· Community foundation
Bay Area Community Foundation
The mission of bacf is to fulfill a wide array of donors' charitable wishes throughout bay and arenac counties (michigan) by building permanent endowment funds and serving as a leader for community improvement through effective grantmaking and collaboration.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 65 grants below total $1,604,863 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $2,145,226 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $540,363 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k15 grants · $112k
- $10k–50k44 grants · $913k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $580k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BAY CITY IN BLOOM | $180,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF BAY COUNTY | $134,041 |
| STUDIO 23THE ARTS CENTER | $79,148 |
| HIDDEN HARVEST | $72,805 |
| DOW BAY AREA FAMILY YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION | $60,822 |
| FOSTER FAMILIES NAVIGATION & RESOURCE CENTER | $53,396 |
| SAGINAW BASIN LAND CONSERVANCY | $48,391 |
| FRIENDS OF BAY CITY STATE PARK | $47,325 |
| ARENAC COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $45,250 |
| BAY AREA WOMEN'S CENTER | $45,199 |
| TONI AND TRISH HOUSE FOR THE CARE OF THE TERMINALLY ILL | $44,500 |
| BAY ARENAC INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL DISTRICT | $39,009 |
| SAFE HARBOR COMMUNITY CENTER | $38,789 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE GREAT LAKES BAY REGION | $37,870 |
| BAY COUNTY HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $27,500 |
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 (FY17–25, $617k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +38% since the first grant, against +8% for the ones you funded once.
81 repeat relationships — 48 still active in FY2025, 33 since wound down; 16 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $204k 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
- S2STUDIO 239× · 2017–2025 · $698k · revenue +25% · 28% of their budget
- SBSAGINAW BASIN LAND CONSERVANCY7× · 2018–2025 · $466k · revenue +40%
- UWUNITED WAY OF BAY COUNTY8× · 2017–2025 · $370k · revenue +121%
Funded once
- GLGREAT LAKES BAY REGIONAL TRAILone grant, 2019 · $153k · revenue -84% · 69% of their budget
- FTFRASER TOWNSHIPone grant, 2019 · $125k
- ACARENAC COMMUNITY CENTERone grant, 2020 · $59k
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 be a catalyst for economic and community progress within the great lakes bay region.
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.
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 promote business and economic development for eight towns in southwest michigan.
To faciliatate and collaborate on programs that support a thriving community and economic growth in bay county and the great lakes bay region.
Identifying, promoting, and creating awareness for projects to improve the quality of life for citizens of the great lakes bay area.
Safeguard southern michigan's land and water to support diverse, resilient, and thriving communities - forever
Assisting the community mental health boards of michigan in developing methods for mental health planning, care and treatment.
To promote conditions favorable to job creation and business success in michigan.
To conserve the land, water and scenic character of leelanau county, and to provide educational programs to develop an understanding and appreciation of leelanau county's natural heritage.
To champion and support regional collaboration and initiatives that help grow the great lakes bay region.
Acquisition and conservation of natural areas.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Foster Families Navigation & Resource Center Inc and the most unlike its peers is Antique Toy and Firehouse Museum. 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 38 years old; the field is 24. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
98 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. 98 of the 168 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 STUDIO 23 ↗
- Who funds SAGINAW BASIN LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF BAY COUNTY ↗
- Who funds DOW BAY AREA FAMILY YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds STATE THEATRE - BAY CITYBAY COUNTY ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE GREAT LAKES BAY REGION ↗
- Who funds BAY AREA WOMEN'S CENTER ↗
- Who funds HURON PINES RESOURCE CONSERVATION & DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds Rescue Ministries of Mid-Michigan ↗
- Who funds BAY CITY IN BLOOM ↗
- Who funds BAY COUNTY CHILD & SENIOR CITIZEN CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds YWCA GREAT LAKES BAY REGION ↗
- Who funds BAY SAIL INC ↗
- Who funds FISH TALES ↗
- Who funds BAY COUNTY HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE BAY CITY STATE RECREATION AREA ↗
- Who funds GREAT LAKES BAY REGIONAL TRAIL ↗
- Who funds ARENAC COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds HIDDEN HARVEST ↗
- Who funds TONI & TRISH HOUSE FOR THE TERMINALLY ILL ↗
- Who funds DISABILITY SERVICES RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds GREAT LAKES BAY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CAN COUNCIL GREAT LAKES BAY REGION BAY COUNTY ↗
- Who funds BAY CITY PLAYERS INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE PINCONNING COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds HUMANE SOCIETY OF BAY COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds MIDLAND AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE CONSERVATION FUND A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds FOSTER FAMILIES NAVIGATION & RESOURCE CENTER 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: Midland Area Community Foundation · Saginaw Community Foundation · Consumers Energy Foundation · Gougeon Employees Foundation · Russell H & Maxine E Smith Charitable Foundation · The Kantzler Foundation · Bierlein Companies Foundation · Wallace & Irene Bronner Family Charitable Foundation · United Way of Bay County · Frances Goll Mills Fund · Tri-Star Charitable Foundation · The Patricia and David Kepler 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 Bay Area Community 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.