GrantmakersDistrict of Columbia

Melanoma Research Foundation

Washington, DC · EIN 76-0514428. Reported 58 grants totalling $7,571,783 to 39 organizations across tax years 2020-2024, on Form 990 Schedule I.

39organizations funded
$100,000median reported grant
$7,571,783granted, 2020-2024
18%of grantees funded again the next year
9%of dollars to its largest recipient

Does this grantmaker accept applications?

Its tax return does not say, and we will not guess. Private foundations file Form 990-PF, which asks outright whether they fund only organizations they select themselves -- 78% say yes, and that one answer is what lets the rest of this site tell you which foundations are worth approaching. Grantmaking charities like this one file a regular Form 990 instead, and the IRS never puts the question to them. Anyone claiming to know the answer from the filing is inventing it.

Three things in the filing do bear on it:

  1. What kind of organization it is. The IRS has no activity classification on file for this one, so we cannot tell you whether it is a community foundation or a single-institution support fund. The recipient list below is the better guide.
  2. How spread out its giving is. 39 distinct organizations, with 9% of the dollars going to the largest single recipient. That is genuinely spread out -- the mark of a funder making many independent decisions rather than underwriting one institution.
  3. How much its list changes. 18% of one year's grantees are funded again the next, across 4 year-to-year transitions. That is below the 57% median for grantmaking charities, and well below the 67% private foundations manage. A list that turns over this much is one a newcomer can realistically join.

How big are its grants?

The median reported grant is $100,000. Half of what it reported fell between $100,000 and $200,000; the smallest was $5,873 and the largest $400,000. If you are asking for materially more than the top of that range, you are asking the wrong organization.

Schedule I only reports grants over $5,000. Form 990 requires a charity to list recipients it paid more than that and lets it omit the rest, so every grant-size figure on this page describes the grants it reported, not all of them. Its real median is lower and its real recipient count is higher. This is also why these numbers cannot be compared with the private-foundation figures elsewhere on this site -- Form 990-PF has no reporting floor, so the two are different populations rather than two samples of one.
$5,000 - $10,000
3 grants
$10,000 - $25,000
5 grants
$25,000 - $50,000
2 grants
$50,000 - $100,000
4 grants
$100,000 - $250,000
35 grants
$250,000 Or More
9 grants

9 of those grants were non-cash -- goods, property or services worth $1,115,916 in total. In-kind giving is real support but it is not a cheque.

Every organization it funded

This is the complete list from its filings, largest first. Recipients are grouped by the EIN the filer reported, not by name, so an organization that was typed differently in two years appears once rather than twice.

OrganizationLocationTotal receivedGrantsYears fundedLast
H Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute IncTampa, FL$700,000422023
Trustees of the University of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia, PA$600,000222024
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount SinaiNew York, NY$500,000332023
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer CenterHouston, TX$500,000222021
University of PittsburghPittsburgh, PA$455,873332024
Dana-Farber Cancer InstituteBoston, MA$450,000222024
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer CenterNew York, NY$450,000542024
The Ohio State UniversityColumbus, OH$410,000222024
Regents Univ of CaliforniaLos Angeles, CA$400,000322024
The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and BiologyPhiladelphia, PA$350,000222024
Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery InstituteLa Jolla, CA$206,661222024
Duke UniversityDurham, NC$200,000112022
Fred Hutchinson Cancer CenterSeattle, WA$200,000112023
Wake Forest University Health SciencesWinstonsalem, NC$199,002112022
Beckman Research InstituteDuarte, CA$150,000112020
Mass General Brigham IncorporatedSomerville, MA$150,000112020
Rockefeller UniversityNew York, NY$150,000112020
Trustees of Columbia UniversityNew York, NY$150,000112021
New York UniversityNew York, NY$109,828112024
Albert Einstein College of MedicineBronx, NY$100,000112022
Case Western Reserve UniversityCleveland, OH$100,000112022
City of HopeDuarte, CA$100,000112021
Emory UniversityAtlanta, GA$100,000112024
Institute for Cancer ResearchPhiladelphia, PA$100,000112024
President and Fellows of Harvard CollegeCambridge, MA$100,000112021
Regents of the University of ColoradoDenver, CO$100,000112022
The Board of Trustees of the University of IllinoisUrbana, IL$100,000112024
University of California San FranciscoSan Francisco, CA$100,000112021
Childrens Hospital Pittsburgh FoundationPittsburgh, PA$99,916112021
Mass General Brigham IncorporatedSomerville, MA$65,000112020
H Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute Foundation IncTampa, FL$50,000112020
Conquer Cancer Fdn of the American Society of Clinical OncologyAlexandria, VA$36,000112021
Vanderbilt University Medical CenterNashville, TN$30,000112021
Jonsson Cancer Center Foundation- UCLALos Angeles, CA$10,000112022
Nccn FoundationPlymouth Mtng, PA$10,000112023
Philadelphia UniversityPhiladelphia, PA$10,000112020
University of California San Francisco FoundationSan Francisco, CA$10,000112020
West Virginia University Research CorporationMorgantown, WV$10,000112024
University of Alabama of BirminghamBirmingham, AL$9,503112024

