How much does Mariel Foundation give?

Mariel Foundation reported 27 grants totaling $701,020 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 25 and 30 organizations a year over FY2021 to FY2024.

What does Mariel Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2021 to FY2025, its largest causes are Environment (40%), Arts & Culture (16%), International (12%).

Who are Mariel Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2021 to FY2025: Water First International ($375k), Interlochen Center for the Arts ($271k), Leelanau Conservancy ($253k).

Does Mariel Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 8% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does Mariel 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.

Which funders back the same organizations as Mariel Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation, Oleson Foundation, Rotary Charities of Traverse City.

Where is Mariel Foundation based?

Mariel Foundation is based in MI.

Mariel Foundation

Mariel Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

Mariel 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.

$701k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$135k

Largest

01What it funds

0197% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2021 to 2025.

Environment$1.3MArts & Culture$510kInternational$390kPublic Safety & Disaster$223kReligion$203kHealth$135kPublic Benefit$132kEducation$82kOther$0

02FY2025 · 27 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k12 grants · $49k
$10k–50k9 grants · $174k
$50k–250k6 grants · $478k

$10,000

Median grant

States reached

$11M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
Water 1st	$135,000
Trout Unlimited	$100,000
Leelanau Conservancy	$73,550
Mote Marine Laboratory Aquar	$66,000
Inland Seas Education Assoc	$53,500
Interlochen Center for the Arts	$50,000
Afraid of Bear-American Horse Tiosp	$35,000
Groundwork Ctr for Resilient Comm	$30,750
20Fathoms	$22,500
Individual grant recipient	$19,000
Women's Reproductive Rights Assista	$18,985
Partners for World Health	$14,985
Individual grant recipient	$12,500
REACH Studio Art Ctr	$10,000
Ripa Ladrang Foundation	$10,000

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its human-services grants (FY21–24, $35k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Its grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

95%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$3.0M · 31 repeat orgs$170k to everyone else

31 repeat relationships: 19 still active in FY2025, 12 since wound down; 7 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$3.0M

$83k

Still filing today

81%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $87k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

EnvironmentArts & CultureEducationPhilanthropyHuman ServicesInternationalOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

TU
TROUT UNLIMITED INC
3× · 2023–2025 · $250k · revenue +75%
IS
INLAND SEAS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
5× · 2021–2025 · $161k · revenue +157%
SH
SACRED HEALING CIRCLE
3× · 2021–2023 · $125k · revenue +58% · 36% of their budget

Funded once

GC
Grouindwork Ctr for Resilient Comm
one grant, 2021 · $50k
IG
Individual grant recipient
one grant, 2021 · $20k
F
FAWCO
one grant, 2024 · $5k

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Land Conservancy of West Michigan

Our mission is conserving West Michigans ecologically critical land. We protect land by creating public nature preserves, providing support to communities and local governments in creating natural areas, and helping private landowners…

Environment

Six Rivers Land Conservancy Fka Six Rivers Regional Land Conservancy

To conserve, sustain, and connect natural areas, land, and waters that make the places we live special

Environment

The Little Forks Conservancy Inc

To permanently protect and improve natural environments in Mid-Michigan by leading and inspiring actions that conserve vital habitats and waterways for the benefit of our entire community.

Environment

Heart of the Lakes Ctr for Land Cons

Heart of the Lakes provides technical assistance, leadership training, and strategic communication tools that help organizations thrive - from grassroots land conservancies to larger regional conservation groups. Programs such as peer…

Environment

Minnesota Land Trust

The minnesota land trust protects and restores minnesota's most vital natural lands in order to provide wildlife habitat, clean water, outdoor experiences and scenic beauty for generations to come.

Environment

Great Peninsula Conservancy

Preserve in perpetuity the natural habitats, rural landscapes, and open spaces of the great peninsula of washington's puget sound.

Environment

Midcoast Conservancy

The mission of Midcoast Conservancy is to protect vital lands and waters on a scale that matters and to inspire wonder and action on behalf of all species and the Earth.

Environment

Environmental Law and Policy Center of the Midwest

The environmental law & policy center (elpc) is the midwest's leading public interest environmental legal advocacy and ecobusiness innovation organization, and among the nation's leaders. we develop and lead successful strategic…

Environment

Legacy Land Conservancy

Safeguard southern michigan's land and water to support diverse, resilient, and thriving communities - forever

Environment

Native Plant Trust Inc

The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.

Environment

Natural Resources Foundation of

To protect wisconsin's lands, waters, and wildlife by providing funding, leading partnerships, and connecting all people with nature.

—

Great Lakes Center for the Arts

The Center's mission is to inspire, entertain, educate, and serve all in Northern Michigan year-round by presenting exceptional experiences across the full spectrum of the performing arts and offering impactful educational opportunities.

Arts & Culture

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is National Center for Family Philanthropy Inc; the most unlike its peers is Para La Naturaleza Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

31 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2026, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 31 of the 45 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

31/31

Grantees still filing

18/31

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Environment$756,134Other$1,055,374Arts & Culture$432,010Philanthropy$406,138Animals$250,000Public Benefit$132,403Education$130,500

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Grand Traverse Regional Community FoundationMI17.7× affinity6 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation · Oleson Foundation · Rotary Charities of Traverse City · DTE Energy Foundation · Hp Foundation · Jim and Diana Huckle Family Foundation · The Art and Mary Schmuckal Family Foundation · Harry a and Margaret D Towsley Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Mariel Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Mariel Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

0get no government money at all

13report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to Mariel Foundation?

Find your warmest path to Mariel 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.

Play a game based on Mariel’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