· Private foundation
Merlo 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 FY2022–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k5 grants · $22k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $45k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $150k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH | $100,000 |
| ALL HANDS AND HEARTS SMART RESPONSE INC | $50,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF PROVIDENCE | $15,000 |
| HUMANE SOCIETY OF THE UNITED STATES | $10,000 |
| AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO | $10,000 |
| LINCOLN SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| DANA FARBER CANCER INSTITUTE INC | $6,000 |
| LOVE4PAWS INC | $5,000 |
| JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY | $5,000 |
| CHILDRENS HOSPITAL PITTSBURGH FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| MOVEMBER FOUNDATION | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY22–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 87% of your 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 15% of Merlo Family Foundation’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.
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 +19% since the first grant, against +10% for the ones you funded once.
6 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2024, 0 since wound down; 5 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, 69% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $67k 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
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH3× · 2022–2024 · $230k · revenue +11%
LINCOLN SCHOOL3× · 2022–2024 · $30k · revenue +24%- HWHumane World for Animals Inc3× · 2022–2024 · $13k · revenue +32%
Funded once
WOMEN & INFANTS HOSPITAL OF RIone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue +10%- AFARTHRITIS FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue 0%
- ASAMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TOone grant, 2023 · $2k
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.
For more than 125 years, the mission of the johns hopkins hospital has been to lead the world in the diagnosis and treatment of disease and to train tomorrow's great physicians, nurses and scientists. above all, we aim to provide the…
The children's hospital of philadelphia, the oldest hospital in the united states dedicated exclusively to pediatrics, strives to be the world leader in the advancement of health care for children by integrating excellent patient care,…
Mass general brigham incorporated is developing an integrated health care delivery system throughout the region that offers patients a continuum of coordinated, high-quality care.
Leadership in the prevention, treatment, and cure of cancer through excellence, vision and cost effectiveness in patient care, outreach programs, research, and education.
We educate the next generation of leaders to improve the health of our society.
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
University of minnesota physicians serves as the integrated group practice for the university of minnesota medical school full-time faculty to provide the highest quality healthcare to patients and their families.university of minnesota…
Upmc carlisle's mission is to serve the community by providing access to outstanding patient care and to shape tomorrow's health care system through clinical and technological innovation, research and education.
Sanford burnham prebys medical discovery institute's mission is to advance the biomedical sciences by cultivating the next generation of scientific leaders, providing meaningful opportunities for researchers of all backgrounds to learn,…
The mission of children's hospital & research center at oakland is to protect and advance the health and well-being of children through clinical care, teaching and research.
Upmc pinnacle hospitals mission as a charitable organization is dedicatied to maintaining and improving the health and quality of life for all persons of the central pennsylvania area.
Fred hutch cancer center ("fred hutch") unites innovative research and compassionate care to prevent and eliminate cancer and infectious disease. continued on schedule o
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Arthritis Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
13 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. 13 of the 14 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 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF PROVIDENCE ↗
- Who funds ALL HANDS AND HEARTS SMART RESPONSE INC ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds WOMEN & INFANTS HOSPITAL OF RI ↗
- Who funds Humane World for Animals Inc ↗
- Who funds Love4Paws Inc ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds ARTHRITIS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PITTSBURGH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MOVEMBER 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 set of overlaps that mostly run through you, not between each other.
Open a dossier: Amazonsmile 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 Merlo 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% 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.