· Private foundation
Dennis & Ellin Murphy 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
96% of Dennis & Ellin Murphy Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to University Of Notre Dame Du Lac, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 6 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2024, the last year Dennis & Ellin Murphy Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 7 organizations, $49k. 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k16 grants · $29k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AMERICAN RED CROSS | $10,000 |
| OMAHA DISCOVERY TRUST | $10,000 |
| SACRED HEART SCHOOLS | $5,000 |
| ESSENTIAL PREGNANCY SERVICES | $4,000 |
| ST ROBERT BELLARMINE SCHOOL | $3,500 |
| CHILDRENS SCHOLARSHIP FUND | $2,500 |
| SIENA FRANCIS HOUSE | $2,500 |
| RUSH OFFICE OF PHILANTHROPY | $1,000 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES | $1,000 |
| ST PATRICKS CHURCH | $1,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| TACOMA HUMANE SOCIETY | $1,000 |
| ST JOSEPH SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM AT NOTRE DAME | $1,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
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, $36k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 93% 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 +43% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
28 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 21 since wound down; 17 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call). Read against FY2024, 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, 74% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6k 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
- MUMarquette University7× · 2017–2025 · $55k · revenue +46%
- CFCUES FUND4× · 2020–2023 · $38k · revenue +21%
- EEEPS ESSENTIAL PREGNANCY SERVICES INC8× · 2017–2025 · $26k · revenue +161%
Funded once
- MHMARIAN HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2017 · $10k
- CCCATHOLIC CHARITIES OF HOUSTONone grant, 2017 · $10k
- CCCATHOLIC CHARITIES OF NAPLESone grant, 2017 · $10k
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 University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
To strengthen the University and communities that have touched the lives of KU alumni and friends, the mission of The KU Endowment Charitable Gift Fund is to receive and administer gifts and bequests to further the charitable objectives of…
Children's physicians delivers the highest quality pediatric primary care while supporting education and research.
The council of indepependent nebraska colleges foundation exists to provide operating funds and scholarship support for students attending nebraska's independent institutions of excellence.
Support the mission and social services programs of catholic charities of the archdiocese of omaha, inc.
Provides a means whereby the resources, expertise, and knowledge of the pediatric specialty physicians can be marshaled to develop, promote, and make available to patients from omaha, ne and the surrounding area, pediatric, academic, and…
The mission of the osteopathic founders foundation is to support osteopathic medical education, to enhance the public's understanding of osteopathic medicine, and to improve the health of the community through projects consistent with the…
Benedictine University is an inclusive academic community dedicated to teaching and learning, scholarship and service, truth and justice, as inspired by the Catholic intellectual tradition, the social teaching of the Church, and the…
Our mission is to lead the world in transforming lives to create a healthy future for all individuals and communities through premier educational programs, innovative research and extraordinary patient care.
The nmu foundation will establish and foster relationships to generate resources that benefit the strategic goals of northern michigan university.
The university of iowa facilities corporation acquires and holds property for the benefit and use of the university of iowa.
Loyola University New Orleans, a Jesuit and Catholic institution of higher education, welcomes students of diverse backgrounds and prepares them to lead meaningful lives with and for others; to pursue truth, wisdom, and virtue; and to work…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Child Saving Institute Inc and the most unlike its peers is Marquette University. 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 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
31 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. 31 of the 108 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 Notre Dame du Lac ↗
- Who funds Marquette University ↗
- Who funds OMAHA DISCOVERY TRUST ↗
- Who funds CUES FUND ↗
- Who funds EPS ESSENTIAL PREGNANCY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S SCHOLARSHIP FUND OF OMAHA ↗
- Who funds NEW CASSEL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BETHLEHEM HOUSE ↗
- Who funds SIENA FRANCIS HOUSE ↗
- Who funds EDUCATE UGANDA ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES DIOCESE OF VENICE INC ↗
- Who funds East End Hospice Inc ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK FOR THE HEARTLAND ↗
- Who funds POTOMAC FALLS BAND BOOSTERS INC ↗
- Who funds ASSISTANCE LEAGUE OF OMAHA NEBRASKA INC ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
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 Charles and Mary Heider Family Foundation · The Lozier Foundation · Cl Werner Foundation · D F Dillon Foundation · The Hawks Foundation · Greater Horizons · Donald a & Joan M Cimpl Foundation · Robertson Family Foundation · Dr C C and Mabel L Criss Memorial · Eagle Foundation · Richard Brooke Foundation · Seline Family 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 Dennis & Ellin Murphy 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.
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Find your warmest path to Dennis & Ellin Murphy 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.