpetuate ties of affection and esteem formed in university or college days, and serve the student body.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Texas Public Policy Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Mobeetie Volunteer Fire Department Inc. 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 37 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.8% 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.
228 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 228 of the 338 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds ABILENE HERITAGE SQUARE INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF ABILENE ↗
- Who funds ABILENE IMPROVEMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds TEXAS TECH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AMARILLO AREA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HARDIN-SIMMONS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds West Texas Rehabilitation Center Foundation ↗
- Who funds Abilene Zoological Society ↗
- Who funds Texas Agricultural Land Trust ↗
- Who funds MCMURRY UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds ABILENE CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds WEST TEXAS A&M UNIV FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE GEORGE W BUSH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF ABILENE INC ↗
- Who funds Hendrick Medical Center Foundation ↗
- Who funds Abilene Restoration Ministries dba Nehemiah Abilene ↗
- Who funds ANGELO STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds All Kind Animal Initiative ↗
- Who funds FRONTIER TEXAS INC ↗
- Who funds HEAL THE CITY FREE CLINIC ↗
- Who funds ABILENE ARTS ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITY SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds Schreiner University ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS LONE STAR ↗
- Who funds Southern Methodist University ↗
- Who funds Remember the Alamo Foundation ↗
- Who funds BCFS Health and Human Services ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Ranching Heritage Association ↗
- Who funds GROVER NELSON PARK ZOOLOGICAL FOUNDATION ↗
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: Kickapoo Springs Foundation · Dian Graves Owen Foundation · The Karakin Foundation · Community Foundation of Abilene · Shelton Family Foundation · Barber Foundation · Greathouse Foundation · The Robison Excelsior Foundation · Amarillo Area Foundation Inc · The Massey Family Charitable Trust · M K Brown Foundation Inc · Abilene Christian University
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 Legett 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.
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Learning Ally Inc — 4% of income from government
- Southeastern Guide Dogs Inc — 0% of income from government
- The Johns Hopkins Hospital — 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Legett Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Legett 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.