· Private foundation
The Melville 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 $10k48 grants · $144k
- $10k–50k17 grants · $305k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $403k
- $250k+2 grants · $1.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DARDEN SCHOOL FOUNDATION | $913,275 |
| UVA HEALTH SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT | $256,186 |
| NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDENS | $203,182 |
| LOST TREE CHAPEL | $50,000 |
| HETERODOX ACADEMY | $50,000 |
| SUCCESS ACADEMY CHARTER SCHOOL | $50,000 |
| LOST TREE VILLIAGE CHARITABLE FOUND | $50,000 |
| KENT SCHOOL | $30,000 |
| THE JEFFERSON TRUST (DUNCAN BURN) | $30,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF MARTIN COUNTY | $25,000 |
| DENVER BOTANIC GARDENS | $25,000 |
| CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH | $25,000 |
| VIRGINIA ATHLETIC FOUNDATION (MEN T | $25,000 |
| KENT DENVER SCHOOL | $20,000 |
| ST CHRISTOPHER'S SCHOOL FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
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.
Your human-services grants (FY20–24, $95k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 96% 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 +45% since the first grant, against +10% for the ones you funded once.
100 repeat relationships — 65 still active in FY2024, 35 since wound down; 7 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $83k 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
- NYNEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN4× · 2020–2024 · $1.0M · revenue +42%
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF MARTIN COUNTY5× · 2020–2024 · $355k · revenue +74%
- JSJEFFERSON SCHOLARS FOUNDATION2× · 2020–2021 · $347k · revenue +94%
Funded once
VIRGINIA STUDENT AID FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2021 · $170k · revenue +10%- CHCHILDREN'S HOSPITAL FOUNDATION OUTRone grant, 2022 · $100k
- UHUVA HEALTH SYSTEMBECCA HARRIS FELLOWSHIPone grant, 2021 · $25k
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.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The university of virginia investment management company (uvimco) is organized to invest funds on behalf of the rector and visitors of the university of virginia (the university or uva) and university-associated organizations (uaos).
To provide administrative services to university of virginia (university) entities, university associated organizations, or other entities involved in activities which support the university. to engage in matters pertaining to real…
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
The mission of the school is to provide outstanding legal education in a collegial and supportive environment with attention to newly emerging areas of law, particularly those related to technological development, globalization and the…
New york school of interior design provides the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world, demonstrating the impact of professionally designed interiors on the health, happiness, and well-being…
Eastern national promotes the public's understanding and support of america's national parks and other public trust partners by providing quality educational experiences, products and services.
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
Saint anselm is a catholic, benedictine college providing all of its students a distinctive liberal arts education that incorporates opportunities for professional and career preparation. it does so in a learning community that encourages…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Success Academy Charter Schools Inc and the most unlike its peers is Design Leadership Foundation 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 35 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% 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 13% 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.
77 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. 77 of the 148 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 NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF MARTIN COUNTY ↗
- Who funds JEFFERSON SCHOLARS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Lost Tree Village Charitable Foundation ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA STUDENT AID FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DENVER BOTANIC GARDENS INC ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds HETERODOX ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds CHARLOTTESVILLE DAY SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL HIGH SCHOOL IN VIRGINIA ↗
- Who funds MONTPELIER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE EVERGLADES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Ron Brown Scholar Fund ↗
- Who funds ST CHRISTOPHER'S SCHOOL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SUCCESS ACADEMY CHARTER SCHOOLS INC ↗
- Who funds THE NEW CANAAN LIBRARY INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds FOCUSED ULTRASOUND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MALTZ JUPITER THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds EXODUS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds BOTANICAL GARDEN OF THE PIEDMONT ↗
- Who funds FOLDS OF HONOR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds City Squash Inc ↗
- Who funds Jupiter Medical Center Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds THOMAS JEFFERSON FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds STRATFORD HALL ↗
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: Charlottesville Area Community Foundation · The J & E Berkley Foundation · Perry Foundation Inc · The Charles Fund Inc · The Community Foundation Inc · Caplin Foundation · S&P Global Foundation Fka the McGraw-Hill Research Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Oakwood Foundation Charitable Trust · The Genan Foundation · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · Manning Family 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 Melville 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.
- Inspirica Inc — 30% of income from government
- Family Centers Inc — 20% of income from government
- New England Dance Theater Inc — 5% of income from government
- Squash Haven Inc — 4% of income from government
- Boys & Girls Club of Martin County — 2% of income from government
- St Anne's Episcopal School — 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 Melville Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Melville 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.