· Private foundation
The Blum Merians 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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k24 grants · $47k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $26k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PATERSON EDUCATION FOUNDATION - MEL MERIANS MEMORIAL FUND | $25,750 |
| INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE | $5,150 |
| WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN | $3,134 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $3,129 |
| FOOD BANK FOR NEW YORK CITY | $3,125 |
| REGIONAL FOOD BANK | $3,090 |
| ADVOCATES FOR TRANS EQUALITY | $3,078 |
| BLACK VOTERS MATTERBVM CAPACITY BLDG INST | $3,000 |
| EVERYORG | $2,300 |
| RAICES | $2,097 |
| PALESTINE CHILDREN'S RELIEF FUND | $2,089 |
| FAIR FOOD PROGRAM | $2,058 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS | $2,000 |
| NEW JERSEY CONSORT GIVEBUTTER | $1,180 |
| NORTH AMERICAN TRADITIONAL INDIGENOUS FOOD SYSTEMS | $1,069 |
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 (FY19–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 91% 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.
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 +58% since the first grant, against +38% for the ones you funded once.
26 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 8 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, 81% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $14k 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
MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC7× · 2019–2025 · $23k · revenue +79%- IRInternational Rescue Committee INC7× · 2019–2025 · $23k · revenue +67%
WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC5× · 2021–2025 · $19k · revenue +167%
Funded once
- ABACT BLUEone grant, 2022 · $3k
- TATHE ANTI-RECIDIVISM COALITIONone grant, 2022 · $1k · revenue +9%
- TFTHE FORTUNE SOCIETY INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $1k · revenue +38%
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.
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
To drive transformational adaptation to protect communities across the country from higher seas, stronger storms, and more frequent flooding.
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
The intertribal agriculture council was founded in 1987 to pursue and promote the conservation, development and use of our agricultural resources of american indian and alaska native tribes.
To lead and coordinate the global initiative to address and prevent criminalization, violence, and impunity against indigenous peoples towards strengthening their collectives, solidarity, and actions.
To nourish the world's hungry through uniting and advancing food banks.
Ilsi is a global, nonprofit federation dedicated to generating and advancing emerging science and groundbreaking research to ensure foods are safe, nutritious and sustainable, and that they improve planetary and human health and well-being…
Nuru is a global collective that enables inclusive and sustainable prosperity by identifying communities at the stability tipping point, strengthening rural livelihoods and market systems, and fostering stabilizing connections that repair…
Wri is committed to creating change that improves people's lives and ensures the natural world can thrive. (see schedule o)wri's bold vision requires a formula for success we call "count it. change it. scale it.":- count it: our work is…
Aclu foundation of ma was established to defend freedoms guaranteed in the constitution and bill of rights through public education and litigation.
To provide multi-specialty surgical care, humanitarian aid and educational support to people in low- and middle-income countries.
Ifac acts in the public interest and has no profit-making purpose. ifac serves the public interest by: speaking out and engaging as the voice for the global profession; leading and developing a future-ready accountancy profession; and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Medecins Sans Frontieres Usa Inc and the most unlike its peers is Every Org. 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 37 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 39 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 MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds REFUGEE & IMMIGRANT CENTER FOR EDUCATION & LEGAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds ADVOCATES FOR TRANS EQUALITY EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL NETWORK OF ABORTION FUNDS INC ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA INDIAN WOMEN'S RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds MENTAL HEALTH AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK FOR NEW YORK CITY ↗
- Who funds PALESTINE CHILDREN'S RELIEF FUND ↗
- Who funds HIAS INC ↗
- Who funds North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems ↗
- Who funds The Coalition of Immokalee Workers Inc ↗
- Who funds ZAHARA KATHAWALLA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Amah Mutsun Land Trust ↗
- Who funds Black Girl Hockey Club ↗
- Who funds THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS INC ↗
- Who funds REGIONAL FOOD BANK OF NORTHEASTERN NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds ADVOCATES FOR TRANS EQUALITY ↗
- Who funds EVERY ORG ↗
- Who funds GIVEDIRECTLY INC ↗
- Who funds THE ANTI-RECIDIVISM COALITION ↗
- Who funds THE FORTUNE SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds MOUNT WASHINGTON OBSERVATORY ↗
- Who funds GREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds LATINOJUSTICE PRLDEF ↗
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: Tides Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Network for Good · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · 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 The Blum Merians 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.
- Hias Inc — 88% of income from government
- Greater Boston Food Bank Inc — 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 The Blum Merians Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Blum Merians 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.