· Private foundation
The Lords Fund
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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k3 grants · $6k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $55k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $156k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Houston's First Baptist Church | $98,000 |
| Truly Fed Ministries | $57,800 |
| Redeemer Bible Church | $25,000 |
| Southwestern Univeristy | $10,000 |
| Spring Spirit | $10,000 |
| Houston Christian University | $10,000 |
| Second Baptist School Foundation | $5,000 |
| Student Mobilization | $500 |
| As Our Own | $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 (FY18–19, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 7% of The Lords Fund’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.
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 +31% since the first grant, against +8% for the ones you funded once.
19 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down; 3 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $36k 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
- PAPro Athletes Outreach2× · 2018–2019 · $500k · revenue +32%
- TFTRULY FED MINISTRIES3× · 2020–2025 · $78k · revenue +236%
- WMWATER MISSIONS INTERNATIONAL2× · 2018–2020 · $78k · revenue +32%
Funded once
- HCHOUSTON CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY ATHLETICSone grant, 2023 · $84k
- FBFirst Baptistone grant, 2024 · $50k
- SCSEED COMPANY INCone grant, 2020 · $43k
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 King's University integrates Biblical education and practical ministry to shape Spirit-formed individuals who follow Jesus, serve His Church, and are sent to impact the world.
The King's University integrates Biblical education and practical ministry to shape Spirit-formed individuals who follow Jesus, serve His Church, and are sent to impact the world.
Pursue Ministries has the mission to pursue an eternal impact by introducing others to Jesus Christ, teaching the Bible and training disciples through one-on-one meetings, small groups, resources, retreats and seminars.
The focus of the ministry is to establish christian camps and retreats that will reach men and women who have been affected by post traumatic stress disorder with the gospel of jesus christ, and equip them to recognize, manage, and…
To prepare students to serve christ and his church through biblical, experiential and practical ministry. prts provides theological training and instruction in accordance with the scriptures and the historic reformed creeds for promotion…
Equip women and men to be ministers and messengers of God's mission of reconciliation through academic excellence, personal transformation, and leadership development.
To train pastors/leaders in africa who have little or no formal training and resources. teach them how to study and prepare bible-based messages using the thompson chain reference study bible and to provide bible to trained pastors/leaders.
A training ministry that equips the saints more focusing on preparing leaders and ministers of the word for the work of ministry to the building up of the body of Christ.
United campus ministry provides pastoral and program services at houston area universities, offering opportunities for bible study, worship, christian fellowship and community service
Faith's purpose is to mentor students for spirit-filled leadership in ministry, in light of the great commission. while academics are important, the classrooms are not the only learning place. through a combination of formal instruction,…
A church whose primary purpose is to spread the gospel of jesus christ to the world
The heart of texas foundation college of ministry takes the gospel of jesus christ into the darkest of places in the texas prison system through our bachelor degree program, which educates men and women with long-term prison sentences.…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Water Missions International and the most unlike its peers is Blood Cancer United 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 25 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 13% 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.
24 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. 24 of the 45 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 Pro Athletes Outreach ↗
- Who funds TRULY FED MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds WATER MISSIONS INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds SECOND BAPTIST SCHOOL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FAITH IN PRACTICE ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds GRACE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds FREE THE CAPTIVES ↗
- Who funds THE PRAYER INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds SpringSpirit Inc ↗
- Who funds Honoring The Father Ministries Inc ↗
- Who funds AS OUR OWN NFP ↗
- Who funds Trexo ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds PITTSBURGH KIDS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CIRCUIT RIDER MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds TEXAS VALUES ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON COUNTY LITTLE LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds YOUNG LIFE ↗
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: Servant Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · Greater Houston Community Foundation · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · The Signatry Charitable Trust · Christian Community Foundation Inc · GiveClear Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · National Philanthropic Trust
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 Lords Fund 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 The Lords Fund?
Find your warmest path to The Lords Fund 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.