Skip to content
Plinth

· Private foundation

The Mel and Grace McLean Foundation

Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$139k
Granted FY2020
40
Grants FY2020
1
States reached
$25k
Largest
01What you fund
0196% classified

What you funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY20172024.

Philanthropy$6.1MHealth$43kArts & Culture$23kFood & Nutrition$11kEnvironment$6kHousing & Shelter$4kEducation$3kCommunity Improvement$2kOther$0
02FY2020 · 40 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2020

  • Under $10k38 grants · $94k
  • $10k–50k2 grants · $42k
$2,000
Median grant
1
States reached
$33M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
St. Joseph's Hospital Foundation$25,000
Humboldt Area Foundation$17,000
Humboldt Area Foundation$9,500
Humboldt Area Foundation$9,000
The Ink People Center for the Arts/ English Express$6,180
Northern California Community Blood Bank$5,000
Heart of the Redwoods Hospice$5,000
St. Joseph's Hospital Foundation$5,000
The Ink People Center for the Arts/ English Express$5,000
The Ink People Center for the Arts/ English Express$3,500
Food for People, Inc.$2,660
Humboldt Area Foundation$2,500
Northcoast Regional Land Trust$2,500
LightHouse for the Blind & Visually Impaired$2,500
Humboldt Area Foundation$2,500
02Your field

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.

1
Friends of the Anacortes Community Forest Lands

Friends of the Anacortes Community Forest Lands is dedicated to the preservation, care, and enjoyment of the Anacortes Community Forest Lands.

Environment
2
Cultural Fire Management Council

Cultural restoration

Environment
3
Northern California Regional Land Trust

The purpose of the organization is to monitor, manage, and preserve conservation easements it stewards in northern california. the organization acquires conservation easements in land exhibiting important natural features to protect and…

Environment
4
Oregon Agricultural Trust

Oregon agricultural trust partners with farmers and ranchers to protect agricultural lands for the benefit of oregons economy, communities, and landscapes.

Environment
5
Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center Inc

CSERC protects water, wildlife, and wild places of the Northern Yosemite region.

Unclassified
6
Fort Ross Conservancy

Fort Ross Conservancy (FRC) is the not-for-profit partner of the Russian River Sector, Sonoma/Mendocino District of California State Parks. FRC works to preserve the nature and culture of the Sonoma Coast for the benefit of the public.

Arts & Culture
7
Mother Lode Land Trust

The land trust is organized to preserve productive lands, scenic areas, natural habitats, and historic and archaeological sites for the benefit of present and future generations.

Environment
8
Del Norte and Tribal Lands Community Food Council

To strengthen our local food system to support a healthy and resilient north coast community.

Food & Nutrition
9
North Dakota Natural Resources Trust
10
Northern California Sled Dog Rescue

Northern California Sled Dog Rescue (NORSLED) is an all volunteer non-profit group dedicated to rescuing, rehabilitating, fostering and finding new homes for unwanted, abused and abandoned siberian huskies, alaskan malamutes, samoyeds and…

Animals
11
The Sea Ranch Thespians
Arts & Culture
12
Bear Yuba Land Trust

Bear Yuba Land Trust exists to conserve and protect the natural, working, and cultural lands in the Bear and Yuba River watersheds and empower a healthy, resilient community through nature access and education.

Environment

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Humboldt Area Foundation and the most unlike its peers is New Life Christian School. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

03the grantee network

10 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 20172025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 10 of the 21 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.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
3
Early backer (in before they grew)
10/10
Grantees still filing
9/10
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

St. Joseph's Hospital Foundation — $30,000 · OtherSt. Joseph's Hospital FoundationThe Ink People Center for the Arts/ English Express — $17,180 · OtherThe Ink People Center for the Arts/ English ExpressHeart of the Redwoods Hospice — $5,000 · OtherHeart of the Redwoods HospiceNORTHERN CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY BLOOD BANK — $5,000 · OtherNORTHERN CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY BLOOD BANKWaterfront Recovery Services — $2,500 · Other+8 more — $10,969 · Other+8 moreHUMBOLDT AREA FOUNDATION — $42,500 · PhilanthropyHUMBOLDT AREA FOUNDATIONFOOD FOR PEOPLE INC — $9,617 · Food & NutritionFOOD FOR P…NORTHCOAST REGIONAL LAND TRUST — $2,500 · Food & NutritionNORTHCOAST…NEW LIFE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL — $3,222 · EducationLIGHTHOUSE FOR THE BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED — $2,500 · Human ServicesFerndale Repertory Theatre — $2,500 · Arts & CultureFRIENDS OF THE DUNES — $1,919 · EnvironmentEUREKA RESCUE MISSION — $1,000 · Housing & Shelter
Other$70,649Philanthropy$42,500Food & Nutrition$12,117Education$3,222Human Services$2,500Arts & Culture$2,500Environment$1,919Housing & Shelter$1,000

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetHUMBOLDT AREA FOUNDATION — $42,500 over 1y, 0.3% of budgetFOOD FOR PEOPLE INC — $9,617 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetNORTHERN CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY BLOOD BANK — $5,000 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetNEW LIFE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL — $3,222 over 1y, 0.8% of budgetLIGHTHOUSE FOR THE BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED — $2,500 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetFerndale Repertory Theatre — $2,500 over 1y, 1.1% of budgetNORTHCOAST REGIONAL LAND TRUST — $2,500 over 1y, 0.5% of budgetFRIENDS OF THE DUNES — $1,919 over 1y, 0.4% of budgetFORTUNA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE — $1,624 over 1y, 1.1% of budgetEUREKA RESCUE MISSION — $1,000 over 1y, 0.1% of budget
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.

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.

Humboldt Area FoundationCA15.6× affinity5 shared granteesties to 6 of 6Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Humboldt Area Foundation · Andree Wagner Peace Trust UTD 121289 · Christine & Jalmer Berg Foundation · Coast Central Credit Union · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · 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.

03Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to The Mel and Grace McLean Foundation?

Find your warmest path to The Mel and Grace McLean 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.

On method. Every financial figure here is read directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 21 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears. How we build these →

Generated from your IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2020, released 2020. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2024) is on record and reports $1.1M of grant expense with no grantee named in the published copy. A private foundation itemizes every grant it makes, so a return carrying none has filed its list as an attachment that the public copy does not include. The figures above are therefore from FY2020, the most recent year this funder’s grantee list reached the public record.

Source object · view filing

More from the funding graph