· Private foundation
George J and Theresa L Cotsirilos Merced 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.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 45% of George J and Theresa L Cotsirilos Merced 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 $10k15 grants · $56k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $56k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UC Berkeley Foundation | $30,000 |
| California Trout | $15,500 |
| Legal Defense Fund | $10,000 |
| PBS News Hour | $8,500 |
| KQED | $8,500 |
| Earthjustice | $5,700 |
| Jazz in the Neighborhood | $5,000 |
| Golden Gate Bird Alliance | $5,000 |
| Bard College | $5,000 |
| Working America Education Fund | $5,000 |
| Berkeley East Bay Humane Society | $5,000 |
| Harvard University | $2,000 |
| Trout Unlimited | $1,000 |
| UC Berkeley Foundation | $1,000 |
| Mono Lake Committee | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 98% 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.
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 +89% since the first grant, against +10% for the ones you funded once.
26 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2025, 16 since wound down; 5 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, 73% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $29k 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
- CTCALIFORNIA TROUT INC9× · 2017–2025 · $105k · revenue +396%
EARTHJUSTICE8× · 2017–2025 · $83k · revenue +82%- BEBerkeley East Bay Humane Society Inc dba Berkeley Humane9× · 2017–2025 · $45k · revenue +271%
Funded once
- VLVOTO LATINO FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2020 · $10k · revenue -42%
- NYNew York Universitygraduatedone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +76%
- ECEL CERRITO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2018 · $5k
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 bar association of san francisco champions equal access to justice and promotes humanity, excellence, and diversity in the legal profession. we provide legal services to disadvantaged and underserved individuals in san francisco. we…
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
The San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory is dedicated to the conservation of birds and their habitats through science and outreach.
Golden gate university prepares individuals to lead and serve by providing high quality, practice-based educational programs in law, taxation, business and related professions - as a nonprofit institution - in an innovative and challenging…
To distribute public affairs and other educational information in order to create an electronic bridge between californians and their public officials, and, in the process educate a new generation of voting citizens and civic leaders who…
A long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build greater economic power for workers and community members through employee rights at work and access to good jobs,…
Educational & charitable. to provide legal and scientific information to public interest attorneys and scientists in numerous countries.
Southern coalition for social justice partners with communities of color and economically disadvantaged communities across the south to defend and advance their political, social, and economic rights. through an intersectional and…
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is East Bay Community Law Center and the most unlike its peers is New York 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 44 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 5% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 42 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 CALIFORNIA TROUT INC ↗
- Who funds EARTHJUSTICE ↗
- Who funds SIERRA CLUB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Berkeley East Bay Humane Society Inc dba Berkeley Humane ↗
- Who funds BARD COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Intersection for the Arts ↗
- Who funds WORKING AMERICA EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds JAZZ IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Golden Gate Bird Alliance Prev Golden Gate Audubon Society Inc ↗
- Who funds CALLIOPE EAST BAY MUSIC & ARTS ↗
- Who funds VOTO LATINO FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER WASHINGTON EDUCATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds KQED INC ↗
- Who funds UNIDOSUS ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds New York University ↗
- Who funds EL CERRITO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SEA SHEPHERD CONSERVATION SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds EAST BAY COMMUNITY LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds TRACE MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds Mission Local SF Inc ↗
- Who funds Southern Center for Human Rights ↗
- Who funds THE MONO LAKE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CITYSIDE JOURNALISM INITIATIVE ↗
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: East Bay Community Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · McNabb Foundation · The James Irvine Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Endowment Foundation · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Network for Good
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 George J and Theresa L Cotsirilos Merced 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.
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% 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.