· Private foundation
Merry S Graham Charitable Foundation Trust of 12-9-21
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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 $10k3 grants · $8k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $70k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SUNFLOWER STAR LABORATORY | $35,000 |
| FRIENDS OF WNC NATURE CENTER | $25,000 |
| LLAMAS DEL SOL INC | $10,000 |
| BREVARD SCHOOL FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES | $1,500 |
| SAN FRANCISCO ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY | $1,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY23–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 95% 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.
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.
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.
Friends of the Elephant Sea is dedicated to educating people about elephant seals and other marine life and teaching stewardship for the ocean along the central coast of California. by providing docent/guide services year round at the…
The mission of the Lowry Park Zoological Society of Tampa a/k/a ZooTampa at Lowry Park, is to rescue, rehabilitate and care for animals.(Expanded mission on Schedule O)ZooTampa creates exceptional personalized experiences that connect…
Through management of oakland zoo, the conservation society of california deepens connection with animals, saves wildlife, and inspires champions for the natural world.
We inspire people to live in harmony with the natural world by fostering love, appreciation, and understanding of the sonoran desert.
Bay ecotarium is the largest non-profit 501(c)(3) watershed conservation group in the san francisco bay area committing to global climate resilience and ocean conservation, inspiring actionable environmental stewardship locally, and…
The mission of the monterey bay aquarium is to inspire conservation of the ocean. millions of people worldwide draw inspiration from the aquarium and look to us to advocate for the ocean and its wildlife.
Inspiring communities to save wildlife for future generations.
Gfa works in partnership with and on behalf of the greater farallones and cordell bank national marine sanctuaries to preserve, monitor, research, educate about and enhance these invaluable marine resources.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is San Francisco Zoological Society and the most unlike its peers is Llamas Del Sol Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
8 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. 8 of the 9 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 Sunflower Star Laboratory ↗
- Who funds Friends of the WNC Nature Center Inc ↗
- Who funds FLORIDA STATE PARKS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SEA OTTER SAVVY ↗
- Who funds Llamas Del Sol Inc ↗
- Who funds BREVARD SCHOOLS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
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: American Online Giving Foundation Inc · 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 Merry S Graham Charitable Foundation Trust of 12-9-21 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.
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.