· Private foundation
The Lyons Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HOPE & HEALING CENTER AND INSTITUTE | $32,000 |
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 (FY21–22, $900k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 14%. 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.
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 +10% since the first grant, against -6% for the ones you funded once.
6 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2024, 5 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- KMKIDS' MEALS INC2× · 2021–2022 · $550k · revenue +38%
- DCDEPELCHIN CHILDREN'S CENTER2× · 2021–2022 · $150k · revenue +13%
- HAHope and Healing Center & Institute2× · 2022–2024 · $137k · revenue +10%
Funded once
- CSCizik School of Nursing at UTHealthone grant, 2021 · $1.0M
- TRTHE RISE SCHOOL OF HOUSTONone grant, 2021 · $400k
- CACHILD ADVOCATES INCone grant, 2022 · $300k · revenue -6%
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 mission of Family Service Center of Houston and Harris County (Family Houston) is to create a stronger community for tomorrow by helping individuals and families meet the challenges they face today. We help others help themselves.
Plant, protect and promote trees all over the greater Houston area.
To enrich life through discovery, education, and the conservation of plants and the natural environment.
The Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Houston's mission is to inspire and enable all youth, especially those who need us most, to realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens.
The mission of Collaborative for Children is to meaningfully improve the quality of early childhood education and care for Greater Houston's children through those most influential in their lives.
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.
LifeHouse is a Christ-centered ministry ensuring life for unborn children by providing opportunities for housing, help, and hope for young women during their pregnancies and beyond.
The mission of Breakthrough Houston (BTH) is to work with highly motivated students to achieve post-secondary success and empower aspiring leaders to become the next generation of educational advocates.
Our mission is to be the leading advocate for our member physicians, their patients and our community, in promoting the highest standards of ethical medical practice, access to quality medical care, medical education, research, and…
To provide essential and next-step services to restore hope and help end homelessness in houston.
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
With more than 1 million patient visits each year, Children's Health is North Texas' leading pediatric health system and among the largest in the nation. For more than a century, our mission has been clear: make life better for children.…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Houston Community Health Centers Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Garden Foundation (fka Transform Houston Foundation). Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 35 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 30% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 19% 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.
19 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. 19 of the 41 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 Small Steps Nurturing Center ↗
- Who funds KIDS' MEALS INC ↗
- Who funds CHILD ADVOCATES INC ↗
- Who funds YELLOWSTONE ACADEMY INC DBA YELLOWSTONE SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds THE FORGE FOR FAMILIES ↗
- Who funds DEPELCHIN CHILDREN'S CENTER ↗
- Who funds Camp Allen Camp & Conference Center ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds Hope and Healing Center & Institute ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS COUNTRY OF HOUSTON INC ↗
- Who funds CASA DE ESPERANZA DE LOS NINOS INC ↗
- Who funds Good Reason Houston Inc ↗
- Who funds Bo's Place ↗
- Who funds Texas Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds Memorial Hermann Foundation ↗
- Who funds COVENANT HOUSE ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds The Garden Foundation (fka Transform Houston Foundation) ↗
- Who funds New Hope Housing Inc ↗
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 · MD Anderson Foundation · The Brown Foundation Inc · Florence and William K McGee Jr Family Foundation · The Sarofim Foundation · Robert W Knox & Pearl Wallis Knox Charitable · Vivian L Smith Foundation · The Methodist Hospital · The William Stamps Farish Fund · The Powell Foundation · Strake Foundation · The Zions Bancorporation 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 Lyons 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Lyons Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Lyons 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.