· Private foundation
Alden and Vada Dow Fund
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 $10k6 grants · $37k
- $10k–50k32 grants · $733k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Interlochen Arts Academy | $45,000 |
| Family and Children's Services | $36,000 |
| Planned Parenthood of MI | $35,000 |
| CAN Council Great Lakes Bay Region | $30,000 |
| West Midland Family Center | $30,000 |
| Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Great Lakes Bay Region | $30,000 |
| MyMichigan Health Foundation | $30,000 |
| Greater Midland North Family Center | $28,000 |
| Shelterhouse - Council of Domestic Violence | $28,000 |
| Greater Midland Coleman Family Center | $28,000 |
| Child & Family Services of Saginaw | $27,000 |
| The Legacy Center | $26,000 |
| The ARC of Midland County | $25,000 |
| The Little Forks Conservancy | $25,000 |
| Bay Area Women's Center | $23,000 |
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, $1.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 77% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +16% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
39 repeat relationships — 27 still active in FY2025, 12 since wound down; 11 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, 77% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $176k 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
- ABAlden B and Vada B Dow Creativity Foundation5× · 2020–2025 · $547k · revenue +54%
- ISINLAND SEAS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION6× · 2020–2025 · $169k · revenue +207%
- GMGREATER MIDLAND COMMUNITY CTRS INC2× · 2020–2022 · $149k · revenue +129%
Funded once
FAMILY & CHILDREN SERVICES INCone grant, 2020 · $71k · revenue -9%- COCITY OF MIDLANDone grant, 2021 · $40k
- BGBOTANICAL GARDEN SOCIETY OF NW MIone grant, 2022 · $30k
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.
To provide high quality community-oriented, patient-centered health services for all.
To provide personal and compassionate support to cancer patients and their caregivers in our community.
Mid michigan community action guides local residents on the path to self-sufficiency through empowerment, education and community enrichment.
Michigan Family Resources mission is to deliver holistic family-centered services to children that promote their well-being and development.
Our mission is conserving West Michigans ecologically critical land. We protect land by creating public nature preserves, providing support to communities and local governments in creating natural areas, and helping private landowners…
To strengthen, nuture and empower children and families for a brighter future by providing programs that preserve the dignity and enhance the well-being of families throughout michigan's upper peninsula, in a caring, compassionate and…
To provide comprehensive outpatient mental health services to over 5400 individuals and their families in a consumer driven person centered delivery system. Approximately 15% of our staff members are our clients who are involved in a…
Through internal expertise, external partnerships, and advocacy, the area agency on aging of western michigan provides older adults, adults with disabilities, and their caregivers equitable access to services that promote independence and…
The Center's mission is to inspire, entertain, educate, and serve all in Northern Michigan year-round by presenting exceptional experiences across the full spectrum of the performing arts and offering impactful educational opportunities.
Kids space is a child focused center that provides and coordinates professional on-site medical treatment, forensic interviews, and mental health services for child abuse victims, their non-offending caregivers, and victims of sexual…
Perform forensic interviews on minor children in response to calls from either the Department of Children and Family Services or law enforcement, regarding potential abuse of the child. The Center works as an advocate for the child with…
Catholic Social Services of Washtenaw County D/B/A Catholic Charities Washtenaw County provides diverse, holistic social services including adoption and pregnancy counseling, food and basic needs assistance, domestic and child abuse…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Council On Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault and the most unlike its peers is Alden B and Vada B Dow Creativity Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 43 years old; the field is 22. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 16% startups (under 5 years old) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 5% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
39 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. 39 of the 76 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 Alden B and Vada B Dow Creativity Foundation ↗
- Who funds CHIPPEWA NATURE CENTER ↗
- Who funds INLAND SEAS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER MIDLAND COMMUNITY CTRS INC ↗
- Who funds The Little Forks Conservancy Inc ↗
- Who funds UNDERGROUND RAILROAD INC ↗
- Who funds YWCA GREAT LAKES BAY REGION ↗
- Who funds BAY AREA WOMEN'S CENTER ↗
- Who funds Family & Children's Services of Mid-Michigan Inc ↗
- Who funds RIVER HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds Child & Family Service of Saginaw ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE & SEXUAL ASSAULT ↗
- Who funds RESPITE VOLUNTEERS OF SHIAWASSEE ↗
- Who funds FAMILY & CHILDREN SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Great Lakes Bay Region ↗
- Who funds MYMICHIGAN HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CRISIS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds The Arc of Midland ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds Reaching Our Community Kids ↗
- Who funds READ Association of Saginaw County ↗
- Who funds MIDLAND AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds East Side Soup Kitchen ↗
- Who funds RAYOLA INC ↗
- Who funds WEST MIDLAND FAMILY CENTER ↗
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: Midland Area Community Foundation · Harry a and Margaret D Towsley Foundation · Consumers Energy Foundation · Rollin M Gerstacker Foundation · The Herbert H & Grace a Dow Foundation · Bay Area Community Foundation · The Patricia and David Kepler Foundation · Saginaw Community Foundation · The Mary C Currie Foundation · The Charles J Strosacker Foundation · United Way of Midland County · Allen 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 Alden and Vada Dow Fund 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 Alden and Vada Dow Fund?
Find your warmest path to Alden and Vada Dow Fund 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.