11 of 39 (28%) received money in more than one year over the 5 years we hold. Remember the $5,000 floor: an organization funded every year at $3,000 shows up here as never funded at all.

It also reported 5 groups of grants to individuals -- scholarships, emergency assistance and similar. Schedule I reports these by category with a headcount and never by name, so there is nothing here we could publish about the recipients even if we wanted to.

What the money was for

Taken verbatim from the purpose column of its filings, largest first. This is the closest thing to a statement of what it funds, in its own words.

What kind of organizations it funds

By each recipient's own IRS classification, for the 35 of 39 recipients we could match to a registered organization. These are assigned categories, not our guesses -- Schedule I reports the recipient's EIN, so this is a lookup rather than a name match.

Education
19 orgs
Medical Research
7 orgs
Health Care
7 orgs
Diseases & Disorders
2 orgs

Giving by year

Tax yearGrants reportedTotalMedian grant
202011$1,235,000$100,000
20219$1,115,916$100,000
202214$1,859,002$100,000
202310$1,810,000$200,000
202414$1,551,865$100,000

Tax years, not calendar years, and the most recent year is usually incomplete -- Form 990 arrives about a year after the year it covers, so a low final year means late paperwork rather than a grantmaker winding down.

Where its money goes

21% of its giving went to organizations in Pennsylvania. Community foundations and federated funds are usually the most geographically bounded funders there are -- being outside the footprint is normally disqualifying in a way that a weak programme fit is not.

Pennsylvania
$1.6M
New York
$1.5M
California
$977K
Massachusetts
$765K
Florida
$750K
Ohio
$510K
Texas
$500K
North Carolina
$399K

Down to the city

New York, NY
$1.4M
Philadelphia, PA
$1.1M
Tampa, FL
$750K
Pittsburgh, PA
$556K
Houston, TX
$500K
Boston, MA
$450K

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Funders that support the same organizations

These grantmakers and private foundations gave to organizations this one also funded. Shared grantees are the strongest signal available that two funders have overlapping priorities -- and a funder already backing your peers is a far warmer prospect than one that merely lists your cause.

Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc17 shared recipientsFidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund15 shared recipientsMorgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc14 shared recipientsVanguard Charitable Endowment Program13 shared recipientsNational Philanthropic Trust12 shared recipientsAmerican Online Giving Foundation Inc11 shared recipients

How to approach this grantmaker

  1. Look for a published programme first. Unlike most private foundations, organizations of this kind often do run open, deadlined grant cycles with written guidelines. Its own website is the authority on that; this page is the authority on who it has actually paid.
  2. Check you are its size. The median reported grant is $100,000 -- and because grants under $5,000 need not be reported, it very likely writes smaller cheques than this page can see.
  3. Check you are in its geography. Its giving concentrates in Pennsylvania.
  4. Read the recipient list for organizations like yours. If nothing on it resembles your work, that is a real answer and a cheap one to get.

Related guides

Foundations funding education in PennsylvaniaEvery funder in this group, rankedFoundations funding education in New YorkEvery funder in this group, rankedFoundations funding health care in New YorkEvery funder in this group, rankedFoundations funding diseases & disorders in New YorkEvery funder in this group, ranked

Where these numbers come from

Everything above is taken from Melanoma Research Foundation's own Form 990 Schedule I filings, which the IRS publishes in bulk. We used 5 returns (tax years 2020-2024). Nothing here is scraped, inferred or estimated.

On its most recent return it told the IRS it made grants to 14 section 501(c)(3) organizations and 0 other organizations. That is the filer's own count for one year; the totals above cover every year we hold.

Address of record on the latest return: 1420 K Street Nw 7TH Floor, Washington, DC, 20005.

EIN 76-0514428 · See the original filings on ProPublica · How we build this

This is history, not an open call. Form 990 is published about a year after the tax year it covers. Nothing on this page is a deadline. It is a record of who this organization has actually funded, which is the best available predictor of who it will fund next.

Is something here wrong about your organization? Email hello@funderscope.com and we will correct it.