· Private foundation
Bell Trust
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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $7,700 |
| Croswell Opera House | $6,250 |
| Hospice of Lenawee | $6,000 |
| Health Network Foundation | $3,000 |
| Lenawee Community Foundation | $2,000 |
| Boys & Girls Club of Lenawee | $1,250 |
| Adrian Armory Community Center | $1,000 |
| Adrian College | $1,000 |
| WGTE Public Media | $500 |
| Lehigh University | $300 |
| Adrian Center for the Arts | $250 |
| Kalamazoo College | $200 |
| Toledo Museum of Art | $150 |
| Hillsdale College | $100 |
| Salvation Army | $100 |
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 (FY21–25, $7k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 43% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 +27% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
21 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 3 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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
- COCROSWELL OPERA HOUSE & FINE ARTS ASSOCIATION6× · 2020–2025 · $41k · revenue +78%
- ACADRIAN COLLEGE6× · 2020–2025 · $6k · revenue +3%
- SHSIENA HEIGHTS UNIVERSITY5× · 2020–2024 · $5k · revenue +13%
Funded once
- ASAdrian Symphony Associationone grant, 2020 · $3k
- BGBoys & Girls Club of Lenawee Countyone grant, 2020 · $1k
- LCLENAWEE COMMUNITY CHORUSone grant, 2023 · $1k
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 educate students in the liberal arts through free inquiry and the open exchange of ideas.when grinnell college framed its charter in the iowa territory of the united states in 1846, it set forth a mission to educate its students "for…
See schedule o.founded in 1866, carleton college is a private, coeducational liberal arts college of 2,007 students located in the historic river town of northfield, minnesota. nationally recognized as the nation's top college for…
Wesleyan university is dedicated to providing an education in liberal arts by building a diverse, energetic community of students, faculty, and staff who value independence of mind and generosity of spirit. see additional description in…
As a diverse community of learners, we cultivate integrity, curiosity, connection and resilience.
The college for creative studies nurtures the creativity that is vital to the enrichment of modern culture. the college educates visual artists and designers, knowledgeable in varied fields, who will be leaders in creative professions that…
To provide a business education that equips individuals to deliver superior service to employers and their communities.
Organization's mission: peirce college empowers adult learners to improve their lives by achieving career goals through academic offerings aligned with evolving workforce needs.
The mission of the michigan state university college of law is to provide a rigorous educational program which prepares a diverse community of students to be national and international leaders in private legal practice, business and…
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
Lawrence university of wisconsin, through its undergraduate residential college and conservatory of music, educates students in the liberal arts and sciences. the university is devoted to excellence and integrity in all of its activities…
As a jesuit catholic university committed to academic rigor, inclusive excellence, and care for the whole person, john carroll university inspires individuals of intellect and character to learn, lead and serve in the community and…
Macalester is committed to being a preeminent liberal arts college with an educational program known for its high standards for scholarship and its special emphasis on internationalism, multiculturalism, and service to society.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Lenawee Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Adrian Schools Education Foundation. 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 43 years old; the field is 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 50 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 CROSWELL OPERA HOUSE & FINE ARTS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE OF LENAWEE ↗
- Who funds LENAWEE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF LENAWEE INC ↗
- Who funds ADRIAN COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds SIENA HEIGHTS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds ADRIAN ARMORY COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds HEALTHNETWORK FOUNDATION FKA HEALTH NET FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LEHIGH UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds KALAMAZOO COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds HOPE COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE TOLEDO MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds ARTS COUNCIL OF BIG SKY ↗
- Who funds Business Advisers of Cleveland ↗
- Who funds GOOD SHEPHERD HOME ↗
- Who funds PLEASANT GROVE HOTEL HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds ADRIAN SCHOOLS EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TOLEDO OPERA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MEMORYLANE CARE SERVICES ↗
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: The S L Hickman Family Foundation · Douglas and Mary Kapnick Family Foundation · Farver Foundation · Lenawee Community Foundation · Premier Bank Foundation · The Murray Family Foundation · Toledo Community Foundation Inc · Maurice&Dorothy Stubnitz Foundation · Promedica Health System Inc · Sage Foundation · Elizabeth Ruthruff Wilson Foundation · Tlc Community Credit Union
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 Bell Trust 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.