· Private foundation
The Carol L Merlone Educational Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k14 grants · $63k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $73k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $302k
- $250k+1 grant · $299k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UCLA FOUNDATION | $299,246 |
| SIGMA NU ALUMNI SCHOLARHSHIP FUND | $164,640 |
| UC REGENTS | $74,999 |
| KARMA CLUB TEENS | $62,500 |
| GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY | $15,000 |
| STANFORD UNIVERSITY | $15,000 |
| Northwestern University | $13,332 |
| SKIDMORE COLLEGE | $10,000 |
| University of Michigan | $10,000 |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | $10,000 |
| DARTMOUTH COLLEGE | $8,333 |
| BOSTON COLLEGE | $5,000 |
| YALE UNIVERSITY | $5,000 |
| UC SAN DIEGO | $5,000 |
| HARVEY MUDD | $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 (FY20–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 82% 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 +21% since the first grant, against +13% for the ones you funded once.
14 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2024, 2 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 74% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $104k 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
- SNSigma Nu Alumni Scholarship Fund3× · 2020–2022 · $424k · revenue +203% · 43% of their budget
TRUSTEES OF BOSTON COLLEGE5× · 2020–2024 · $45k · revenue +50%
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY4× · 2021–2024 · $45k · revenue +34%
Funded once
- NHN HOLLYWOOD HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2021 · $50k
- CHCAMPOLINDO HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2022 · $25k
- BUBOCCONI UNIVERSITYone grant, 2022 · $5k
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.
See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.
Western new england university, a comprehensive private institution with a tradition of excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to service, awards undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in various departments from…
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
Organization's mission: boston university is an international, comprehensive, private research university, committed to educating students to be reflective, resourceful individuals ready to live, adapt, and lead in an interconnected world.…
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
Education and Research
As a Catholic, Jesuit university our mission is to search for truth, discover shareknowledge, foster personal professional excellence, promote a life of faith and developleadership expressed in service to others. See Schedule O.
As the national university of the catholic church in the united states, founded and sponsored by the bishops of the country with the approval of the holy see, the catholic university of america is committed to being a comprehensive…
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Georgetown University and the most unlike its peers is Sigma Nu Alumni Scholarship Fund. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
18 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. 18 of the 31 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 UCLA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Sigma Nu Alumni Scholarship Fund ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF BOSTON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds DUKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds TRINITY COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Pitzer College ↗
- Who funds Harvey Mudd College ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds Massachusetts Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds SKIDMORE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds BARNARD COLLEGE ↗
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization The Carol L Merlone Educational 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.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston College — 3% of income from government
- Trinity College — 0% 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 Carol L Merlone Educational Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Carol L Merlone Educational 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.