· Private foundation
The Paul & Elisabeth Merage Family 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
71% of The Paul & Elisabeth Merage Family Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Orange County Community Foundation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 4 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2021, the last year The Paul & Elisabeth Merage Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 6 organizations, $2M. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2021
- $10k–50k3 grants · $62k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $491k
- $250k+1 grant · $1.6M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UC IRVINE SHAPING THE FUTURE CAMPAIGN | $1,550,000 |
| THE MERAGE INSTITUTE | $215,000 |
| SEGERSTROM CENTER FOR THE ARTS | $145,500 |
| C4L KIDS FOUNDATIONS INC | $80,000 |
| PACIFIC SYMPHONY | $50,000 |
| EL SOL ACADEMY FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| ORANGE COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART | $24,000 |
| JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF ORANGE COUNTY | $12,875 |
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 (FY18–23, $145k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, 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.
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.
16 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2021, 8 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (too recent to call). Read against FY2021, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IRVINE FOUNDATION3× · 2018–2023 · $1.1M · revenue +55%
- SHSAGE HILL SCHOOL2× · 2017–2018 · $350k · revenue +70%
- SCSegerstrom Center for the Arts5× · 2017–2024 · $336k · revenue +57%
Funded once
- TKTHE KEY WORLDWIDE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $400k
- SHSECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK OF ORANGE COUNTY INCone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue +3%
- OCORANGE COUNTY MUSIC AND DANCE INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $50k · revenue +184%
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.
We provide an unparalleled arts and acdademic education in a creative, challenging and nurturing environment to a diverse student body passionate about the arts, preparing them to reach their highest potential.
The ojai music festival serves as a creative music laboratory for pioneering new works,championing adventurous programming, and working with today's emerging artists with events during the year and the ojai music festival serves as a…
We believe opera is a uniquely compelling, entertaining and emotionally thrilling art form. our mission is to bring together growing audiences to experience opera's transformative power.
The hammer museum at ucla believes in the promise of art and ideas to illuminate our lives and build a more just world.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Orange County Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Simbelle Productions. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
16 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. 16 of the 27 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 ORANGE COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE MERAGE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IRVINE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SIMBELLE PRODUCTIONS ↗
- Who funds C4L Kids Foundations Inc ↗
- Who funds SAGE HILL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Segerstrom Center for the Arts ↗
- Who funds Pacific Symphony ↗
- Who funds ORANGE COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds EL SOL ACADEMY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF ORANGE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK OF ORANGE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds THE LARRY AND HELEN HOAG FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHOC FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ORANGE COUNTY MUSIC AND DANCE INC ↗
- Who funds Festival Of Arts Of Laguna Beach ↗
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: Orange County Community Foundation · Rpm Foundation · Tarsadia Foundation · Samueli Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · 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 The Paul & Elisabeth Merage 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 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 The Paul & Elisabeth Merage Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Paul & Elisabeth Merage 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.