· Community foundation
Community Foundation of Merced County
Ensure a permanent source of charitable funds in merced county.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 7 grants below total $125,810 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $180,500 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $54,690 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k5 grants · $39k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $15k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $71k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MERCED COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $71,375 |
| KIDS DISCOVERY STATION | $15,000 |
| PACHECHO HIGH SCHOOL | $8,925 |
| LOS BANOS HIGH SCHOOL | $8,925 |
| UC DAVIS | $8,235 |
| UC MERCED | $8,000 |
| MERCED COUNTY FOOD BANK | $5,350 |
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 (FY17–24, $47k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 15%. 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 +27% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
10 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 4 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 FY2025, 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
- UOUniversity of California Merced Foundation4× · 2019–2025 · $58k · revenue +27%
- KDKIDS DISCOVERY STATION2× · 2019–2025 · $40k · revenue +273%
- LILOVE INC OF GREATER MERCED2× · 2021–2023 · $27k · revenue +26%
Funded once
- SSSteady Studiosone grant, 2024 · $54k · 28% of their budget
- VHVALLEY HARVEST CHURCH OF MERCEDone grant, 2024 · $48k
- AAATWATER AG BOOSTERS ORGANIZATIONgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $30k · revenue +246%
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.
To assist and promote the educational services of Merced community college.
The merced county deputy sheriff's association is dedicated to supporting the sworn and non-sworn employees of the merced county sheriff's deparment.
Provide financial support to mhs football
To save pets and foster them so they may be adopted, find safe and loving permanent homes for resuce animals.
Restoration and operation of the merced theatre building
Provide educational grants and scholarships
Academic Decathlon Association
MERCED RESCUE MISSION: MISSION, VISION AND PURPOSE:Our MISSION is to exhibit the love and caring of Jesus Christ; transforming lives for those in our county who are in physcial and spirtual need.Our VISION is to be the hands, feet and…
Merced county sheriff's department community law enforcement office is a non-profit organized to assist the merced county sheriff's department in accomplishing its law enforcement mission, promoting public safety and serving the community…
Ensure a permanent source of charitable funds in merced county.
Our mission is to exhibit the love and caring of jesus christ; transforming lives for those in our county who are in physical and spiritual need.our vision is to be the hands, fee and voice of christ in merced county; advocating for the…
Support annual merced county spring fair - los banos, ca
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Merced County Education Foundation and the most unlike its peers is California Lions Camp. 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 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 26% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 17% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 34 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 University of California Merced Foundation ↗
- Who funds Steady Studios ↗
- Who funds KIDS DISCOVERY STATION ↗
- Who funds ATWATER AG BOOSTERS ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds LOVE INC OF GREATER MERCED ↗
- Who funds ACE OVERCOMERS OF MERCED COUNTY ↗
- Who funds MERCED COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE MERCED COUNTY FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF MERCED COUNTY FAIR INC ↗
- Who funds SPCA OF MARIPOSA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY FRESNO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MERCED FIREFIGHTERS SCHOLARS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MERCED COUNTY EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MERCED SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds United Way of Merced County ↗
- Who funds KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds JMJ MATERNITY HOMES ↗
- Who funds KIWANIS CLUB OF GREATER MERCED ↗
- Who funds FRESNO PACIFIC UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Restore Merced ↗
- Who funds GALLO CENTER FOR THE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds Hinds Hospice ↗
- Who funds Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Fresno ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY STANISLAUS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WEST HILLS COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MERCED COUNTY SHERIFFS POSSE ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA LIONS CAMP ↗
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: United Way of Merced County · Stewart Family Foundation · Ccf Community Initiatives Fund · Dignity Health · Central California Food Bank · Teichert Foundation · The California Endowment · Enterprise Holdings Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation 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 Community Foundation of Merced County 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.