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Meridian Foundation at a glanceAlso receives grants: funding profile →

· Private foundation

Meridian Foundation

Its FY2022 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

$3.2M
Granted FY2022
3
Grants FY2022
3
States reached
$2.5M
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its fieldRead

Read this first · the figures below need context

78% of Meridian Foundation’s FY2022 grant dollars went to Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, not to grantees.

Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2022 names 2 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it.

Organizations named directly on the return

0
’19
3
’20
3
’21
2
’22

Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.

01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2019 to 2022.

Philanthropy$2.5MEducation$1.3MRecreation & Sports$218kHealth$100kHuman Services$54k
02FY2022 · 3 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2022

  • $50k–250k1 grant · $218k
  • $250k+2 grants · $3.0M
$500,000
Median grant
3
States reached
$0
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND$2,492,313
GRAND VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY$500,000
CHESAPEAKE REGION ACCESSIBLE BOATING$218,000
02The need
03

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 (FY20–20, $54k) land where the poverty rate runs at 6%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Its grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

area typical 13%CENTER OF HELP: $54k → 6%0%20%40%50%more need →
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.
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 field
04the grantee network

7 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

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 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 7 of the 9 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.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
0
Early backer (in before they grew)
7/7
Grantees still filing
4/7
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND: $2,492,313 · Community ImprovementFIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUNDGRAND VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY: $1,000,000 · OtherGRAND VALLEY STATE UNIVERSI…+1 more: $25,000 · OtherUniversity of Miami: $250,000 · EducationUNIVERSITY OF BALTIMORE FOUNDATION INC: $50,000 · EducationCHESAPEAKE REGION ACCESSIBLE BOATING INC: $218,000 · Recreation & SportsMEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER: $100,000 · HealthCENTER OF HELP: $54,000 · Human ServicesNATIONAL CENTER FOR FAMILY PHILANTHROPY INC: $1,000 · Philanthropy
Community Improvement$2,492,313Other$1,025,000Education$300,000Recreation & Sports$218,000Health$100,000Human Services$54,000Philanthropy$1,000

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

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetFIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND: $2,492,313 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetUniversity of Miami: $250,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetCHESAPEAKE REGION ACCESSIBLE BOATING INC: $218,000 over 1y, 15% of budgetMEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER: $100,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetCENTER OF HELP: $54,000 over 1y, 11% of budgetUNIVERSITY OF BALTIMORE FOUNDATION INC: $50,000 over 1y, 0.5% of budgetNATIONAL CENTER FOR FAMILY PHILANTHROPY INC: $1,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budget
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.

How much its grantees rely on government

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

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 20%1%4%8%15%funder's share of their income ↑0%3%5%8%10%share of the org’s income from government →median 5%
  • University of Miami: 5% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
2get no government money at all
2report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–10%
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.

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 9 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 2022, released 2022. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Source object · view filing

Play a game based on Meridian’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