· Private foundation
Merjent 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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FOOD BANK OF ALASKA | $8,000 |
| 2025 - SCHOLARSHIP UNIV OF MARYLND | $3,500 |
| 2025 - SCHOLARSHIP UNIV OF ARIZONA | $2,500 |
| 2025 - SCHOLARSHIP UW STEVEN PT | $2,500 |
| TEMPE COMMUNITY ACTION AGENCY | $2,000 |
| PRISM | $2,000 |
| WELD FOOD BANK | $2,000 |
| NATIVE HEALTH FOOD PANTRY | $2,000 |
| KINSHIP COMMUNITY FOOD CENTER | $2,000 |
| COMMUNITY EMERGENCY ASST PROG | $2,000 |
| DOWNTOWN DAILY BREAD | $2,000 |
| THE GATHERING SOURCE | $2,000 |
| SOUTH KITSAP HELPLINE | $2,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
| NAVAJO RELIEF FUND | $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.
Your human-services grants (FY19–25, $48k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 85% 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 +95% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
9 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down; 16 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, 1% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $40k 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
- TLThe Lift Garage2× · 2020–2021 · $11k · revenue +95%
- EMEVERY MEAL2× · 2020–2023 · $4k · revenue +558%
- PSPEOPLE SERVING PEOPLE INC2× · 2019–2020 · $3k · revenue +318%
Funded once
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branchesone grant, 2024 · $10k · revenue +3%
- 232022 - 3 SCHOLARSHIPS - UMTCone grant, 2022 · $9k
- KMKIDS' MEALS INCone grant, 2023 · $8k · revenue +17%
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.
End hunger together.
Nourishing hope provides food, mental health support, and social services to help all our neighbors thrive.
Engaging the community to end hunger
The open door is a leading hunger-relief organization serving dakota county, minnesota, where food insecurity is a growing challenge. the open door is dedicated to ending local hunger by providing access to healthy, fresh, and nutritious…
End hunger together in NE Minnesota and NW Wisconsin.
The food bank for central & northeast missouri is a regional disaster and hunger relief network that acquires and distributes millions of meals each year to help neighbors get the food they need to thrive. (continued on schedule o)the…
Family Pathways works alongside people to enhance lives through a continuum of essential services and, together with community, champions positive social change.
United Food Bank unites communities to alleviate hunger.
Since 1986, open your heart to the hungry and homeless has worked to ensureevery minnesotan is free from hunger and homelessness. by partnering with organizations serving those in need, we grow donor engagement and raise awareness to…
To provide food to all in need through community partnerships and hunger relief programs. Our vision is a hunger-free Larimer County.
We believe that food is a human right and that food has the power to bring people together. Our vision is to build a stronger, healthier, and hunger-free Coralville community. Powered by community support, the Coralville Community Food…
VEAP is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, multi-service, human service organization with the mission of "Together, we create pathways to stronger, more hopeful, communities through access to healthy food, housing stability and supportive services."
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is People Serving People Inc and the most unlike its peers is Redeemer Center for Life 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 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 3% 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.
45 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. 45 of the 88 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 The Lift Garage ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds Food Bank of Alaska ↗
- Who funds KIDS' MEALS INC ↗
- Who funds SHARE OUR STRENGTH ↗
- Who funds TUBMAN ↗
- Who funds AVIVO ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA ASSISTANCE COUNCIL FOR VETERANS ↗
- Who funds THE LINK ↗
- Who funds TEAM RUBICON INC ↗
- Who funds EVERY MEAL ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE SERVING PEOPLE INC ↗
- Who funds Native American Heritage Association ↗
- Who funds GREATER MINNEAPOLIS CRISIS NURSERY ↗
- Who funds COTS INC ↗
- Who funds GOLDEN HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds SAFEHOUSE DENVER 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: Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Mightycause Charitable Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · The Richard M Schulze Family Foundation · The Minneapolis Foundation · Xcel Energy Foundation · Ch Robinson Worldwide Foundation · Pentair Foundation · Greater Green Bay Community Foundation Inc · Green Bay Packers Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America
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 Merjent 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.