· Private foundation
Velma Lee & John Harvey Robinson Charitable Founda
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 95% of VELMA LEE & JOHN HARVEY ROBINSON CHARITABLE FOUNDA’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k27 grants · $87k
- $10k–50k17 grants · $306k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $257k
- $250k+2 grants · $1.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| South Texas Childrens Home | $580,000 |
| San Marcos Academy | $580,000 |
| First Baptist Church | $142,000 |
| Texas A M University | $115,000 |
| Ganado Volunteer Fire Department | $33,000 |
| Jackson County Emergency Management | $33,000 |
| Texas State University | $28,000 |
| Sam Houston State University | $25,500 |
| Guadalupe Baptist Association | $20,000 |
| Texans on Mission | $20,000 |
| University of Texas | $17,500 |
| Jackson County Young Life | $17,000 |
| University of Texas San Antonio | $16,500 |
| Texas Tech University | $15,500 |
| Baptist General Conv of Texas | $15,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $179k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
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.
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.
146 repeat relationships — 34 still active in FY2025, 112 since wound down; 14 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, 61% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $702k 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
- HHHELPING HANDS OF JACKSON COUNTY INC9× · 2017–2025 · $125k · revenue +32% · 34% of their budget
- BTBILLY T CATTAN RECOVERY OUTREACH2× · 2023–2024 · $75k · revenue +234%
BAYLOR UNIVERSITY7× · 2019–2025 · $57k · revenue +43%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $55k
- RJRestorative Justice Ministryone grant, 2018 · $40k
- COCity of Ednaone grant, 2024 · $25k
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.
East texas baptist university (etbu) was founded in 1912 as a fully accredited institution of higher education. affiliated with the baptist general convention of texas, etbu educates students by integrating biblical faith and learning to…
Union university provides christ-centered education that promotes excellence and character development in service to church and society.
The mission of hardin-simmons university is to be a community dedicated to providing excellence in education enlightened by christian faith and values.
John brown university (jbu) provides christ-centered education that prepares students to honor god and serve others by developing their intellectual, spiritual, and professional lives. (continued on schedule o)jbu serves traditional…
Trinity university is an independent co-educational university whose mission is excellence in the interrelated areas of teaching, research and services.
Belhaven university prepares students academically and spiritually to serve jesus christ in their careers, in human relationships, and in the world of ideas.
The mission of Taylor University is to develop servant-leaders marked with a passion to minister Christ's redemptive love, grace, and truth to a world in need.
Letourneau university is a comprehensive institution of christian higher education where educators engage learners to nurture christian virtue, to develop competency and ingenuity in their professional fields, to integrate faith and work,…
A private institution of higher education, offering both undergraduate and graduate courses to students.
We prepare students in our christian academic community to excel as thoughtful, resourceful, and responsible citizens with a passion for serving god, the church, and the world. we accomplish this through excellent teaching, high…
Greenville college d/b/a greenville university empowers students for lives of character and service through a transforming christ-centered education in the liberal arts, sciences, and professional studies.
Houghton university provides an academically challenging, christ-centered education in the liberal arts and sciences to students from diverse traditions and economic backgrounds and equips them to lead and labor as scholar-servants in a…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Schreiner University and the most unlike its peers is Olivia Community Foundation. 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 48 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) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 2% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 297 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.
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: San Antonio Livestock Exposition Educational Fund Inc · Greater Houston Community Foundation · The O'Connor & Hewitt Foundation · Folds of Honor Foundation · Tulsa Community Foundation · Bruce & Gladys Wright Charitable Trust · Rc Caffarelli Educational Fund Frost Bank Trustee · Building Bridge Foundation · The Kathryn O'Connor Foundation · Texas Higher Education Foundation · Michael & Susan Dell Foundation · Communities Foundation of Texas Inc
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 Velma Lee & John Harvey Robinson Charitable Founda 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 Velma Lee & John Harvey Robinson Charitable Founda?
Find your warmest path to Velma Lee & John Harvey Robinson Charitable Founda 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.