· Private foundation
The Harold and Marilyn Melcher 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k20 grants · $24k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $45k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $52k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WAYSIDE WAIFS | $51,730 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER KANSAS CITY | $35,000 |
| PET RESOURCE CENTER OF KANSAS CITY | $10,000 |
| SCHOOLS3 | $2,500 |
| COMMUNITY HEALTH | $2,500 |
| HARVESTERS | $2,500 |
| CARMEL PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| JEWISH COMMUNITY RELATIONS BUREAU | $2,500 |
| THE NIGHT MINISTRY | $1,500 |
| MADRE | $1,250 |
| KINGS COUNTY TENNIS LEAGUE | $1,250 |
| SUTTER HEALTH - CPMC FOUNDATION | $1,250 |
| YOUNG CENTER FOR IMMIGRANT CHILDREN'S RIGHTS | $1,000 |
| HIAS | $750 |
| JANE'S DUE PROCESS | $750 |
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, $66k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 98% 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 +38% since the first grant, against +28% for the ones you funded once.
37 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2025, 21 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- WWWAYSIDE WAIFS INC9× · 2017–2025 · $698k · revenue +14%
- SNSPAY & NEUTER KANSAS CITY D/B/A PET RESOURCE CENTER OF KANSAS CITY7× · 2017–2025 · $142k · revenue +191%
- PIPAWSPERITY INC3× · 2017–2019 · $45k · revenue +594%
Funded once
- PPPLANNED PARENTHOOD GREAT PLAINSgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $30k · revenue +105%
- KCKANSAS CITY PET PROJECTgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $25k · revenue +176%
- OBOPERATION BREAKTHROUGH INCone grant, 2018 · $20k · revenue +17%
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.
Women donors network advances a just, equitable, and sustainable world through the power of philanthropy, women's leadership, and collective and individual action.
Our mission as a global alliance is to provide strategies, research, and resources that support the critical agency and influence of women's foundations and gender justice funders in the movement for equality, justice, and power for all.
See schedule okqed serves the people of northern california with a community-supported alternative to commercial media, providing the knowledge needed to make informed decisions; convening community dialogue; bringing the arts to everyone;…
To build and maintain financial support for planned parenthood north central states to advance and protect sexual and reproductive health care for all.
Common impact's mission is to strengthen the capacity of social change organizations, enabling them to better run and scale their programs. through its partnership with companies, common impact taps into the business skills and expertise…
Pro publica is an independent, non-profit, pulitzer prize-winning newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories. [see continuation on schedule o] we produce…
Building a movement of diverse, upwardly mobile college grads overcoming underemployment through digital skills and peer connections.
People inc. provides health and human services that enrich lives and communities through innovation and supportive services. with a goal to help people achieve greater independence and quality of life, people inc. provides day,…
Fos feminista fund was formed exclusively for charitable purposes to support, foster, aid, and enhance access to contraception, responsible parenthood, reproductive health, and empowerment of women and shall aid and support the activities…
The jewish women's archive documents jewish women's stories, elevates their voices, and inspires them to be agents of change.jwa is dedicated to expanding and transforming the historical narrative by restoring jewish women and gender…
CITY REPORT, INC. serves the people of New York through independent journalism that answers their information needs and holds the powerful to account.
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Planned Parenthood Great Plains and the most unlike its peers is Charity Global 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 32 years old; the field is 24. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% 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 12% 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.
71 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. 71 of the 91 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 WAYSIDE WAIFS INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER KANSAS CITY ↗
- Who funds SPAY & NEUTER KANSAS CITY D/B/A PET RESOURCE CENTER OF KANSAS CITY ↗
- Who funds PAWSPERITY INC ↗
- Who funds HARVESTERS - THE COMMUNITY FOOD NETWORK ↗
- Who funds SCHOOLS3 ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD GREAT PLAINS ↗
- Who funds KANSAS CITY PET PROJECT ↗
- Who funds OPERATION BREAKTHROUGH INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds BUILD INC ↗
- Who funds Ronald McDonald House Global ↗
- Who funds THE YOUNG CENTER FOR IMMIGRANT CHILDRENS RIGHTS ↗
- Who funds CARMEL PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MADRE INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF GREATER KANSAS CITY ↗
- Who funds KINGS COUNTY TENNIS LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds JOHN HOWARD ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds PEER HEALTH EXCHANGE INC ↗
- Who funds HYMAN BRAND HEBREW ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COMMUNITY RELATIONS BUREAU INC ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds ONE MILLION DEGREES ↗
- Who funds PETS FOR LIFE INC ↗
- Who funds NEW GEORGIA PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds MARGARETS VILLAGE ↗
- Who funds 10000 DEGREES ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL NETWORK OF ABORTION FUNDS LILITH FUND ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL NETWORK OF ABORTION FUNDS INC ↗
- Who funds Central Texas Food Bank Inc ↗
- Who funds CASA MARIANELLA INC ↗
- Who funds MIRIAM'S KITCHEN ↗
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: Greater Kansas City Community Foundation · Marion and Henry Bloch Family Foundation · Norman & Elaine Polsky Family Charitable Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Abe & Anna Bograd Memorial Trust 10030800 · Nerman Family Foundation · Oppenstein Brothers Foundation · Chicago Foundation for Women · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · American Express Foundation · Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust
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 Harold and Marilyn Melcher 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
- The Sundari Foundation Inc — 5% of income from government
- Sandy Hook Promise Foundation — 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 Harold and Marilyn Melcher Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Harold and Marilyn Melcher 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.