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Hawaii · Private foundation

Paul & Irene Buehner and Joan B Merrill Family Foundation

Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$37k
Granted FY2025(still arriving)
8
Grants FY2025
6
Organizations funded FY2024
17%
First-time grantees FY2024
Read the full brief
Median grant, FY2025
$5,000
Largest grant, FY2025
$7,200
Organizations funded a year
2 to 6
FY2018 to FY2024
States reached, FY2025
4
Total assets, FY2025
$264k
Applications
Takes unsolicited applications
Per its most recent filing; check its own site

How open it is to new grantees

In FY2024, 17% of the organizations Paul & Irene Buehner and Joan B Merrill Family Foundation funded were first-time grantees, receiving 1% of its grant dollars.

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $350 went to new ones.

50%100%’18’19’20’21’22’23’24
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’18’19’20’21’22’23’24
EducationEnvironmentOther
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as new. Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
The numbers by year
Fiscal yearOrganizations fundedTo those organizationsFirst-time grantees
FY2025still arriving6$37k33%
FY20246$33k17%
FY20234$29k25%
FY20223$26k0%
FY20213$18k33%
FY20202$10k0%
FY20192$10k50%
FY20185$45k60%
100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Health$91kEducation$69kReligion$67kEnvironment$16kScience & Tech$3kPublic Safety & Disaster$350

Top grantees

Largest recipients by total granted, FY2017 to FY2025, and the share of each one’s budget the grants supplied at peak.

GranteeTotal grantedYearsShare of their budget
Helphopelive Inc$91,00080%
Maria Lanakila$33,9002n/a
Maui Preparatory Academy$16,44230%
Teton Regional Land Trust Inc$15,00030%
Brigham Young University$12,5003n/a
Utah State University$5,0001n/a
Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition$1,0001n/a
Granite Education Foundation$25010%

Plus 6 recipients with no EIN on record ($70k), not named here.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Donor Advised Charitable Giving IncCO7.5× affinity5 shared granteesties to 2 of 2Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

Compare Paul & Irene Buehner and Joan B Merrill Family Foundation with peer funders

About Paul & Irene Buehner and Joan B Merrill Family Foundation

How much does Paul & Irene Buehner and Joan B Merrill Family Foundation give?
Paul & Irene Buehner and Joan B Merrill Family Foundation reported 8 grants totaling $37,200 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 2 and 6 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.
What does Paul & Irene Buehner and Joan B Merrill Family Foundation fund?
By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Health (37%), Education (28%), Religion (27%).
Who are Paul & Irene Buehner and Joan B Merrill Family Foundation's largest grantees?
By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: Helphopelive Inc ($91k), Maria Lanakila ($34k), Maui Preparatory Academy ($16k).
Does Paul & Irene Buehner and Joan B Merrill Family Foundation fund new organizations?
In FY2024, 17% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.
Does Paul & Irene Buehner and Joan B Merrill Family Foundation accept unsolicited applications?
Its most recent filing reports that it accepts unsolicited grant applications.
Which funders back the same organizations as Paul & Irene Buehner and Joan B Merrill Family Foundation?
Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc, Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, Amazonsmile Foundation.
Where is Paul & Irene Buehner and Joan B Merrill Family Foundation based?
Paul & Irene Buehner and Joan B Merrill Family Foundation is based in HI.

On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 14 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

How this is measured
Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Source object · view filing

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