· Private foundation
Mercury Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
Read this first · the figures below need context
54% of Mercury Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 4 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS | $15,000,000 |
| PANTHERA | $3,000,000 |
| VANGUARD CHARITABLE FUND - DAF | $3,000,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA | $3,000,000 |
| NRDC | $2,000,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD LOS ANGELES | $2,000,000 |
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 (FY20–21, $2.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% 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 +64% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
11 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down; 1 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, 77% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3.0M 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
PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC7× · 2019–2025 · $18M · revenue +43%
PLANNED PARENTHOOD LOS ANGELES7× · 2019–2025 · $11M · revenue +71%- PCPANTHERA CORPORATION7× · 2019–2025 · $7.5M · revenue +64%
Funded once
- VCVanguard Charitable-Donor Advised Fundone grant, 2018 · $7.2M
- TITREEPEOPLE INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $700k · revenue +150%
THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS INCone grant, 2024 · $500k · revenue 0%
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 engage and catalyze global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming.
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
Project drawdown's mission is to drive meaningful climate action by advancing science-based solutions and strategies. project drawdown's work is focused on three pillars: science - advancing science-based climate solutions and strategies;…
We generate ideas, produce evidence, and design solutions to improve the lives of underserved populations around the world. we take a multidisciplinary, intergenerational, life-cycle approach that contributes to (see schedule o)four global…
The resource renewal institute facilitates the creation, development and implementation of practical strategies to solve the entire complex environmental problem by addressing it comprehensively.
The center for biological diversity inc, works to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. we do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and…
Perc is dedicated to advancing conservation through markets, incentives, property rights, and partnerships.
Rri's mission is to support local communities and indigenous peoples' struggles against poverty and marginalization by promoting greater global commitment and action towards policy, market, and legal reforms that secure their rights to…
Ocean conservancy unites science, people, and policy to protect our ocean, today and for generations to come.
Friends of the earth strives for a more healthy and just world by defendng the environment and human health while advancing social and economic justice by conducting research and education, transforming the economy so it protects the…
To prevent cruelty to animals, we promote enacting and enforcing good public policies. enacting good laws depends upon electing good lawmakers, and we remind voters which candidates care about and support animal issues.
World animal protection is a global organization working to end factory farming and wildlife exploitation. we expose cruel systems, promote animal-friendly alternatives, and influence policy change. for over 75 years, we've been rewriting…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Planned Parenthood Federation of America Inc and the most unlike its peers is Downtown Women's Center. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
19 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. 19 of the 24 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 ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD LOS ANGELES ↗
- Who funds PANTHERA CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS INC ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & EDUC FUND INC ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN WOMEN'S CENTER ↗
- Who funds IMMIGRANT LEGAL RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds TREEPEOPLE INC ↗
- Who funds SEA SHEPHERD CONSERVATION SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD FINDERS INC ↗
- Who funds SEA SHEPHERD LEGAL ↗
- Who funds FFLV USA ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES LGBT CENTER ↗
- Who funds KITTEN RESCUE ↗
- Who funds WESTRIDGE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS INC ↗
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: 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 Mercury 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.
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 Mercury Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Mercury 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.