· Private foundation
Merkin Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k5 grants · $70k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $310k
- $250k+5 grants · $8.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MILKEN INSTITUTE | $5,600,000 |
| JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY | $2,000,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN DIEGO | $500,000 |
| CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY | $400,000 |
| THE MAVEN PROJECT | $300,000 |
| REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CA | $150,000 |
| PROSTATE CANCER FOUNDATION | $60,000 |
| THE HAROLD & CAROLE PUMP FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| LOS ANGELES BALLET | $50,000 |
| KYLES FAMILY FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| THE ANDERSON FAMILY FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| UNITED FRIENDS OF THE CHILDREN | $10,000 |
| UCLA FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| THE SUGAR RAY LEONARD FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
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 (FY19–24, $150k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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 +57% since the first grant, against +4% for the ones you funded once.
17 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2024, 6 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $25k 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
- CICALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY6× · 2019–2024 · $22M · revenue +13%
- TBThe Broad Institute Inc5× · 2019–2023 · $17M · revenue +58%
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY3× · 2021–2024 · $8.0M · revenue +40%
Funded once
- FJFALLEN JOURNALISTS MEMORIAL FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $1.0M · revenue -76%
- CRCONVERGENT RESEARCH INCone grant, 2023 · $1.0M · revenue -28%
- KSKECK SCHOOL OF MEDICINE OF USCone grant, 2019 · $500k
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 harness the power of the human immune system and advanced computing technologies to create and translate scientific discoveries into next generation vaccines and therapies for prevention, control and cure of chronic diseases, enabling…
The mission of the uc davis foundation is to secure, steward and manage private gifts for uc davis.
The mission of the university of california, irvine foundation (uc irvine foundation) is to raise and manage private funds to support uc irvine's broader mission of excellence in teaching, research and public service. to this end, the uc…
The jonsson cancer center foundation is the single most important vehicle for raising private funds for cancer research at ucla and plays a key role in advancing cancer treatments and care. please see schedule o for additional information.
The Institute is a scientific research center dedicated to conducting basic and applied research to advance the understanding of human disease and the improvement of human health. The Institute fosters an innovative research environment…
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
The samuel waxman cancer research foundation (the "foundation") funds innovative research to bring faster cures to patients. in addition to supporting ongoing collaborative research in specific cancers, our scientists are investigating the…
At la jolla institute for immunology, our scientists focus on understanding how the immune system works in order to promote human health and prevent disease. our discoveries apply to many diseases, ranging from diabetes to heart disease,…
Our mission is to accelerate scientific progress, understand the root causes of disease, and narrow the gap between discoveries and impact on patients.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
The parker institute for cancer immunotherapy's (pici) mission is to accelerate the development of breakthrough immune therapies to turn all cancers into curable diseases.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Ucla Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Why Not Foundation. 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 24 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
30 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. 30 of the 46 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 CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ↗
- Who funds The Broad Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE MILKEN INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds PROSTATE CANCER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WGU Advancement ↗
- Who funds FALLEN JOURNALISTS MEMORIAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CONVERGENT RESEARCH INC ↗
- Who funds THE MAVEN PROJECT ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM ASSOCIATES ↗
- Who funds BIOSCIENCE LOS ANGELES COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds X PRIZE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds THE HAROLD AND CAROLE PUMP FOUNDATION (FKA THE HAROLD PUMP FOUNDATION) ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES BALLET INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED FRIENDS OF THE CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY PARTNERS INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds UCLA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Kyles Family Foundation ↗
- Who funds KERSHAW'S CHALLENGE ↗
- Who funds THE HEART FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR COLLEGE-READY PUBLIC SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds WHY NOT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ANDERSON FAMILY FOUNDATION ↗
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: California Community Foundation · Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · The Annenberg Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · 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 Merkin 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.
- The Broad Institute Inc — 19% of income from government
- 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 Merkin Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Merkin 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.