· Private foundation
Ruth & William Merkey 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 $10k28 grants · $144k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $39k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SISTERS OF ST FRANCIS OF THE HOLY CROSS | $25,663 |
| SECOND HARVEST HEARTLAND | $13,808 |
| NEW COMMUNITY CLINIC | $9,838 |
| PAULS PANTRY | $9,808 |
| Individual grant recipient | $9,808 |
| FRIENDS OF KOWAK | $9,500 |
| CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES | $9,200 |
| PROJECT HOPE | $9,000 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS | $7,200 |
| SALVATORIAN MISSION WAREHOUSE | $6,500 |
| SALVATION ARMY OF BROWN COUNTY | $6,500 |
| HOUSE OF HOPE | $5,300 |
| CROSIER BROTHERS AND FATHERS | $5,200 |
| BENEDICTINE MISSION HOUSE | $5,200 |
| SAMARITAN'S PURSE | $5,200 |
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, $100k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 57% 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 +50% since the first grant, against -53% for the ones you funded once.
34 repeat relationships — 30 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- SHSECOND HARVEST HEARTLAND9× · 2017–2025 · $124k · revenue +119%
- PPPAUL'S PANTRY INC9× · 2017–2025 · $91k · revenue +50%
- NCNEW COMMUNITY CLINIC LTD9× · 2017–2025 · $89k · revenue +30%
Funded once
- TNThrive Networks Globalone grant, 2017 · $3k · revenue -53%
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.
Since 1816, american bible society has been fulfilling its mission of making the bible available to every person in a language and format each can understand and afford so all people may experience its life-changing message.
To boldly engage the world's greatest crises in partnership with the church.
In 2005, medical missions outreach began pointing others to the great physician through an annual medical missions trip to the developing world by partnering with local churches to reach their communities with the gospel. now more than 20…
The organization cares for the sick and suffering in Jesus name by partnering with Christian mission hospitals, helping patients unable to afford treatment, and supporting Mustard Seed House ministry locations in Kenya.
Catholic medical mission board (cmmb) is an international, faith-based nonprofit that believes in healthier lives worldwide. we work in partnerships globally to deliver locally sustainable, quality health solutions, (continued on schedule…
Plant with purpose, a christian nonprofit organization, reverses deforestation and poverty around the world by transforming the lives of the rural poor. we do this through: - watershed restoration & regenerative agriculture - savings…
Asm's commitment to the great commission leads us to serve others by:-partnering with national leaders, churches, ministries, and individuals to create and distribute scripture media to share the good news of jesus.-recording bible and…
International needs has the vision to transform lives and change communities by helping christian nationals serve both god and neighbor within their own countries.
Partners In Health (PIH) is a non-profit, global health organization that fights social injustice by bringing the benefits of modern medical science first and foremost to the most vulnerable communities worldwide. In Haiti, Malawi, Rwanda,…
Christian Mission for the United Nations Community is a ministry aimed at leading the head of every nation and other top leaders to faith in Jesus Christ and helping them to walk in dependence upon God as they discharge the…
The center shares christ's peace by embracing and addressing the world's weighty concerns through feeding, educating, and caring for those who hunger for change.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Medecins Sans Frontieres Usa Inc and the most unlike its peers is Friends of Kowak. 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 39 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 8% 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.
16 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. 16 of the 35 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 SECOND HARVEST HEARTLAND ↗
- Who funds PAUL'S PANTRY INC ↗
- Who funds NEW COMMUNITY CLINIC LTD ↗
- Who funds Friends of Kowak ↗
- Who funds XAVIER SOCIETY FOR THE BLIND ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds Adopt-A-Native Elder ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds PROJECT HOPE - THE PEOPLE-TO-PEOPLE HEALTH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Community Bible Study ↗
- Who funds LIVING FAITH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ETERNAL WORD TELEVISION NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds American Bird Conservancy ↗
- Who funds Unbound ↗
- Who funds SMILE TRAIN INC ↗
- Who funds Thrive Networks Global ↗
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: Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · 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 Ruth & William Merkey 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.
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Find your warmest path to Ruth & William Merkey 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.