Texas · Nonprofit
Great Hearts America-Texas
Great Hearts America-Texas (Texas) receives grants from 33 organizations whose IRS filings report $18,502,212 to it, the largest being GEORGE W BRACKENRIDGE FOUNDATION ($4,395,000). 24 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2025
- $149M
- Funders on record
- 33
- Grants received
- $19M
- Net assets
- $31M
What Great Hearts America-Texas does
Mission
The primary goal of Great Hearts America-Texas is to graduate thoughtful leaders of character who will contribute to a more philosophical, humane, and just society.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Program
Great Hearts America-Texas academies are public, independently operated charter schools with open admissions policies. Each school promises a traditional liberal arts education with small classes and an advanced honors core curriculum. Each academy requires a common and rigorous sequence of courses for all students. All students graduate as critical thinkers, coherent writers, and confident speakers. High expectations for student conduct are co-equal with the school's academic standards. Students profess an honor code that calls upon them to practice and defend academic integrity.
$143,087,333 spent$5,763,350 earned by the program100% of program spending
The program described on its FY2024 Form 990. Program spending in total: $143,087,333.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2020 to 2021, from $162M to $264M (+62%).
How it's funded, over time
Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.
Government-grant reliance: 2017 2% · 2018 2% · 2019 2% · 2020 5% · 2021 4% · 2022 89% · 2023 87% · 2024 91% · 2025 90%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
95% of Great Hearts America-Texas’s revenue is contributions — more donation-reliant than the typical peer (90% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 2 of the last 9 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Chief executive
Margaret M Lessner
Exec. Director-Special Student Serv.
Board chair
Jim Rahn
Chair
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 5 funders to 17 funders, grant income rose $145k → $1.4M.
12 of 33 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 10% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
From the IRS filings of Great Hearts America-Texas’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 33 funders by total. Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How concentrated its funding is
Great Hearts America-Texas has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 24% of grant income, and it takes 3 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 3 funders to its left
33% of the income these shares are computed over arrives through pass-through sponsors or from payers whose filings do not say what kind of payment it is. Concentration is still measured over all of it, because the money is real; what it does not support is a claim about how many institutions have chosen to fund Great Hearts America-Texas.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 69% · 2018 36% · 2019 45% · 2020 34% · 2021 32% · 2022 32% · 2023 64% — diversifying over time.
“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How long its funders stay
58% of Great Hearts America-Texas's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 73% give in more than one year at all.
Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.
Where its funders are
55% of Great Hearts America-Texas's grant income comes from Texas funders.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $1.9M arriving through sponsors registered in 9 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Against its field
Great Hearts America-Texas has grown faster than three-quarters of the 15 environment nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 15 environment nonprofits over $100M, FY2025
Organizations like Great Hearts America-Texas
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In Texas
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
95% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
98%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Part of a family of 3 related entities
- Greathearts Arizona · exempt
- Great Hearts America · exempt
- Greathearts Foundation · exempt
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for Great Hearts America-Texas: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds Great Hearts America-Texas?
- Great Hearts America-Texas (Texas) receives grants from 33 organizations whose IRS filings report $18,502,212 to it, the largest being GEORGE W BRACKENRIDGE FOUNDATION ($4,395,000). 24 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does Great Hearts America-Texas have?
- IRS filings report 33 organizations giving $18,502,212 in grants to Great Hearts America-Texas, 24 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of Great Hearts America-Texas?
- GEORGE W BRACKENRIDGE FOUNDATION is the largest funder on record, with $4,395,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like Great Hearts America-Texas find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Texas. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
Play a game about who funds Great Hearts America-Texas →
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2025 (financials across 2017–2025), and the filings of 33 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 22, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing