Skip to content
Foundation DossiersAlso receives grants: funding profile →

Illinois · Private foundation

Henry & Louise Mermelstein Charitable 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.

$827k
Granted FY2024(still arriving)
16
Itemized grants FY2024
23
Organizations funded FY2023
74%
First-time grantees FY2023
Read the full brief
Itemized, FY2024
$60k
The rest is grants the schedule does not break out
Median grant, FY2024
$3,000
Largest grant, FY2024
$20,000
Organizations funded a year
21 to 23
FY2022 to FY2023
Total assets, FY2024
$5.1M
Applications
Preselected organizations only
Per its most recent filing; check its own site

How open it is to new grantees

In FY2023, 74% of the organizations Henry & Louise Mermelstein Charitable Foundation funded were first-time grantees, receiving 81% of its grant dollars.

The numbers by year
Fiscal yearOrganizations fundedTo those organizationsFirst-time grantees
FY2024still arriving16$60k75%
FY202323$495k74%
FY202221$440kn/a
91% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Science & Tech$3.8MReligion$939kEducation$31kHuman Services$20kArts & Culture$3kPublic Benefit$500Civil Rights$245Other$0

Top grantees

Largest grants in FY2024.

Shvu Return Inc.$20,000
Shidduch Chicago Inc,$10,000
Tzur Foundation$6,500
Tomchei Shabbos of BP$5,000
CATV$3,000
Keren Chasanim of Saad L'Talmid$3,000
Kollel Avi Ezri Elad$3,000
Torah Center of Chestnut Ridge$3,000
Cong. Ahavas Tzedakah V'Chesed$1,500
American Friends of Ramat Bais Shemesh$1,200
Friends of Zichron Meir$1,000
Torah Center of America$1,000
Yeshiva Gedolah Zichron Yosef Aryeh$1,000
Yeshiva Gedolah of Patterson$500
Botoshon$360

Compare Henry & Louise Mermelstein Charitable Foundation with peer funders

About Henry & Louise Mermelstein Charitable Foundation

How much does Henry & Louise Mermelstein Charitable Foundation give?
Henry & Louise Mermelstein Charitable Foundation reported 16 itemized grants totaling $60,240, out of $826,631 in total grant expense reported on the return in its FY2024 IRS filing. It funded between 21 and 23 organizations a year over FY2022 to FY2023.
What does Henry & Louise Mermelstein Charitable Foundation fund?
By grant dollars over FY2022 to FY2024, its largest causes are Science & Tech (47%), Religion (11%), Education (0%).
Does Henry & Louise Mermelstein Charitable Foundation fund new organizations?
In FY2023, 74% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.
Does Henry & Louise Mermelstein Charitable Foundation accept unsolicited applications?
Its most recent filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and does not take unsolicited requests. Check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Where is Henry & Louise Mermelstein Charitable Foundation based?
Henry & Louise Mermelstein Charitable Foundation is based in IL.

On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 50 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

How this is measured
Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2024, released 2024. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2025) is on record and reports $1.4M of grant expense with no grantee named in the published copy. A private foundation itemizes every grant it makes, so a return carrying none has filed its list as an attachment that the public copy does not include. The figures above are therefore from FY2024, the most recent year this funder’s grantee list reached the public record.

Source object · view filing

Play a game based on Henry & Louise Mermelstein’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions
grants reported with no recipient in the public record
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
The endowment market
who holds foundation money, and what just moved
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home