Funders › Oregon

The Lemelson Foundation

Portland, OR · EIN 88-0391959. Reported 252 grants totalling $61.4M to 117 recipients across tax years 2021-2024. This foundation told the IRS it does not accept unsolicited requests: it contributes only to organizations it selects itself.

Does this foundation accept applications?

No -- on its own tax return. Form 990-PF asks every private foundation to check a box if it "only makes contributions to preselected charitable organizations and does not accept unsolicited requests for funds". The Lemelson Foundation checked it on its most recent filing, as 78% of the 91,758 foundations in our data that made a grant and answered did. An unsolicited request is unlikely to go anywhere.

Organizations it funds that make grants of their own

5 of the organizations The Lemelson Foundation funded make grants themselves, and it reported 9 grants totalling $2,075,000 to them. That is 4% of the $46.8M of its giving we could match to a registered organization. Each is classified by the IRS as a philanthropy or grantmaking organization, reported grants to at least 25 organizations of its own, and has at least 10 funders behind it.

All of them file Form 990, which never asks whether an organization funds only groups it picks, so there is no answer on record either way.

What that does not mean. It does not mean an application to any of them reaches this foundation's money. A private foundation's grant to a community foundation or a federated campaign is often a donor-advised fund or a gift designated for a purpose the foundation chose, and has nothing to do with any open programme the receiving organization runs. Its return's purpose text sometimes names a family fund or a designated purpose, which is the plainest case of money no applicant can reach; where it names none, neither return says which. The list is who this foundation paid that also makes grants. Whether any of them would fund you is a question for its own page.

A floor, not a full list. A grantmaker appears here only where this foundation's return named it clearly enough for us to match the name to an EIN, which we manage for about two thirds of 990-PF grant rows, and only where that grantmaker has a page on this site. There may be more. Dollars here are summed by EIN across every spelling on its returns, so a figure can differ from the matching row in the full list below, which groups names as written. And the IRS classification cannot tell a grantmaker from a funders' association or a donor-advised fund sponsor, so a payment to one of these may be dues or an account rather than support for a grants programme.

How big are its grants?

The median grant is $95,500. Half of everything it gave fell between $39,991 and $250,000; the smallest was $460 and the largest $3,080,447.

Every organization it funded

This is the complete list from its filings, largest first. Recipients are grouped by name and state as they were written on the returns, so an organization entered under two different names appears twice. Years funded is the number of separate tax years in which that name received money.

55 of 117 (47%) received money in more than one year over the 4 years we hold.

Measured the way we measure every foundation -- what share of one year's grantees are funded again the next -- this one retains 59%, across 3 year-to-year transitions. The median foundation retains about 67%, so this one is about typical. This measures how often it paid the same organizations again. It says nothing about whether it would consider a new one, and this foundation told the IRS it does not.

What the money was for

Taken verbatim from the purpose field of its filings. This is the closest thing to a statement of what this foundation cares about, in its own words.

• National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance $3,080,447 · 2021
  TO SUPPORT PROMISING, EARLY-STAGE STUDENT INVENTORS IN THE VENTURE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS, AND TO SUPPORT FACULTY TO CULTIVATE THE CONDITIONS THAT NURTURE STUDENT INVENTORS.
• National Collegiate Inventors & Innovators Alliance $3,021,976 · 2023
  TO SUPPORT INVENTIVE MINDSETS AND SKILLSETS IN COLLEGIATE STUDENTS AND TO SUPPORT FACULTY TO CULTIVATE INVENTION EDUCATION.
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology $2,300,000 · 2023
  TO SEEK TO DEVELOP THE NEXT GENERATION OF INVENTORS, WITH A FOCUS ON DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION, AND SPECIFICALLY TO EXPAND INCLUSIVE OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL PEOPLE TO LEARN TO INVENT, PROTECT THEIR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, AND BRING CREATIONS TO INTENDED BENEFICIARIES; ADVANCE INVENTION EDUCATION AS A FIELD OF STUDY THROUGH SCHOLARLY RESEARCH THAT INFORMS POLICIES AND PRACTICES; AND EXPAND SUPPORT FOR INVENTORS AND INVENTION EDUCATION EDUCATORS WITHIN LOCAL COMMUNITIES THROUGH NEW POLICIES, PROGRAMS, COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS, AND CELEBRATORY EVENTS.
• National Science Foundation $1,650,000 · 2024
  TO ENABLE INNOVATIVE COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH ON SUSTAINABILITY BY FOSTERING EFFORTS TO TRANSFORM ENGINEERING EDUCATION TO PREPARE GRADUATING ENGINEERS TO ADDRESS ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY
• Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy Inc $1,250,000 · 2024
  TO SUPPORT PRE-DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES NECESSARY TO SUPPORT TRIBES SEEKING TO DEVELOP RENEWABLE ENERGY PROJECTS ON THEIR LANDS
• Climate Breakthrough Inc $1,000,000 · 2023
  FOR GENERAL OPERATING SUPPORT.

What kind of organizations it funds

By the activity category the IRS assigns each recipient, for the 152 grants where we could match the recipient to a registered organization. The categories are the IRS's. The match, made from the name and address on the return, is ours.

Giving by year

Tax years, not calendar years, and the most recent year is usually incomplete -- filings arrive about a year late, so a low final year means late paperwork rather than a foundation winding down.

Already committed for future years

Form 990-PF has a separate schedule for grants approved but not yet paid. The Lemelson Foundation has 112 of them, worth $58.6M. This is the one part of the filing that looks forward rather than back.

Where its money goes

38% of its giving went to organizations in Massachusetts.

Funders that support the same organizations

These funders gave to organizations this one also funded -- some private foundations, some community foundations and other grantmaking charities. Shared grantees are a sign of overlapping priorities and nothing more. Unlike this foundation, none of them is on record as funding only organizations it picks, and each page says what its filings show.

Related guides

Where these numbers come from

Everything above is taken from The Lemelson Foundation's own Form 990-PF filings, which the IRS publishes in bulk. We used 4 returns (tax years 2021-2024). Grant figures are from its returns. Matching recipients to registered organizations, their IRS classifications, the retention rate and the funders that support the same organizations are our own calculations, described in how we build this.

Address of record on the latest return: 2035 Nw Front Avenue 501, Portland, OR, 97209. This is the address the foundation gave the IRS.

EIN 88-0391959 · See the original filings on ProPublica · How we build this

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