· Private foundation
The Mehlum Family 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 52% of The Mehlum Family Foundation’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k29 grants · $69k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $54k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $75k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNITED WAY OF LANE COUNTY | $75,417 |
| WESTERN LANE COUNTY FOUNDATION | $14,000 |
| SIUSLAW PIONEER MUSEUM ASSOCIATION INC | $10,000 |
| WESTERN LANE COUNTY FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| LANE COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| THE JOHN G SHEDD INSTITUTE FOR THE ARTS | $10,000 |
| CENTER FOR COMMUNITY COUNSELING | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| SPRINGFIELD ROTARY CHARITABLE FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| FOOD FOR LANE COUNTY | $5,000 |
| SOROPTIMIST INTERNATIONAL OF THE AMERICAS INC | $5,000 |
| PACIFIC LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY INC | $5,000 |
| BRIGHTFOCUS FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| OPHELIAS PLACE | $2,500 |
| EUGENE BALLET | $2,500 |
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 (FY23–25, $7k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 87% 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 +19% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
25 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 16 since wound down; 24 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, 62% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $66k 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
- UWUNITED WAY OF LANE COUNTY4× · 2022–2025 · $142k · revenue +46%
- EMEisenhower Medical Center2× · 2022–2024 · $15k · revenue +24%
- CFCENTER FOR COMMUNITY COUNSELING3× · 2023–2025 · $15k · revenue +60%
Funded once
- VVariousone grant, 2024 · $7k
- SRSpringfield Rotary Foundationone grant, 2024 · $5k
- RCRoberts College of Instanbulone grant, 2024 · $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.
To eliminate hunger
Orla serves as the leading industry advocate, striving to protect, improve and promote oregon hospitality.
Oregon agricultural trust partners with farmers and ranchers to protect agricultural lands for the benefit of oregons economy, communities, and landscapes.
Responding to christ's message to love our neighbors as ourselves, catholic community services offers immediate help by providing food and other assistance to anyone in need and seeks to instill hope by helping lane county individuals and…
To alleviate hunger in lincoln county by soliciting, collecting, and distributing food through a network of agencies. to provide temporary services to individuals and families in time of need. to assist clients to become more…
Lane Community College Education Association is the union that represents 200 full-time and 375 part-time faculty members at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon. LCCEA is an affiliated unit of the Oregon Education Association (OEA)…
Food forward fights hunger and prevents food waste by rescuing fresh surplus produce, connecting this abundance with people experiencing food insecurity, and inspiring others to do the same.
The mission of Lane County Community Foundation (the Foundation) is to improve the quality of life in Lane County, Kansas and communities within Lane County, and to ensure that the communities in and around Lane County will forever remain…
Nourishing our community. the port angeles food bank is the main food bank in clallam county, providing food to 13 other area pantries and meal programs as well as providing food to over 5,000 individuals per month.
Provide food to low income families.
Oregon research institute is an independent behavioral sciences research center dedicated to understanding human behavior and improving the quality of human life through the prevention and treatment of health, educational, and social…
The mission of rescuing leftover cuisine ("rlc") is to redistribute excess food for the benefit of people experiencing food insecurity.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Food for Lane County and the most unlike its peers is Brightfocus Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 45 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
41 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. 41 of the 64 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 UNITED WAY OF LANE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds WESTERN LANE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Eisenhower Medical Center ↗
- Who funds LANE COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR COMMUNITY COUNSELING ↗
- Who funds FOOD FOR LANE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds RELIEF NURSERY INC ↗
- Who funds SIUSLAW PIONEER MUSEUM ASSOCIATION LLC ↗
- Who funds THE JOHN G SHEDD INSTITUTE FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds FLORENCE FOOD SHARE ↗
- Who funds MAPLETON FOOD SHARE ↗
- Who funds BRIGHTFOCUS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OPHELIA'S PLACE ↗
- Who funds GREENHILL HUMANE SOCIETY SPCA ↗
- Who funds OREGON COAST HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Pacific Lutheran University ↗
- Who funds SPRINGFIELD ROTARY CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OBA EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds EUGENE BALLET COMPANY ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC CREST COUNCIL INC BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds ROTARY CLUB OF FLORENCE ↗
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: The Oregon Community Foundation · Chambers Family Foundation · The Ford Family Foundation · United Way of Lane County · The Autzen Foundation · Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation Trust · The Woodard Family Foundation · Alton F Baker Family Foundation · The Coeta and Donald Barker Foundation · Braemar Charitable Trust · M J Murdock Charitable Trust · Giustina 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 Mehlum Family 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Arc of Lane County — 79% of income from government
- United Way of Lane County — 31% of income from government
- Relief Nursery Inc — 30% of income from government
- Ophelia's Place — 22% of income from government
- With Love Oregon Inc — 16% of income from government
- Boys & Girls Club of Corvallis Inc — 16% of income from government
- Food for Lane County — 5% of income from government
- Greenhill Humane Society Spca — 1% of income from government
- Caldera — 1% 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 Mehlum Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Mehlum Family 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.