· Private foundation
Merkel Foundation Inc
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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k4 grants · $20k
- $10k–50k33 grants · $705k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $488k
- $250k+3 grants · $1.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GLOBAL BRIGADES INC | $451,381 |
| ARCHDIOCESE OF MILWAUKEE INC (CATHOLIC STEWARDSHIP APPEAL) | $401,187 |
| SIXTEENTH STREET COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTERS | $250,726 |
| HOLY APOSTLES CATHOLIC PARISH | $99,822 |
| SHEBOYGAN YOUTH SAILING CLUB INC | $99,464 |
| ST DOMINIC PARISH | $84,898 |
| COMMUNITY OF ST PAUL INC | $53,610 |
| MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY | $50,194 |
| SAINT FRANCIS DE SALES SEMINARY (THE SALESIANUM TRUST) | $50,194 |
| RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF EASTERN WI INC | $50,194 |
| CATHOLIC MEMORIAL HIGH SCHOOL | $49,732 |
| NATIVITY JESUIT CATHOLIC SCHOOL ACADEMY | $49,732 |
| SAINT FRANCIS DE SALES SEMINARY | $40,155 |
| WORLD CRANIOFACIAL FOUNDATION | $30,117 |
| ARCHDIOCESE OF MILWAUKEE INC (COMBINED COLLECTIONS) | $30,117 |
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 (FY17–25, $515k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 56% 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.
52 repeat relationships — 40 still active in FY2025, 12 since wound down; 5 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $140k 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
- MUMarquette University9× · 2017–2025 · $1.1M · revenue +46%
SIXTEENTH STREET COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTERS INC4× · 2022–2025 · $871k · revenue +20%
RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF EASTERN WISCONSIN INC9× · 2017–2025 · $286k · revenue +39%
Funded once
- HNHOLY NAME OF JESUS & ST CLEMENTS PARISHone grant, 2017 · $10k
- U(UNISON (FKA SET MINISTRY INC)one grant, 2019 · $10k
- WOWORKS OF MERCY MINISTRY INCone grant, 2024 · $10k
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.
Community care health plan's mission is to develop and demonstrate innovative, flexible, community-based approaches to care for at-risk adults, in order to optimize their quality of life and optimize the allocation of community resources.
Provide affordable, high-quality health services and remove inequities to improve the lives of all.
Strengthening the community by providing behavioral health, healthcare and social services to all ages, faiths and backgrounds.
Our mission is to enrich the lives of older adults through gracious retirement living, spiritual growth, cultural and educational opportunities and health care services.
The mission of burnett medical center is to provide compassionate, comprehensive, community healthcare that exceeds our customer's expectations. our mission, as well as our vision and values, serves as a guideline for daily decision making…
To serve our communities by provding innovative and compassionate healthcare.
We provide comprehensive hospice care services, supportive care for pain & symptom management for those with serious illness, and grief support. through our mission, willamette vital health supports adults and children living with a…
Florida community health centers, inc. (fchc) is a federally qualified health center serving medically needy populations in south florida, with an emphasis on serving rural and farm worker communities.
The medical college of wisconsin (mcw) is a distinguished leader and innovator in the education and development of the next generation of physicians, (continued in schedule o)
Midwest dairy works with others to give consumers an excellent dairy experience increasing sales, fostering innovation, and inspiring consumer confidence of dairy products and practices.
The organization provides primary medical, behavior health, and dental care to the population of san joaquin, and solano counties without regard to patients' ability to pay.
To improve the health of the people of wisconsin by supporting and strengthening physicians' ability to practice high quality patient care in a changing environment.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Make-a-Wish Foundation of Wisconsin Inc and the most unlike its peers is New Berlin Food Pantry 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 50 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 8% 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.
36 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. 36 of the 63 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 GLOBAL BRIGADES INC ↗
- Who funds Marquette University ↗
- Who funds SIXTEENTH STREET COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds SHEBOYGAN YOUTH SAILING CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF EASTERN WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds NOURISH FARMS INC ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CRANIOFACIAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PROJECT ANGEL HUGS ↗
- Who funds COMMON HOPE ↗
- Who funds FAMILY RESOURCE CENTER OF SHEBOYGAN COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS OF SHEBOYGAN COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds Disabled American Veterans ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES INC DIOCESE OF MADISON ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF MILWAUKEE INC ↗
- Who funds SHARON S RICHARDSON COMMUNITY HOSPICE INC ↗
- Who funds SHEBOYGAN COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds FOOD ALLERGY RESEARCH & EDUCATION INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds John C Campbell Folk School Inc ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds DOGSINVESTS INC ↗
- Who funds LAKESHORE COMMUNITY HEALTH CARE INC ↗
- Who funds ELMBROOK HUMANE SOCIETY 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: Green Bay Packers Foundation · Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc · United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County Inc · Baird Foundation Inc · Archdiocese of Milwaukee Catholic Community Foundation Inc · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · The Sartori Family Foundation Inc · Frank G & Frieda K Brotz Family Foundation Inc · The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation Inc · Ge Aerospace Foundation · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · Trusted Fraternal Life
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 Foundation Inc 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.