· Private foundation
Oliver B Merlyn Foundation
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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $4k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $112k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $128k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MERCY FLIGHT CENTRAL | $68,067 |
| GLENVILLE HILL FIRE DIST | $60,000 |
| WYOMING COUNTY EMER RESP TEAM | $33,396 |
| PERINTON VOLUNTEER AMBULANCE | $26,000 |
| MERCY FLIGHT CENTRAL | $20,000 |
| BEUKENDAAL VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT | $17,359 |
| LOLLYPOP FARM | $15,000 |
| CASTLETON PRESERVATION TRUST | $2,000 |
| PAWLING COMMUNITY CENTER | $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 (FY19–22, $15k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 93% 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.
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.
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 +90% since the first grant, against +31% for the ones you funded once.
17 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2025, 14 since wound down; 5 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, 53% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $115k 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
- MFMERCY FLIGHT CENTRAL INC8× · 2017–2025 · $493k · revenue +90%
- PVPERINTON VOLUNTEER AMBULANCE CORPS3× · 2023–2025 · $76k · revenue +30%
- THTHE HUMANE SOCIETY OF ROCHESTER & MONROE COUNTY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO2× · 2024–2025 · $45k · revenue +24%
Funded once
- MFMERCY FLIGHT INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $33k · revenue +107%
- IAIrondequoit Ambulance Incgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $25k · revenue +123%
- MFMERCY FLIGHT CENTRAL FOUNDATIONone grant, 2024 · $20k
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.
The health and safety of our communities providing emergency services and safety training
Our mission is to provide exceptional Advanced Life Support and medical care to our communities in Upstate New York. As a proud 501(c)3 non-profit organization, we serve the Town of Maine, Town of Nanticoke, the Village and Town of Newark…
Volunteer Fire and Ambulance Service
Provide fire and rescue services to the citizens of our fire district
The varna volunteer fire co inc's mission is to provide fire, rescue and emergency response to the varna , ny and surrounding community.
Provide medical asssitance and transportation to the sick and injured servingthe towns of granville and hebron ny. also serving some parts of rutland county vermont.
Volunteer fire/ambulance services
to prevent the loss of life and to control or reduce the loss of property by applying all of our knowledge and resources.
Provide fire protection and emergency medical services to the citizens of the Stony Brook fire district 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.
Fire and ems protection
Provide volunteer ambulance service
Provides emergency medical services to residents in the town of queensbury.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Mercy Flight Inc and the most unlike its peers is Colette Louise Tisdahl Foundation. 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 34 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
19 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. 19 of the 73 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 MERCY FLIGHT CENTRAL INC ↗
- Who funds PERINTON VOLUNTEER AMBULANCE CORPS ↗
- Who funds THE HUMANE SOCIETY OF ROCHESTER & MONROE COUNTY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ↗
- Who funds Gainesville Fire Dept Inc ↗
- Who funds MERCY FLIGHT INC ↗
- Who funds Irondequoit Ambulance Inc ↗
- Who funds EAST AREA VOLUNTEER EMERGENCY SERVICE INC ↗
- Who funds MEDICAL DEBT RESOLUTION INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds GLOW YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds DIRECT RELIEF ↗
- Who funds LAUGHING AT MY NIGHTMARE INC ↗
- Who funds COLETTE LOUISE TISDAHL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Hero Labradors ↗
- Who funds SISKIYOU MOUNTAIN CLUB ↗
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: United Way of Greater Rochester and the Finger Lakes Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 Oliver B Merlyn 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.
- Siskiyou Mountain Club — 22% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Oliver B Merlyn Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Oliver B Merlyn 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.