· Private foundation
The Merz Family Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k16 grants · $45k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $290k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $353k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WILLISTOWN CONSERVATION TRUST | $127,500 |
| MAYO CLINIC | $120,000 |
| PHILADELPHIA ZOO | $55,000 |
| MISTY MEADOWS MITEY RIDERS INC | $50,000 |
| EPISCOPAL ACADEMY | $49,500 |
| BAPTIST HEALTH FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| PAOLI HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| BROOKS REHABILITATION HOSPITAL | $25,000 |
| CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA | $20,000 |
| QUINNIPIAC UNIVERSITY | $20,000 |
| AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY | $20,000 |
| PENN MEDICINE | $20,000 |
| THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE | $20,000 |
| CHILDREN'S SPECIALIZED HOSPITAL 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 (FY20–25, $150k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 1% 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.
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 +39% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
57 repeat relationships — 26 still active in FY2025, 31 since wound down; 5 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, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $28k 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
- WCWillistown Conservation Trust Inc6× · 2020–2025 · $343k · revenue +60%
- ZSZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA6× · 2020–2025 · $143k · revenue +7%
- GRGENESIS REHABILITATION HOSPITAL INC3× · 2021–2025 · $105k · revenue +51%
Funded once
- PSPennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animalsone grant, 2023 · $15k · revenue +9%
CHARITY GLOBAL INCone grant, 2024 · $13k · revenue 0%- UOUNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA NEW BOLTEN CENTERone grant, 2023 · $10k
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.
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
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…
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland school of medicine, medical services are rendered by the members of the faculty on behalf of the school of medicine in connection with their duties to provide clinical…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland school of medicine, medical services are rendered by the members of the faculty on behalf of the school of medicine in connection with their duties to provide clinical…
The organization provides medical care to improve, maintain, and restore the health of the people in the communities we serve.
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland school of medicine, medical services are rendered by the members of the faculty on behalf of the school of medicine in connection with their duties to provide clinical…
As the parent entity of a blended health organization, highmark health seeks to improve the health and well-being of the people and communities it serves by providing affordable, accessible and high-quality healthcare.
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland school of medicine, medical services are rendered by the members of the faculty on behalf of the school of medicine in connection with their duties to provide clinical…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland school of medicine, medical services are rendered by the members of the faculty on behalf of the school of medicine in connection with their duties to provide clinical…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Bryn Mawr Hospital Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Historic Sugartown Incorporated. 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 40 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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.
63 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. 63 of the 90 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 MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds Willistown Conservation Trust Inc ↗
- Who funds ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds MISTY MEADOWS MITEY RIDERS INC ↗
- Who funds GENESIS REHABILITATION HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Episcopal Academy ↗
- Who funds LANKENAU MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds QUINNIPIAC UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds HARLEM LACROSSE AND LEADERSHIP CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S SPECIALIZED HOSPITAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PAOLI MEMORIAL HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GARY SINISE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE GENESIS HEALTH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds Baptist Health Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds THE AGNES IRWIN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds MUSICIANS ON CALL INC ↗
- Who funds DREXEL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds HISTORIC SUGARTOWN INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals ↗
- Who funds CHESTER COUNTY FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds Bethesda Hospital Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds CHARITY GLOBAL INC ↗
- Who funds Philabundance ↗
- Who funds MAIN LINE HEALTH INC ↗
- Who funds CREATIVETS ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds HAVERFORD SCHOOL ↗
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: Chester County Community Foundation · Hamilton Family Foundation · Claneil Foundation Inc · E Murdoch Family Foundation · Chubb Charitable Foundation · Ethel D Colket Foundation · The William Penn Foundation · The Philadelphia Foundation · First Cornerstone Foundation Inc-Ima · Connelly Foundation · United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey · Simkiss 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 Merz 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.
- Quinnipiac University — 0% of income from government
- Genesis Rehabilitation Hospital Inc — 0% of income from government
- Caridad Center Inc — 0% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project 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.