· Private foundation
The Mericos 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k22 grants · $110k
- $10k–50k51 grants · $974k
- $50k–250k27 grants · $2.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNITED BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY | $135,000 |
| GARRETT'S SPACE | $130,000 |
| GARRETT'S SPACE | $100,000 |
| UNION RESCUE MISSION | $100,000 |
| NEW VILLAGE GIRLS ACADEMY | $100,000 |
| CENTER FOR URBAN AGRICULTURE AT FAIRVIEW GARDENS | $100,000 |
| FOODBANK OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY | $100,000 |
| MOXI THE WOLF MUSEUM OF EXPLORATION INNOVATION | $100,000 |
| GREATER HORIZONS | $85,000 |
| GREATER HORIZONS | $85,000 |
| OUTWARD BOUND ADVENTURES INC | $84,000 |
| HEAL THE OCEAN | $75,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $75,000 |
| THE TURNER FOUNDATION - SINCE 1958 | $75,000 |
| PASADENA HUMANE SOCIETY & SPCA | $70,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $1.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 14% of The Mericos Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 70% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 67% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +23% for the ones you funded once.
116 repeat relationships — 52 still active in FY2024, 64 since wound down; 39 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, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $824k 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
- UBUNITED BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY8× · 2017–2024 · $1.7M · revenue +9%
- FOFoodbank of Santa Barbara County Inc8× · 2017–2024 · $675k · revenue +76%
- CFCENTER FOR URBAN AGRICULTURE AT FAIRVIEW GARDENS5× · 2019–2024 · $465k · revenue +305%
Funded once
- SSStanford School of Engineeringone grant, 2017 · $225k
- NVNEW VILLAGE GIRLS ACADEMY AND CHARTER SCHOOL INCone grant, 2023 · $100k
- EE3Mone grant, 2022 · $84k
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.
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
The ucla foundation is the giving, receiving, and investing arm of the ucla campus. the foundation enables private donors to help build, sustain and advance one of the world's finest academic and research institutions. private philanthropy…
Ca fwd drives action to identify solutions that can be taken to scale to meet the challenges the state is facing. the organization is driven by the belief that regional solutions across the state will help ensure economic, environmental,…
The los angeles conservancy is a nonprofit membership organization that works through education and advocacy to recognize, preserve, and revitalize the historic architectural and cultural resources of los angeles county.
The uc santa barbara foundation actively works to further the goals of the university of california, santa barbara. the foundation seeks to maintain and nurture the university's quality and distinction. on behalf of the campus, the…
The organization provides professional investment management services for endowed gifts and financial assets entrusted to the ucsf foundation.
California ocean science trust (ost) is a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating progress towards a healthy and productive ocean future for california. created by state legislation, ost bridges the gap between cutting-edge…
The foundation's mission is to improve the oral health of all californians by supporting the dental profession and its efforts to meet community needs.
The university of la verne offers a distinctive and relevant educational experience to a diverse population of traditional-age, adult, and graduate learners, preparing them for successful careers and a commitment to lifelong learning…
The association serves its members by creating resources that enable california school administrators to develop and apply creative leadership and management skills and in turn, improve the educational process for all students.
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 promote philanthropy to make santa cruz county a better place to live, now and in the future.we bring together people, ideas, and resources to inspire philanthropy and accomplish great things.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The San Diego Foundation and the most unlike its peers is North American Society of Laser Therapy Applications. 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 33 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
218 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. 218 of the 282 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds Greater Horizons ↗
- Who funds Foodbank of Santa Barbara County Inc ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR URBAN AGRICULTURE AT FAIRVIEW GARDENS ↗
- Who funds MIDLAND SCHOOL CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA ZOOLOGICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MOXI THE WOLF MUSEUM OF EXPLORATION INNOVATION ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA PARTNERS IN EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds GARRETT'S SPACE ↗
- Who funds WESTMONT COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds FAMILY SERVICE AGENCY OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds HEAL THE OCEAN INC ↗
- Who funds YOSEMITE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MOMS AGAINST FLUORIDATION DBA NATIONAL CLEAN WATER ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds THE TURNER FOUNDATION - SINCE 1958 ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds UNION RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds PASADENA HUMANE ↗
- Who funds GIRLS GROUP ↗
- Who funds GIRLS INCORPORATED OF GREATER SANTA BARBARA ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds ARCTIC ICE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds BRITISH SCHOOLS & UNIVERSITIES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Outward Bound Adventures ↗
- Who funds BOOK HARVEST ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds GIRLS INCORPORATED OF CARPINTERIA ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD CALIFORNIA CENTRAL COAST ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS AND BETTER EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds Montana State University Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Boys & Girls Club of Lake County ↗
- Who funds CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CHARITIES AID FOUNDATION AMERICA ↗
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 Confidence Foundation · The Ralph M Parsons Foundation · Weingart Foundation · California Community Foundation · Www Foundation · The Rose Hills Foundation · The Annenberg Foundation · Pasadena Community Foundation · The Ahmanson Foundation · Santa Barbara Foundation · Hutton Foundation Dba Hutton Parker Foundation · Ann Jackson 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 Mericos 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.
- Partners for a Hunger Free Oregon — 31% of income from government
- Oregon Food Bank — 21% of income from government
- Coalition of Communities of Color — 15% of income from government
- Ethos Inc — 13% of income from government
- University of Miami — 5% of income from government
- Americares Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- University of Maryland Foundation Inc — 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 Mericos Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Mericos 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.