· Private foundation
Virginia Lee Upham and Chester R Upham Jr Foundation
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: 61% of VIRGINIA LEE UPHAM AND CHESTER R UPHAM JR FOUNDATION’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 $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $60k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PALO PINTO AREA FOUNDATION INC | $20,000 |
| MEALS ON WHEELS OF PALO PINTO COUNTY INC | $20,000 |
| MINERAL WELLS CENTER OF LIFE | $10,000 |
| GRACE HOUSE MINISTRIES INC | $10,000 |
| HOPE INC | $5,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 15%. 100% of your 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 +18% for the ones you funded once.
7 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2025, 3 since wound down; 1 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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k 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
- MWMINERAL WELLS CENTER OF LIFE9× · 2017–2025 · $95k · revenue +701%
- MOMEALS ON WHEELS OF PALO PINTO COUNTY2× · 2024–2025 · $40k · revenue +53%
- HIHOPE INC7× · 2017–2025 · $40k · revenue +43%
Funded once
- GSGIRL SCOUTS OF TEXAS OKLAHOMA PLAINS INCone grant, 2024 · $10k · revenue -16%
- MWMINERAL WELLS VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENTone grant, 2022 · $3k · revenue -71%
- SVSTRAWN VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENTone grant, 2022 · $3k · revenue +23%
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 Poteet VFD is a 100% volunteer organization. In addition to responding to fires, vehicles accidents, medical emergencies and public assistance, the VFD is also trained to handle vehicle extrication.
Volunteer fire department
Provide firefighting services for frelsburg, texas area.
Volunteer Fire Department, providing fire, rescue, and medical services to a population of approximately 22,000 residents, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.
Provides protection of property and preservation of life from and during fire or other emergencies within the area of its operation in hood and johnson counties, texas. also, provides rescue and various other emergency services in the…
Volunteer fire department
To provide fire and medical emergency services for the city of garrison, tx and the surrounding districts.
Fire fighting and prevention
Volunteer fire department organized to contain fires in and around the city of tolar, county of hood, texas
To provide fire suppression, fire investigation, and search and rescue services to the citizens of clyde and the surrounding rural areas of callahan co., tx.
To extinguish any fires and to help the community stay safe.
To provide fire protection, education, emergency medical treatment and rescue services to approx 140 sq miles in guadalupe county texas.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Palo Pinto Volunteer Fire Dept and the most unlike its peers is Hope Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
16 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. 16 of the 20 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 MINERAL WELLS CENTER OF LIFE ↗
- Who funds PALO PINTO AREA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS OF PALO PINTO COUNTY ↗
- Who funds HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds HOPE WOMEN'S SHELTER INC ↗
- Who funds GRACE HOUSE MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUTS OF TEXAS OKLAHOMA PLAINS INC ↗
- Who funds MINERAL WELLS VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT ↗
- Who funds STRAWN VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT ↗
- Who funds LAKE PALO PINTO VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT ↗
- Who funds Lone Camp Volunteer Fire Department ↗
- Who funds PALO PINTO VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT ↗
- Who funds SANTO VOLUNTEER FIRE AND EMS DEPT ↗
- Who funds BRAZOS VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT ↗
- Who funds GORDON VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT ↗
- Who funds Possum Kingdom Westside Vol Fire Dept ↗
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: Tartaglino Richards Foundation · Texas Instruments Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Amazonsmile 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 Virginia Lee Upham and Chester R Upham Jr 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.