· Private foundation
Americana Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k8 grants · $22k
- $10k–50k22 grants · $495k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $130k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY | $130,000 |
| COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG FOUNDATION | $32,000 |
| ASBURY COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION | $30,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF NORTHEAST MICHIGAN | $30,000 |
| FAIR FOOD NETWORK | $25,000 |
| HURON PINES | $25,000 |
| CONCORD ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY | $25,000 |
| FRESHWATER FUTURE | $25,000 |
| CLINTON RIVER WATERSHED COUNCIL | $25,000 |
| VALLEY FORGE PARK ALLIANCE | $25,000 |
| GROWING HOPE INC | $25,000 |
| MUSKEGON RIVER WATERSHED ASSEMBLY | $25,000 |
| CITIZENS FOR A SAFE AND CLEAN LAKE SUPERIOR | $25,000 |
| MAKE FOOD NOT WASTE | $25,000 |
| JAMESTOWN REDISCOVERY FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
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 (FY23–23, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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 +55% since the first grant, against +42% for the ones you funded once.
39 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2024, 25 since wound down; 13 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 61% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $255k 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
- GHGROWING HOPE INC5× · 2018–2024 · $122k · revenue +72%
- EMEASTERN MARKET CORPORATION3× · 2018–2024 · $105k · revenue +41%
- TGTHE GREENING OF DETROIT4× · 2018–2022 · $104k · revenue +128%
Funded once
- CHCOMMUNITY HOUSE OF BIRMINGHAMone grant, 2020 · $50k
- PMPHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ARTgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $50k · revenue +28%
- MOMUSEUM OF FINE ARTS BOSTONone grant, 2022 · $50k
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.
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 permanently protect and improve natural environments in Mid-Michigan by leading and inspiring actions that conserve vital habitats and waterways for the benefit of our entire community.
Advocate for michigan's historic resources to contribute to the economic vitality, sense of place and connection to the past.
The mission of the dahlem conservancy is to provide environmental education and outdoor experiences to the people of south central michigan.
Be and create stewards for the water environment of michigan. provide high quality education for michigan's water professionals. educate and inform policy makers and the general public. promote scientifically sound environmental practices…
To protect and restore land, air, water, and diversity of life through informed personal and public action.
The coalition to protect michigan resources's mission is to be a strong voice for the equitable co-management of michigan's fisheries, with both the great lakes and inland lakes and streams, to insure that conservation principles remain in…
Heart of the Lakes provides technical assistance, leadership training, and strategic communication tools that help organizations thrive - from grassroots land conservancies to larger regional conservation groups. Programs such as peer…
Inspire awareness, appreciation and passion for michigan's history and stories, culture and environment through the arts.
To conserve natural land and open space - including forests, wetlands, meadows, agricultural lands, and places of scenic beauty - to provide habitat for wildlife and to enrich the lives of people.
To protect natural, scenic, recreational, and agricultural lands and their natural diversity in mid-michigan so rural landscapes are preserved, and to promote the protection of these lands and their natural diversity through education and…
To preserve the knowledge, skills and technology involved with the maintenance and operation of steam locomotives and to educate the public about the enormous impact that these machines had in the economic development of owosso and the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Legacy Land Conservancy and the most unlike its peers is Edsel & Eleanor Ford House. 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 28 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
93 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. 93 of the 127 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 EARTH University Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds THOMAS JEFFERSON FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GROWING HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds EASTERN MARKET CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds THE GREENING OF DETROIT ↗
- Who funds Colonial Williamsburg Foundation ↗
- Who funds ASBURY COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORP ↗
- Who funds KEEP GROWING DETROIT ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND POLICY CENTER OF THE MIDWEST ↗
- Who funds OLD STURBRIDGE INC ↗
- Who funds HENRY FORD ESTATE ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN ENVIROMENTAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds MAKE FOOD NOT WASTE ↗
- Who funds DETROIT PUBLIC MEDIA ↗
- Who funds EDSEL & ELEANOR FORD HOUSE ↗
- Who funds EDIBLE FLINT ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF NORTHEAST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds FORGOTTEN HARVEST INC ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN HISTORY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LEGACY LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds SAUGATUCK DUNES COASTAL ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds HESSEL SCHOOL HOUSE CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds SIX RIVERS LAND CONSERVANCY FKA SIX RIVERS REGIONAL LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWEST DETROIT ENVIRONMENTAL VISION ↗
- Who funds OUR KITCHEN TABLE ↗
- Who funds KEWEENAW LAND TRUST INC ↗
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: Dte Energy Foundation · Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan · The Fred & Barbara Erb Family Foundation · Charles Stewart Mott Foundation · Consumers Energy Foundation · WK Kellogg Foundation · Harry a and Margaret D Towsley Foundation · The Kresge Foundation · Michigan Health Endowment Fund · Ford Philanthropy · United Way for Southeastern Michigan · Frey 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 Americana 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.
- Old Sturbridge Inc — 4% of income from government
- Concord Antiquarian Society D/B/a Concord Museum — 1% of income from government
- Worcester Art Museum — 1% of income from government
- Historic Deerfield 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Americana Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Americana 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.