· Private foundation
Merit 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LAFAYETTE COLLEGE | $5,200 |
| FOUNDATION FOR THE MOUNT PROSPECT PUBLIC LIBRARY | $5,200 |
| GAY & LESBIAN ALLIANCE AGAINST DEFAMATION | $5,200 |
| MENTAL HEALTH AMERICA INC | $5,200 |
| ROMAN CATHOLIC DIOCESE OF MADISON INC | $4,200 |
| WHEATON NORTH HIGH SCHOOL | $3,000 |
| THE PARENTING PATH | $3,000 |
| HOLY CROSS LUTHERAN CHURCH | $2,700 |
| TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY - BLOOM FAMILY LEADERSHIP | $2,700 |
| ST JUDE CHILDRENS RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC | $2,700 |
| SUMMIT SCHOOL OF AHWATUKEE | $2,700 |
| TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY - FRIENDS OF MEN'S SWIMMING & DIVING | $2,500 |
| GRACE LUTHERAN CHURCH | $2,000 |
| EDITH KANAKA'OLE FOUNDATION | $1,700 |
| ALBION COLLEGE | $1,500 |
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 (FY18–25, $16k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 57% 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.
38 repeat relationships — 21 still active in FY2025, 17 since wound down; 4 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $9k 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
- LCLAFAYETTE COLLEGE8× · 2018–2025 · $42k · revenue +28%
- AAACTION AGAINST HUNGER - USA2× · 2022–2023 · $15k · revenue +23%
- FFFOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND EXPRESSION INC2× · 2020–2021 · $11k · revenue +191%
Funded once
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITYgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $9k · revenue +64%- RCROMAN CATHOLIC DIOCESE OF MADISON INC LOVE BEGINS HEREone grant, 2023 · $5k
- TOTRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY - LEADERSHIP INITIATIVEone grant, 2023 · $4k
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.
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
Engage actively and continuously in medical research, education and training in the practice of medicine in conjunction with the department of family medicine of the indiana university school of medicine and indiana university…
To make kids better today and healthier tomorrow.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
Ahip is the national trade association representing the health insurance industry. ahip's members provide health care coverage, services and solutions to more than 200 million americans. we are committed to market-based solutions and…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland school of medicine, medical services are rendered by the members of the faculty on behalf of the school of medicine in connection with their duties to provide clinical…
Primary functions are the coordination and delivery of health care resources and services, health care education for the hospital service area, long range analysis of health care needs and development of programs, and arranging for…
Empowering college admission counseling professionals through education, advocacy, and community.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
American gas association's (the association) mission is to develop and advocate for informed, innovative, and durable policy that fulfills our nation's energy needs, environmental aspirations and economic potential. we are committed to…
Children's physicians delivers the highest quality pediatric primary care while supporting education and research.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Local Initiatives Support Corporation and the most unlike its peers is Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression Inc. 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 37 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.
38 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. 38 of the 67 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 LAFAYETTE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Foothills Educational Foundation ↗
- Who funds CAMP GRAY INC ↗
- Who funds ACTION AGAINST HUNGER - USA ↗
- Who funds MENTAL HEALTH AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND EXPRESSION INC ↗
- Who funds EXCHANGE CLUB CENTER FOR THE PREVENTION OF CHILD ABUSE OF NORTH CAROLINA INC ↗
- Who funds EDGEWOOD CAMPUS SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds GLAAD INC ↗
- Who funds HUSHABYE NURSERY ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR THE MOUNT PROSPECT PUBLIC LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds LOCAL INITIATIVES SUPPORT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Pleasant Hill PTA ↗
- Who funds GIO'S GARDEN INC ↗
- Who funds RHINELANDER HEALTH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CHILD POVERTY ACTION LAB ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWEST AUTISM RESEARCH AND RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF HONOLULU ↗
- Who funds XAVIER DADS CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds CANCER SERVICES 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 Winston-Salem Foundation · Forsyth Memorial Hospital Inc · AbbVie Foundation · Baird Foundation Inc · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 Merit 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.
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% 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 Merit Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Merit 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.