· Private foundation
Mercy Works 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
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k11 grants · $44k
- $10k–50k33 grants · $715k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $592k
- $250k+1 grant · $257k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHRISTOPHER MISSIONS FOUNDATION | $256,563 |
| WELLS OF LIFE | $162,000 |
| RELEVANT RADIO INC | $100,250 |
| JOHN PAUL II HEALING CENTER | $95,000 |
| SALVATORIAN MISSION WAREHOUSE | $70,000 |
| CATHOLIC FOUNDATION FOR THE GREEN BAY DIOCESE | $65,000 |
| APOSTOLATE FOR FAMILY CONSECRATION INC | $50,000 |
| VIDA CLINIC INC | $50,000 |
| HELP THE HELPLESS | $40,000 |
| INSTITUTE FOR PRIESTLY FORMATION | $40,000 |
| FRANCISCAN WORKS | $35,000 |
| NATIONAL SHRINE OF OUR LADY OF CHAMPION | $30,000 |
| SHRINE OF OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE | $30,000 |
| LIVE ACTION | $30,000 |
| MISSIONARIES OF THE WORD | $28,400 |
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 (FY20–25, $1.5M) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 75% 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 +12% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
99 repeat relationships — 45 still active in FY2025, 54 since wound down; 6 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $142k 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
- JPJOHN PAUL II HEALING CENTER INC6× · 2020–2025 · $501k · revenue +9%
- SGST GIANNA MOLLA CLINIC INC5× · 2020–2024 · $437k · revenue ×20 · 27% of their budget
- HIHEARTBEAT INTERNATIONAL INC6× · 2020–2025 · $390k · revenue +57%
Funded once
- AGAd Gentes Missionary Congregationone grant, 2023 · $80k · revenue -53%
- AMAVE MARIA UNIVERSITY INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $65k · revenue +127%
- GSGRACE SYSTEM ST JPII CLASSICAL SCHOOLCHERSTERTON ACADEMYone grant, 2021 · $60k
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 International Catholic Jurists Forum (ICJF) was established to produce, compile, and share resources on fundamental human rights under attack in the regional and international human rights protection systems. It operates as a forum for…
To inform, instruct and inspire people through the media about the sacred scriptures and teachings of the roman catholic church
Action for life promotes, upholds, and supports efforts to protect the sanctity of life from conception to natural death through education, advocacy, and prayer as well as by supporting traditional family values.
Our mission is to provide content that empowers people to grow spiritually, improve relationships, engage in dialogue and foster collaboration within the Church and throughout society.
Amnion's mission is to share the gospel of jesus christ and to protect and advocate for the sanctity of all human life, born and unborn, through the provision of abortion alternative services that empower mothers to choose life.
Keep the faith is a catholic lay apostolate devoted to assist in the dissemanation of good catholic doctrine
Ave Maria Communications (AMC)employs radio, internet and other media to offer news, analysis, teaching, devotion and music to demonstrate Catholic values.
Liberty Women's Clinic ministers with the love of Christ by empowering people to make informed, life-affirming decisions about pregnancy, sexual health, and relationships.
Mission is to provide women facing an unplanned pregnancy with truthful medical information and education. we are faith-based with a mission to encourage, through education and outreach, the recognition of human life from the moment of…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Catholic Answers Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Vine Foundation. 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 28 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 6% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
71 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. 71 of the 130 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 WELLS OF LIFE INC ↗
- Who funds IMMACULATE HEART MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds JOHN PAUL II HEALING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds ST GIANNA MOLLA CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds HEARTBEAT INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds ORDER OF MALTA WORLDWIDE RELIEF MALTESER INTERNATIONAL AMERICAS ↗
- Who funds HELP THE HELPLESS ↗
- Who funds LIVE ACTION ↗
- Who funds THE ALEXANDER HOUSE APOSTOLATE ↗
- Who funds MARY MOTHER OF GOD MISSION SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE OF CATHOLIC CULTURE ↗
- Who funds MOBILE LOAVES & FISHES INC ↗
- Who funds Augustine Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds HUMAN LIFE INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds Courage International Inc ↗
- Who funds THE VINE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ADVANCE COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds Spitzer-Magis Center FKA Magis Institute ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC YOUTH EXPEDITIONS INC ↗
- Who funds Witherspoon Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds SOPHIA INSTITUTE ↗
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: Knights of Columbus Charitable Fund Inc · The Catholic Foundation No Colorado · The Moran Foundation · Green Bay Packers Foundation · Our Sunday Visitor Inc · Sumnicht Family Foundation · Catholic Community Foundation of Minnesota · The Martin Family Foundation · Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region Inc · The Clarence Wallace & Dolores Lynch Wallace Family Foundation · US Ventureschmidt Family Foundation · Koch Foundation Inc
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 Mercy Works 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.
- Ave Maria University Inc — 0% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Mercy Works Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Mercy Works 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.