· Private foundation
Merryman Charitable Foundation
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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k32 grants · $59k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| VIRGINIA TECH FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| LIBERTY UNIVERSITY | $5,000 |
| LYNCHBURG COMMUNITY TRUST | $5,000 |
| ACADEMY CENTER OF THE ARTS | $3,000 |
| CVCC | $3,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000 |
| SKELTON 4H EDUCATIONAL CENTER | $2,500 |
| THE NATIONAL D-DAY MEMORIAL | $2,500 |
| V-COM | $2,500 |
| RUTGERS UNIVERSITY | $2,500 |
| CAMPBELL COUNTY EDUCATION FOUNDATIO | $2,000 |
| CASA OF CENTRAL VIRGINIA | $2,000 |
| LYNCHBURG CITY SCHOOL EDUCATION FND | $2,000 |
| HUMAN KIND | $2,000 |
| RUSTBURG UNITED METHODIST CHURCH | $2,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $47k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 61% 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.
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 +62% since the first grant, against +9% for the ones you funded once.
41 repeat relationships — 30 still active in FY2025, 11 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $4k 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
- ACACADEMY CENTER OF THE ARTS INC9× · 2017–2025 · $23k · revenue +287%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF LYNCHBURG4× · 2017–2020 · $20k · revenue +5%
- CCCAMPBELL COUNTY EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION9× · 2017–2025 · $18k · revenue +399%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $5k
- LULONGWOOD UNIVERSITYone grant, 2024 · $5k
- TNTREVECCA NAZARENE UNIVERSITYone grant, 2021 · $5k · revenue +14%
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.
Provision of safe and affordable housing.
Providing life-enriching services that promote well-being and build community.
To provide "dignity in living" for senior adults who reside in this planned services community.
Louisville collegiate school inspires academic excellence, extraordinary character and global citizenship.
VCIC works with schools, businesses, and communities to achieve success through inclusion.
To provide investment and investment management and related services to the rector and the board of visitors of virginia commonwealth university (vcu), and/or to the private and independent foundations and other entities affiliated with…
To provide excellence in the delivery of healthcare.
Provides seminary, under-graduate, graduate, doctoral, and other continuing education programs
Furtherance of economic growth, education, training and development
New schools for virginia works with parents, students, educators and the community to improve educational outcomes by designing new schools and by supporting existing schools to improve outcomes.
The mission of the school is to provide outstanding legal education in a collegial and supportive environment with attention to newly emerging areas of law, particularly those related to technological development, globalization and the…
To deliver important healthcare services with exceptional quality and patient-centered care.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Lynchburg Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Beacon of Hope Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 52 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
22 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. 22 of the 54 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 VIRGINIA TECH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ACADEMY CENTER OF THE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF LYNCHBURG ↗
- Who funds CAMPBELL COUNTY EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PRESBYTERIAN HOMES & FAMILY SVCS ↗
- Who funds CASA OF CENTRAL VIRGINIA INC ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS INC ↗
- Who funds BEACON OF HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds Campbell County Historical Society Inc ↗
- Who funds FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES ↗
- Who funds LIBERTY UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds LYNCHBURG DAILY BREAD INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER LYNCHBURG HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds MIRIAM'S HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRA HEALTH INC ↗
- Who funds TREVECCA NAZARENE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CHATHAM HALL ↗
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: Foster Foundation · Schewel Charitable Foundation · Easley Char Irr Tua 5019004715 · Centra Health Inc · Greater Lynchburg Community Foundation · The Al Stroobants Foundation · Valtim Family Foundation Inc · The Harry D Forsyth Foundation · Valentine Family Foundation · Carrington Family Foundation · M4k Lynchburg Inc · Moore's Charitable 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 Merryman Charitable 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.
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 Merryman Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Merryman Charitable 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.