· Private foundation
The Elena Melius Foundation Inc
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 $10k13 grants · $13k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $32k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ST FRANCIS HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $16,000 |
| PAT CAIRO FAMILY FOUNDATION INC | $15,500 |
| COLD SPRING HARBOR LABORATORY | $5,000 |
| THOMAS REYNOLDS FOUNDATION | $2,000 |
| THE HAGEDORN LITTLE VILLAGE SCHOOL | $1,000 |
| SAVE THE CHILDREN | $1,000 |
| MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER | $750 |
| NATIONAL RIGHT TO WORK LEGAL DEFENSE FOUNDATION | $500 |
| JUDICIAL WATCH | $500 |
| GUIDE DOGS FOR BLIND INC | $500 |
| SORRENTINO FAMILY FOUNDATION CORP | $500 |
| LEUKEMIA & LYMPHOMA SOCIETY | $500 |
| JEWISH NATIONAL FUND | $500 |
| ST MARY'S FOUNDATION FOR CHILDREN INC | $500 |
| GIRL SCOUTS OF NASSAU COUNTY INC | $70 |
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 (FY20–23, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 6%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
21 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down; 6 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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
- TPThe Pat Cairo Family Foundation Inc7× · 2019–2025 · $31k · revenue +120%
- SFST FRANCIS HOSPITAL FOUNDATION INC3× · 2022–2025 · $19k · revenue +171%
- CSCOLD SPRING HARBOR LABORATORY3× · 2022–2025 · $8k · revenue +12%
Funded once
ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue +59%- NHNORTHWELL HEALTH FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue +6%
MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTERgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $5k · revenue +64%
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.
Susan g. komen 's mission is to save lives by meeting the most critical needs in our communities & investing in breakthrough research to prevent & cure breast cancer.
Operate a state-of-the-art, world-class genomic research center that creates and uses advanced genomics to understand the genetic basis of disease. for more information, see schedule o.
Leadership in the prevention, treatment, and cure of cancer through excellence, vision and cost effectiveness in patient care, outreach programs, research, and education.
The mission of dfci is to provide expert, compassionate, and equitable care to children, adults, and their families, while advancing the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure, and prevention of cancer and related diseases. we train new…
Sanford burnham prebys medical discovery institute's mission is to advance the biomedical sciences by cultivating the next generation of scientific leaders, providing meaningful opportunities for researchers of all backgrounds to learn,…
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.
Our mission is to break down barriers to als research to find effective treatments. by uniting academia, the pharma and biotech industry, government, venture capital, related nonprofits, and the als community, we aim to overcome the…
For more than 125 years, the mission of the johns hopkins hospital has been to lead the world in the diagnosis and treatment of disease and to train tomorrow's great physicians, nurses and scientists. above all, we aim to provide the…
The hugo w. moser research institute at kennedy krieger, inc. (the "research institute") is an internationally recognized research facility finding answers to problems and injuries that affect a child's developing brain. researchers have…
The mission of mila's miracle foundation is to find and fund paths to a cure for batten and other life-threatening neurological disorders. families in this community have been pivotal in raising the necessary funds and awareness. together,…
The lustgarten foundation is the largest private funder of pancreatic cancer research in the world. see schedule o.the lustgarten foundation is boldly leading the way through hope and innovation, turning fear into action through education…
To significantly improve the lives of people with down syndrome through research, medical care, education and advocacy. an important part of this mission is to support the global affiliate organizations that we helped establish and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Seeing Eye Inc and the most unlike its peers is Sorrentino Family Foundation Corp. 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 40 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
43 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. 43 of the 77 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 The Pat Cairo Family Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds ST FRANCIS HOSPITAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds COLD SPRING HARBOR LABORATORY ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NORTHWELL HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER ↗
- Who funds Save The Children Federation Inc ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN KIDNEY FUND INC ↗
- Who funds SHLOFMITZ HEART FOUNDATION INC ATTNDDK ↗
- Who funds Mercy Corps ↗
- Who funds Mercy Ships International ↗
- Who funds LONG ISLAND TEEN CHALLENGE INC ↗
- Who funds PAWS FOR PURPLE HEARTS ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds HARMONY HEIGHTS INC ↗
- Who funds CHILD ABUSE PREVENTION SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds THE HAGEDORN LITTLE VILLAGE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S FOUNDATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds HUNTINGTON HUMAN SERVICES INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS INC ↗
- Who funds LONG ISLAND PINE BARRENS SOCIETY ↗
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: Peter & Jeri Dejana Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Network for Good · National Philanthropic Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · 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 The Elena Melius 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.
- Mercy Corps — 47% of income from government
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% 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 Elena Melius Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to The Elena Melius 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.