· Private foundation
The Merle E & Olive Lee Gilliand Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k6 grants · $27k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $107k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DUQUESNE UNIVERSITY | $106,869 |
| WARREN WILSON COLLEGE | $6,869 |
| FOX CHAPEL PRESB CHURCH | $6,869 |
| FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $3,434 |
| SHADY SIDE ACADEMY | $3,434 |
| PITTSBURGH THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY | $3,434 |
| UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH | $3,434 |
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 (FY19–23, $185k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, 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.
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 8% of The Merle E & Olive Lee Gilliand 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.
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.
12 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2025, 5 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- DUDUQUESNE UNIVERSITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT8× · 2017–2025 · $345k · revenue +29%
- BHBETHLEHEM HAVEN OF PITTSBURGH5× · 2019–2023 · $185k · revenue +9%
- GPGREATER PITTSBURGH COMMUNITY FOOD BANK3× · 2020–2023 · $80k · revenue +13%
Funded once
- GFGILLILAND FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2021 · $40k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $25k
- CHCHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PITTSBURGH FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $25k · revenue +49%
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.
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
Chatham university prepares women and men to be world ready: to build lives of purpose and value and fulfilling work. (see continuation on schedule o)in addition to appropriate professional skills and liberal arts learning, chatham…
The trustees of the university of pennsylvania (the "university") sees itself as having a public service mission. in such regard, the university aims to provide a rich and diverse educational environment for its students; to pioneer…
Working as an integrated system within highmark health, employees at all of ahn's care sites, including hospitals, health + wellness pavilions, primary and specialty care offices and more, are committed to improving health and promoting…
Drexel university fulfills its founder's vision of preparing each new generation of students for productive professional and civic lives while also focusing its collective expertise on solving society's greatest problems. drexel is an…
Upmc pinnacle hospitals mission as a charitable organization is dedicatied to maintaining and improving the health and quality of life for all persons of the central pennsylvania area.
The pittsburgh promise promotes high educational aspirations among urban youth, funds scholarships for post-secondary access, and fuels a prepared and diverse regional workforce.
Alvernia university is a catholic comprehensive university with a liberal arts foundation founded by the bernardine franciscan sisters in 1958. see continuation on schedule o.
Provide a transformative educational experience that cultivates strengths of its students.
We educate the next generation of leaders to improve the health of our society.
See schedule owe are an inclusive community on a mission to inspire unbounded curiosity and independent thought in every one of our students. in a unique educational environment that extends well beyond campus, we nurture students'…
To heal. to teach. to empower. to amaze.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is University of Pittsburgh and the most unlike its peers is Pitcare Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
9 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. 9 of the 16 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 DUQUESNE UNIVERSITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT ↗
- Who funds BETHLEHEM HAVEN OF PITTSBURGH ↗
- Who funds GREATER PITTSBURGH COMMUNITY FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds PITCARE INC ↗
- Who funds WARREN WILSON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds PITTSBURGH PARKS CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds SHADY SIDE ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PITTSBURGH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ↗
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 set of overlaps that mostly run through you, not between each other.
Open a dossier: 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 The Merle E & Olive Lee Gilliand 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.