· Private foundation
David and Laura Merage Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Read this first · the figures below need context
77% of David and Laura Merage Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to National Philanthropic Trust, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 14 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2019, the last year David and Laura Merage Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 30 organizations, $2M. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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.
By grant size · FY2019
- Under $10k25 grants · $48k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $187k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $110k
- $250k+4 grants · $2.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Equitas Foundation | $875,000 |
| Early Learning Ventures | $428,500 |
| JPM Charitable Giving Fund | $400,000 |
| Black Cube | $385,000 |
| Executives Partnering to Invest in | $60,000 |
| Bipartisan Policy Center | $50,000 |
| Friends of the Israel Defense Force | $33,000 |
| Persian American Womens Conference | $20,000 |
| Hebrew Educational Alliance | $20,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $18,000 |
| Arabella Advisors LLC | $15,222 |
| Jewish Colorado 2 | $10,550 |
| Museum of Contemporary Art Denver | $10,250 |
| American Friends of Kishorit | $10,000 |
| Moishe House | $10,000 |
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, $253k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 97% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +56% since the first grant, against +34% for the ones you funded once.
46 repeat relationships — 28 still active in FY2019, 18 since wound down; 67 grantees were first funded in FY2019 (too recent to call). Read against FY2019, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $32k 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
- ELEARLY LEARNING VENTURES9× · 2017–2025 · $3.6M · revenue +127%
- BCBLACK CUBE9× · 2017–2025 · $3.5M · revenue +117% · 90% of their budget
- ALANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE7× · 2017–2024 · $389k · revenue +78%
Funded once
- EEquitasone grant, 2017 · $250k
- JCJewish Comm Center of OCone grant, 2017 · $5k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $3k
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.
Be a catalyst! Ignite our community's passion for nature and science.
To provide meaningful access to high quality, civil legal services in the pursuit of justice for as many low income persons and members of vulnerable populations throughout colorado as possible.
AIA Colorado,is the voice of the architecture profession in Colorado. Through advocacy, leadership development, education and resources for architects, the organization supports architecture professionals in designing a better world where…
Colorado center on law and policy is an antipoverty organization advancing the rights of every coloradan.
Our vision is to reignite the zionist spirit and meet the needs of jewish civilization in the twenty-first century by connecting people around the world through the vibrancy and creativity of contemporary israeli culture.
Common future is a network of pioneering leaders across the u.s. and canada who work deeply within their communities to create alternative approaches to business, philanthropy, and investing. we envision an economy that has transitioned…
To inspire people and mobilize resources to strengthen our community.
Based on jewish values, the jewish federation of greater los angeles convenes and leads the community and leverages its resources to assure the continuity of the jewish people, support a secure state of israel, care for jews in need here…
Partnering to improve quality of life as a nonprofit organization dedicated to mental health and wellness. healing is our purpose, help is our promise, health is our passion.
The Jews of Color Initiatives mission is to advance racial equity in the U.S. Jewish community by centering the leadership of Jews of Color and ensuring that our communities and institutions reflect the multiracial reality of the Jewish…
The organization provides professional investment management services for endowed gifts and financial assets entrusted to the ucsf foundation.
To provide timely, credible and accessible analyses of fiscal and economic issues facing colorado to inform public policy debates and promote economic prosperity
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Colorado Gives Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Little Imaginations Early Learning Center. 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 25 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
92 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. 92 of the 136 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 NATIONAL PHILANTHROPIC TRUST ↗
- Who funds EARLY LEARNING VENTURES ↗
- Who funds BLACK CUBE ↗
- Who funds EQUITAS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JEWISHColorado ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds Redline ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL JEWISH HEALTH ↗
- Who funds HEALTHIER COLORADO ↗
- Who funds BELEV ECHAD INC ↗
- Who funds FREE PRESS ↗
- Who funds BIPARTISAN POLICY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MENTAL HEALTH AMERICA OF COLORADO ↗
- Who funds LION GLOBAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HEALTH FEDERATION OF PHILADELPHIA INC ↗
- Who funds COLORADO PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds TIDES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF KISHORIT INC ↗
- Who funds TEAM FOR WEST VIRGINIA CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds COLORADO CHILDREN'S CAMPAIGN ↗
- Who funds THE ARCHER GROUP ↗
- Who funds Hope Foundation of Iranian-American Jewish Communities ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FERTILITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MOISHE HOUSE ↗
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: The Denver Foundation · Rose Community Foundation · Colorado Gives Foundation · The Colorado Health Foundation · Caring for Colorado Foundation · Gates Family Foundation · Mile High United Way Inc · Boettcher Foundation · Community Foundation Boulder County · Gary Philanthropy · Libertygives Foundation · El Pomar 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 David and Laura Merage 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.
- Hias Inc — 88% of income from government
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.
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Find your warmest path to David and Laura Merage 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.