· Private foundation
Merle Chambers Fund
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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
100% of Merle Chambers Fund’s FY2025 grant dollars went to The Denver Foundation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 0 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2024, the last year Merle Chambers Fund named its own grantees at scale: 86 organizations, $50M. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k37 grants · $68k
- $10k–50k35 grants · $778k
- $50k–250k96 grants · $8.8M
- $250k+25 grants · $41M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DENVER ART MUSEUM | $28,459,047 |
| DENVER ART MUSEUM | $3,000,000 |
| STATE LEADERSHIP PROJECT | $750,000 |
| CENTER FOR TECHNOLOGY AND CIVIC LIF | $600,000 |
| THE DENVER FOUNDATION | $501,777 |
| REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM FOR ALL FOUNDA | $500,000 |
| CLEO PARKER ROBINSON DANCE | $500,000 |
| NEW VENTURE FUND | $500,000 |
| THE BELL POLICY CENTER | $500,000 |
| DENVER ART MUSEUM | $500,000 |
| COMMUNITIES FOUNDATION OF OKLAHOMA | $500,000 |
| WYOMING COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $500,000 |
| THE WOMEN'S FOUNDATION OF COLORADO | $350,000 |
| TIDES FOUNDATION | $350,000 |
| STATE VOICES | $350,000 |
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, $266k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 58% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 55% of Merle Chambers Fund’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 62% of the giving stays in CO; read by stated purpose it is 22% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +26% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
108 repeat relationships — 84 still active in FY2024, 24 since wound down; 18 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call). Read against FY2024, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.6M 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
- DADENVER ART MUSEUM5× · 2019–2024 · $33M · revenue +38% · 76% of their budget
- SLSTATE LEADERSHIP PROJECT3× · 2022–2024 · $2.5M · revenue +67%
- VRVOTER REGISTRATION PROJECT4× · 2020–2024 · $1.4M · revenue +35%
Funded once
- PPPlanned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountainsone grant, 2021 · $850k
MILE HIGH UNITED WAY INCone grant, 2020 · $151k · revenue -23%- TATHE ARCHER GROUPgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $100k · revenue +75%
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 provide meaningful access to high quality, civil legal services in the pursuit of justice for as many low income persons and members of vulnerable populations throughout colorado as possible.
We connect people, ideas, and nonprofits to make good happen. our vision is that all of jeffco is thriving.
AIA Colorado,is the voice of the architecture profession in Colorado. Through advocacy, leadership development, education and resources for architects, the organization supports architecture professionals in designing a better world where…
Colorado nonprofit association strengthens colorado's nonprofits through education, connection and advocacy.
The center for popular democracy (cpd) and its affiliates know that everyday people have the power to change the world. we upend business and politics as usual to forge a representative, multiracial government and society where we all…
Common future is a network of pioneering leaders across the u.s. and canada who work deeply within their communities to create alternative approaches to business, philanthropy, and investing. we envision an economy that has transitioned…
Advance workers rights & social justice through building sustained relationships and taking direct action to create concrete change in the lives of working families
Ethics watch uses high impact legal actions to hold public officials and organizations accountable for unethical activities that undermine the integrity of government in colorado. the organization accomplishes its mission by combining…
To advance the science of jurisprudence, secure the more efficient administration of justice, encourage the adoption of proper legislation, advocate thorough and continuing legal education, uphold the honor and integrity of the bar,…
Advancing the well-being of all coloradans through relationships free from abuse and oppression.
The mission of the center for legal inclusiveness (cli) is to advance diversity in the legal profession by actively educating and supporting private and public sector legal organizations in their individual campaigns to create cultures of…
The organization's mission is to leverage web-technologies to improve civic engagement and voter education.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Denver Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Colorado Womens Hall of Fame. 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 23 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
158 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 158 of the 197 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 DENVER ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds NEW VENTURE FUND ↗
- Who funds STATE LEADERSHIP PROJECT ↗
- Who funds THE BELL POLICY CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE WOMEN'S FOUNDATION OF COLORADO INC ↗
- Who funds STATE VOICES ↗
- Who funds VOTER REGISTRATION PROJECT ↗
- Who funds MONTANA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR TECHNOLOGY AND CIVIC LIFE ↗
- Who funds WYOMING COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES FOUNDATION OF OKLAHOMA ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR YOUTH ORGANIZING ↗
- Who funds COBALT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds POLITICAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATES INC ↗
- Who funds HOPEWELL FUND ↗
- Who funds ROCKY MOUNTAIN PLANNED PARENTHOOD INC ↗
- Who funds TIDES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VOTEAMERICA ↗
- Who funds THE DENVER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WOMEN DONORS NETWORK ↗
- Who funds SUSTAINABLE MARKETS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PANORAMA GLOBAL ↗
- Who funds PROGRESSNOW COLORADO EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds Take Back The Court Foundation ↗
- Who funds Civic Nation ↗
- Who funds THE 19TH NEWS ↗
- Who funds THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds WINDWARD FUND ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL WOMEN'S LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds New Era Colorado Foundation ↗
- Who funds COLORADO ORGANIZATION FOR LATINA OPPORTUNITY AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC BROADCASTING OF COLORADO INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY RESOURCE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds 9TO5 NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF WORKING WOMEN INC ↗
- Who funds COLORADO FISCAL INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds MOMSRISING EDUCATION FUND ↗
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: Rose Community Foundation · The Colorado Health Foundation · The Denver Foundation · Colorado Gives Foundation · Community Foundation Boulder County · Hopewell Fund · New Venture Fund · The Colorado Trust · Brett Family Foundation · The Women's Foundation of Colorado Inc · Caring for Colorado Foundation · Boettcher Foundation
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 Merle Chambers Fund 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.
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Tools of the Mind — 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 Merle Chambers Fund?
Find your warmest path to Merle Chambers Fund 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.