· Private foundation
Merkel Family Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k3 grants · $10k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $78k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $65k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $65,000 |
| THE CHURCH OF GOD INTERNATIONAL | $33,425 |
| THE SALVATION ARMY | $25,000 |
| O R U GOLDEN EAGLE CLUB INC | $20,000 |
| HEART OF ROUTE 66 AUTO MUSEUM INC | $5,000 |
| THE PENCIL BOX INC | $2,500 |
| TULSA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
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 (FY20–20, $3k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% 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.
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 +44% since the first grant, against -61% for the ones you funded once.
10 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- OSOklahoma State University Foundation6× · 2020–2025 · $520k · revenue +63%
- HOHEART OF ROUTE 66 AUTO MUSEUM INC6× · 2020–2025 · $80k · revenue +217%
- ORORAL ROBERTS UNIVERSITY4× · 2020–2023 · $78k · revenue +40%
Funded once
- UOUNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue -114%
- SSSAINT SIMEON'S FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $10k
Tulsa Garden Centerone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue -61%
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.
To prepare students for college through a rigorous arts infused program.
True to our christian heritage, we prepare students from diverse religious, cultural, educational and economic backgrounds to live life fully.
To support, promote, and improve the programs and services of the oklahoma arts institute.
Providing, maintaining and issuing scholarships to eligible nominees or applicants for admission to college or for contributions to regularly maintained scholarship funds of other federal tax exempt colleges and universities with an…
The operation of a public charter school in the tulsa area with the mission to equip all scholars with the academic skills, content knowledge, and ethical character required for college graduation and life success.
The university of tulsa is a student-centered research university that cultivates interconnected learning experiences to explore complex ideas and create new knowledge in a spirit of free inquiry. guided by our commitment to diversity,…
Support Will Rogers Memorial Museums
Support the oklahoma city community foundation through distributions made to the oklahoma city museum of art.
Connecting, caring, advocating for wildlife, people, and wild places.
The oklahoma hall of fame preserves oklahomas unique history while promoting pride in our great state through each of its programs and the gaylord-pickens museum. the association honors our states rich tradition by telling oklahomas story…
It is to enhance all aspects of academic endeavors for the students, faculty, and administration at booker t washington high school in tulsa oklahoma
To inspire children, connect families, and build community through exploration, exhibits, programming, and play.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is University of Oklahoma Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is O R U Golden Eagle Club Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
14 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. 14 of the 19 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 Oklahoma State University Foundation ↗
- Who funds HEART OF ROUTE 66 AUTO MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds ORAL ROBERTS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds O R U GOLDEN EAGLE CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds The Pencil Box Inc ↗
- Who funds TULSA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE SAN MIGUEL SCHOOL OF TULSA ↗
- Who funds TULSA OPERA INC ↗
- Who funds Tulsa Garden Center ↗
- Who funds A NEW LEAF INC ↗
- Who funds OKLAHOMA HEART GALLERY INC ↗
- Who funds WILL ROGERS STAGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR INDIVIDUALS WITH PHYSICAL CHALLENGES ↗
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: Tulsa Community Foundation · Oneok Foundation Inc · Stuart Family Foundation · The Sharna and Irvin Frank Foundation · The Hardesty Family Foundation Inc · The Anne and Henry Zarrow Foundation · A R and Marylouise Tandy Foundation · Mervin Bovaird Foundation · Ralph and Frances McGill Foundation the Trust Company of Oklahoma · El and Thelma Gaylord Foundation · Edward & Helen Bartlett Foundation · Sanford P & Irene F Burnstein Foundation Irene F Burnstein Co-Trustee
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 Merkel 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.
- Tulsa Community Foundation — 11% of income from government
- Oral Roberts University — 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 Merkel Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Merkel Family 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.