· Private foundation
The Merrick Family 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 $10k11 grants · $26k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Youth Endowment Source | $10,000 |
| Oath Central Surgery | $10,000 |
| Numotion | $5,638 |
| Emmanual Cancer Foundation | $5,000 |
| 100 Black Men of Phila | $3,500 |
| Grands Stepping Up | $3,000 |
| Ed Banes Memorial Scholarship Fund | $2,500 |
| Food for the Poor Jamica | $2,000 |
| Sandstone Care | $1,800 |
| Propel Kids Foundation | $1,000 |
| City Team | $1,000 |
| Delco Training Center | $414 |
| Brandwine Youth Club | $370 |
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 (FY18–25, $15k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 28% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 5% of The Merrick Family 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, 54% of the giving stays in PA; read by stated purpose it is 51% — 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 +54% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down; 10 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, 18% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $38k 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
- TETHE EMMANUEL CANCER FOUNDATION INC5× · 2018–2025 · $19k · revenue +102%
- QTQUEST THERAPEUTIC SERVICES INC2× · 2018–2021 · $7k · revenue +54%
- CMCITYTEAM MINISTRIES6× · 2017–2025 · $6k · revenue +50%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2019 · $20k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $20k
- MWMobility Works Leonard Parkone grant, 2018 · $15k
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.
Curesearch's mission is to fund & support targeted & innovative cancer research with measurable results, & to be the authoritative source of information & resources for all those affected by children's cancer. see schedule o for…
The organization provides child care services to families through child care centers and a network of family child care homes. child care of the berkshires also strengthens families through support services and home visiting focused on…
To foster the courage and strength in children and families to meet life's challenges and build fulfilling lives serving new haven, hartford and tolland counties.
Organization - kids beating cancer, inc., (kbc) is a nonprofit, nonstock florida corporation formed in 1992. kbc provides access to life-saving treatments through the science of cellular therapy and advancing pediatric innovative, novel,…
The arc baltimore supports people with developmental disabilities to lead fulfilling lives with a sense of belonging, purpose, and meaningful relationships.
Our mission is to provide high-quality support and advocacy for children, adults and families to develop and nurture safe, permanent relationships and maximize individual growth.
Our mission: drive research, expand knowledge, and advance care for the nf community. our vision: end nf.
Bounce children's foundation transforms the lives of chronically ill children, and their families, shifting all from surviving to thriving.
Medical facility providing physical, occupational and speech therapy for children with a wide range of special needs, including down syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy and many more. we see children from 18 months to 13 years old.
When a family is in crisis, Bridges is there to offer support by providing respite and host homes for children in our community. Children visit respite homes for several hours after school or on weekends to enjoy the benefit of a nurturing…
Cultivating inclusive communities through relationships, innovation and high-quality services.
Bridgespan's mission is to build a better world by strengthening the ability of mission-driven organizations and philanthropists to achieve breakthrough results in addressing society's most important challenges and opportunities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Bridges Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Ed Banes Memorial Scholarship Fund. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
12 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. 12 of the 86 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.
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 Pfizer Foundation Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation 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.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization The Merrick Family 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.
- Cradles to Crayons Inc — 2% 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 Merrick Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Merrick Family 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.