· Private foundation
Sherman and Marjorie Zeigler Foundation Inc
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k13 grants · $43k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $115k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $643k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MUNCIE & DELAWARE COUNTY INC | $240,000 |
| COMMUNITY ENHANCEMENT PROJECTS INC | $140,100 |
| MUNCIE CHILDREN'S MUSEUM | $85,000 |
| MUNCIE DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP | $67,000 |
| CARDINAL GREENWAY INC | $60,000 |
| RED-TAIL LAND CONSERVANCY | $51,000 |
| URBAN LIGHT COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT | $47,000 |
| ROSS COMMUNITY CENTER | $24,000 |
| HALTEMAN VILLAGE NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION | $20,000 |
| ACADEMY OF MODEL AERONAUTICS | $13,000 |
| WHITELY COMMUNITY COUNCIL | $10,765 |
| MINNETRISTA CULTURAL CENTER | $7,500 |
| STRONG CEMETERY ASSOCIATION | $5,000 |
| CONSERVATION LAW CENTER | $5,000 |
| THE NATURE CONSERVANCY | $5,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY18–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 18%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 94% of your 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 6% of Sherman and Marjorie Zeigler Foundation Inc’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 95% of the giving stays in IN; read by stated purpose it is 100% — more of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
22 repeat relationships — 19 still active in FY2025, 3 since wound down; 3 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $65k 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
- CECOMMUNITY ENHANCEMENT PROJECTS INC8× · 2018–2025 · $1.3M · revenue +91% · 60% of their budget
- MDMUNCIE DOWNTOWN DEV PARTNERSHIP7× · 2018–2025 · $254k · revenue +61%
- RLRED-TAIL LAND CONSERVANCY INC7× · 2019–2025 · $253k · revenue +134%
Funded once
- YMYOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF MUNCIE INDIANA INCone grant, 2024 · $100k · revenue 0%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $60k
- MPMUNCIE PUBLIC LIBRARYone grant, 2021 · $50k
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 muncie sports commission exists to attract, create, host, and support sporting events and recreational opportunities for delaware county, indiana.
To be an action-oriented, visionary organization which will stimulate progress, foster economic growth and enhance individual opportunity to achieve a high quality of life for everyone.
To develop and promote development and growth of the convention, recreation and visitor industry in the county of delaware, state of indiana.
Aid in the economic revitalization of muncie indiana through securing land for housing initiatives and urban renewal
To encourage the involvement and education of the general public in the local area in the active participation in the arts.
Promote and educate indiana residents on the state's economic success and positive gains.
The central indiana land trust, inc. preserves the best of central indiana's natural areas, protecting plants and animals, so hoosiers can experience the wonder of the state's natural heritage.
The purpose is to promote and develop economic expansion within morgan county, indiana.
Provides contemporary art exhibitions and programs to the community that are aesthetically compelling, conceptually rigorous, and socially impactful.
To develop, coordinate, and proivde housing, social services, and educational programs for low income and moderate income residents of muncie, indiana.
The museum is an educational corporation formed to ignite a life-long passion for exploring, discovering, and valuing nature and science.
Support our members and the business environment by fostering economic and community development initiatives to improve the quality of life in harrison county.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Community Foundation of Muncie and Delaware County Inc and the most unlike its peers is Whitely Community Council Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 41 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 44 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 COMMUNITY ENHANCEMENT PROJECTS INC ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MUNCIE AND DELAWARE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds CARDINAL GREENWAY INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds MUNCIE DOWNTOWN DEV PARTNERSHIP ↗
- Who funds RED-TAIL LAND CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds ROSS COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF MUNCIE INDIANA INC ↗
- Who funds MUNCIE CHILDREN'S MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds IVY TECH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds URBAN LIGHT CHRISTIAN DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds DELAWARE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds WHITELY COMMUNITY COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds Earlham College Inc ↗
- Who funds Hoosier Environmental Council Inc ↗
- Who funds Ball State University Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds ORCHESTRA INDIANA INC ↗
- Who funds CORNERSTONE CENTER FOR THE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds THE CONSERVATION LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE ACADEMY OF MODEL AERONAUTICS INC ↗
- Who funds INDIANA STATE MUSEUM FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds MUNCIE ARTS & CULTURE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds MUNCIE ACTION PLAN 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: Ball Brothers Foundation · George and Frances Ball Foundation · The Community Foundation of Muncie and Delaware County Inc · Mutualbank Charitable Foundation Inc · Hamer D & Phyllis C Shafer Foundation Charitable Trust · Heart of Indiana United Way Inc · American Electric Power Foundation · Muncie Endurathon Inc · Lilly Endowment Inc · Centerpoint Energy Foundation Inc · Central Indiana Community Foundation Inc · Edmund F and Virginia B Ball Foundation Inc
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 Sherman and Marjorie Zeigler Foundation Inc 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 Sherman and Marjorie Zeigler Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Sherman and Marjorie Zeigler Foundation Inc 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.