· Private foundation
Merlyn Anderson Trust
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 FY2023–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k4 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $40k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $515k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NEBRASKA 4-H FOUNDATION | $125,000 |
| SOUTHEAST COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $125,000 |
| NEBRASKA FFA FOUNDATION | $125,000 |
| BEATRICE EDUCAITONAL FOUNDATION | $70,000 |
| FAIRBURY PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION | $70,000 |
| SETH DEAN AND SOUTHEAST COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $10,000 |
| ADDISON KOENING AND CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| SAMANTHA SCHMIDT AND KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| TAELYN FILPI AND UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA | $10,000 |
| JORDAN MUSIL AND BUTLER COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $5,000 |
| ASHLEY SASSE AND NEBRASKA COLLEGE OF TECHNICAL AGRICULTURAL | $5,000 |
| DUSTIN KAPKE AND CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY | $2,250 |
| LUCAS LEWANDOWSKI AND THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA | $2,250 |
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 (FY23–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 6% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
4 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. 4 of the 33 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.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization Merlyn Anderson Trust 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.