· Private foundation
Melling Family Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k14 grants · $37k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $100k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OCEAN CONSERVANCY | $20,000 |
| NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL | $20,000 |
| PROTECT DEMOCRACY PROJECT | $20,000 |
| ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND | $20,000 |
| WILDLIFE REHABILITAION CENTER OF NORTHERN UTAH | $10,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA | $10,000 |
| AFRICAN WILDLIFE FOUNDATION | $4,000 |
| UTAH FOOD BANK | $4,000 |
| BIG LIFE FOUNDATION | $4,000 |
| MADRE | $4,000 |
| WILDLIFE CONSERVATION NETWORK | $4,000 |
| FEEDING AMERICA | $3,000 |
| SAGELAND COLLABORATIVE (WILD UTAH PROJECT) | $2,500 |
| SAVE OUR CANYONS | $2,000 |
| FOURTH STREET CLINIC | $2,000 |
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 (FY20–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 73% 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 58% of Melling Family Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 25% of the giving stays in UT; read by stated purpose it is 15% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +49% since the first grant, against +40% for the ones you funded once.
19 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2024, 2 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 80% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $27k 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
ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED5× · 2020–2024 · $65k · revenue +121%
NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC5× · 2020–2024 · $60k · revenue +26%- OCOCEAN CONSERVANCY5× · 2020–2024 · $50k · revenue +45%
Funded once
Feeding Americagraduatedone grant, 2020 · $3k · revenue +40%- FHFORGOTTEN HARVEST (DETROIT MI)one grant, 2021 · $2k
- SCSageland Collaborativegraduatedone grant, 2020 · $2k · revenue +127%
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.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
The purpose of rainforest foundation us is to support indigenous peoples and forest communities in their efforts to secure their lands, protect their environment, and uphold their rights.
Defenders of Wildlife is a national, nonprofit membership organization dedicated to the protection of all native animals and plants in their natural communities.
Cascadia wildlands defends and restores cacasia's wild ecosystems in the forests,in the courts, and in the streets. we envision vast old-growth forests, rivers full of wild salmon, wolves howling in the backcountry, a stable climate, and…
The resource renewal institute facilitates the creation, development and implementation of practical strategies to solve the entire complex environmental problem by addressing it comprehensively.
The mission of the nature conservancy is to conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends.
Project drawdown's mission is to drive meaningful climate action by advancing science-based solutions and strategies. project drawdown's work is focused on three pillars: science - advancing science-based climate solutions and strategies;…
The montana wildlife federation is a statewide conservation organization dedicated to protecting wildlife, wildlife habitat, and public access for outdoor recreation.
Wild landscapes, inc. (wli) is dedicated to conserving large and connected landscapes globally significant to wildlife and crucial to local communities. our environmental conservation strategy is to empower communities, conservationists,…
To engage and catalyze global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Wildlife Conservation Network Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Road Home. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 35 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 28 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 ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds OCEAN CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds WILDLIFE REHABILITATION CENTER OF NORTHERN UTAH ↗
- Who funds WILDLIFE CONSERVATION NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds PROTECT DEMOCRACY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds MADRE INC ↗
- Who funds UTAH OPEN LANDS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds BIG LIFE FOUNDATION USA ↗
- Who funds UTAH FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds THE ROAD HOME ↗
- Who funds CITIZENS COMMITTEE TO SAVE OUR ↗
- Who funds GREEN AMERICA ↗
- Who funds HAWKWATCH INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds Wasatch Homeless Health Care ↗
- Who funds COEXISTENCE STORY INC ↗
- Who funds AFRICAN WILDLIFE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF TRACY AVIARY ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
- Who funds Sageland Collaborative ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF THE ROCKIES ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL FUND FOR WOMEN 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 Community Foundation of Utah · The Fanwood Foundation · Lawrence & Janet Dee Foundation · The Walbridge Fund · David Kelby Johnson Memorial Foundation · Patagoniaorg · Salt Lake County Fish and Game Asso · Ballard Miller Foundation · Palladium Foundation · Willard L Eccles Charitable Foundation · George S and Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation · Dominion Energy Charitable 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 Melling Family 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.