· Private foundation
Merwin 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $4k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $235k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $160k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ERIE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY | $100,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $60,000 |
| ERIE PHILHARMONIC | $40,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB | $30,000 |
| ERIE CITY MISSION | $30,000 |
| MEALS ON WHEELS ERIE | $20,000 |
| CHILDREN'S ADVOCACY CENTER | $20,000 |
| SIGHT CENTER OF NW PA | $20,000 |
| MERCY CENTER FOR WOMEN | $15,000 |
| ACES | $15,000 |
| NEIGHBORHOOD ART HOUSE | $15,000 |
| ST MARTIN CENTER | $10,000 |
| SARAH A REED CHILDREN'S CENTER | $10,000 |
| AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION | $10,000 |
| ROBERT IRVINE FOUNDATION | $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 (FY17–24, $131k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 100% 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 +38% since the first grant, against +30% for the ones you funded once.
27 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2024, 14 since wound down; 3 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, 72% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $112k 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
- EPErie Philharmonic Inc8× · 2017–2024 · $290k · revenue +48%
- UWUnited Way of Erie County4× · 2017–2020 · $103k · revenue +39%
- CMCITY MISSION OF THE EVANGELICAL CHURCHES OF ERIE6× · 2018–2024 · $100k · revenue +59%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2019 · $25k
- HHHAMOT HEALTH FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $20k · revenue +77%
- ECErie County Historical Societygraduatedone grant, 2022 · $15k · revenue +113%
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 emergency medical services with advanced and basic life support capabilities, ambulance transportation services, and providing trained personnel to assist local fire departments.
To facilitate both the creation and retention of jobs within erie county and increase economic opportunities for individuals and businesses through comprehensive economic development programs.
The mission of the erie cancer wellness center is to support those living with cancer and the people that care for them through free of charge programs and services that promote physical, emotional and mental healing.
A non-profit organization dedicated to the protection, restoration, enhancement, and sustainable development of the lake erie watershed in pennsylvania.
Erie Independence House, Inc. (EIH) exists to enhance and promote independence in people with disabilities through the provision of accessible, affordable, adaptive housing necessary for them to lead productive, independent lives. We offer…
To increase the organized capacity for people to care for one another.
Revitalizing downtown by improving its image, business climate, physical environment and design
To lead erie's economic evolution through access, advocacy and awareness.
The mission of the erie art museum is to promote and advance the visual arts by maintaining a quality art collection, by encouraging art in all its forms, by fostering lifelong art learning, and by building community among artists, art…
Erie day school is a co-educational, independent elementary school (toddler through grade 8) located in erie, pa. our educational approach values the individual talents, traits, and abilities of our students.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Erie Homes for Children & Adults Inc and the most unlike its peers is American Heart Association 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 61 years old; the field is 27. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 15% 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 6% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 51 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 Erie Philharmonic Inc ↗
- Who funds United Way of Erie County ↗
- Who funds ERIE CIVIC THEATRE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Erie Zoological Society ↗
- Who funds CITY MISSION OF THE EVANGELICAL CHURCHES OF ERIE ↗
- Who funds SAFENET INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF ERIE INC ↗
- Who funds St Martin Center ↗
- Who funds Metro-Erie Meals on Wheels Inc ↗
- Who funds MERCY CENTER FOR WOMEN INC ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds ERIE HOMES FOR CHILDREN & ADULTS INC ↗
- Who funds ERIE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC BROADCASTING OF NORTHWEST PENNSYLVANIA INC ↗
- Who funds HAMOT HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Erie County Historical Society ↗
- Who funds Erie Yacht Club Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds SARAH A REED CHILDREN'S CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE KAHKWA CLUB ↗
- Who funds PERRY SQUARE ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds THE ARTS COUNCIL OF ERIE ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds PRESQUE ISLE PARTNERSHIP INC ↗
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: Erie Community Foundation · M J Surgala Tr · Wabtec Foundation · The Britton Family Foundation · Ge Aerospace Foundation · Northwest Charitable Foundation · Kern Family Foundation Inc · Firstenergy Foundation · McBrier Foundation · United Way of Erie County · John M & Gertrude E Petersen Foundation · The Henry A and Mary J MacDonald 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 Merwin 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 Merwin Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Merwin 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.