· Private foundation
Bierlein Companies Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k102 grants · $118k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $133k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COVENANT HEALTH CARE FOUNDATION | $33,700 |
| SAGINAW COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $28,800 |
| RESCUE MINISTRIES OF MID-MICHIGAN | $25,000 |
| GREATER MIDLAND COMMUNITY CENTERS DO | $20,000 |
| SAGINAW Y M C A | $15,000 |
| GREAT ER MIDLAND COMMUNITY TENNIS CEN | $10,000 |
| TRI STAR CHARITABLE FOUNDATION | $5,500 |
| ONE HUNDRED CLUB OF SAGINAW | $5,330 |
| SAGINAW VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY | $5,000 |
| SAGINAW FUTURE INC | $5,000 |
| TEMPLE THEATRE FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| CAN COUNCIL | $4,500 |
| SWAN VALLEY SCHOOLS | $3,550 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF GREAT LAKES BAY | $3,350 |
| SVSU FOUNDATION | $3,300 |
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 (FY20–24, $26k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 66% 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.
119 repeat relationships — 78 still active in FY2024, 41 since wound down; 26 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, 66% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $73k 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
- GMGREATER MIDLAND COMMUNITY CTRS INC2× · 2023–2024 · $50k · revenue +16%
- RMRescue Ministries of Mid-Michigan5× · 2020–2024 · $28k · revenue +25%
- TOTHE ONE HUNDRED CLUB OF SAGINAW COU5× · 2020–2024 · $19k · revenue +610%
Funded once
- YOYMCA of Saginawone grant, 2020 · $10k
- STSAGINAW TOWNSHIP POLICE DEPARTMENTone grant, 2022 · $10k
- GLGREAT LAKES BAY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue -8%
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.
Creating healthy communities - together
Business leaders for michigan is a nonprofit, nonpartisan statewide organization driven by ceos from the state's leading employers, all working toward a shared goal: making michigan a top 10 state for jobs, talent and a thriving economy.…
Business leaders for michigan is a nonprofit, nonpartisan statewide organization driven by ceos from the state's leading employers, all working toward a shared goal: making michigan a top 10 state for jobs, talent and a thriving economy.…
To advance the field of health for the public good.
To advance the well-being of michigan residents through the promotion of sound public policies and responsible legislation. the purpose of these activities is to promote policies that strengthen the michigan health care system.
To provide high quality health care to individuals and community groups in Saginaw, Bay, and other nearby counties. Services are provided without regard to race, beliefs or ability to pay.
Creating healthy communities - together
Creating healthy communities - together
A voice of the building industry in Michigan. The primary purpose is to positively influence the legislative, regulatory and legal issues that affect the industry.
Michigan farm bureau (mfb) is a member directed agricultural organization whose purpose is to represent, protect, and enhance the business, economic, social, and educational interests of our members located throughout the state of michigan.
To promote conditions favorable to job creation and business success in michigan.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Mymichigan Health Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Temple Theatre 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 38 years old; the field is 22. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.8% 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.
106 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. 106 of the 275 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 Urban Racquet Sports Foundation ↗
- Who funds GREATER MIDLAND COMMUNITY CTRS INC ↗
- Who funds Saginaw Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds COVENANT HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Rescue Ministries of Mid-Michigan ↗
- Who funds TRI-STAR CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAGINAW FUTURE INC ↗
- Who funds THE ONE HUNDRED CLUB OF SAGINAW COU ↗
- Who funds CHILD ABUSE & NEGLECT COUNCIL GREAT LAKES BAY REGION ↗
- Who funds SAGINAW BASIN LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds DELTA COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MYMICHIGAN MEDICAL CENTER SAGINAW FOUNDA ↗
- Who funds MIDLAND AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THOMAS TOWNSHIP PARKS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds GREAT LAKES BAY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FIELD NEUROSCIENCES INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds United Way of Midland County ↗
- Who funds MACKINAC CENTER ↗
- Who funds MIDLAND BUSINESS ALLIANCE FNDN ↗
- Who funds SELF LOVE BEAUTY ↗
- Who funds Kali's Cure For Paralysis Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds TEMPLE THEATRE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MID-MICHIGAN CHILDREN'S MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS INC ↗
- Who funds SAGINAW CHORAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds East Side Soup Kitchen ↗
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 · Wallace & Irene Bronner Family Charitable Foundation · Consumers Energy Foundation · Bay Area Community Foundation · Morley Foundation · Allen E & Marie A Nickless Memorial Foundation · Wickson-Link Memorial Foundation · Frank N Andersen Foundation · The Patricia and David Kepler Foundation · The Herbert H & Grace a Dow Foundation · Dow Company 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 Bierlein Companies 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.
- Epilepsy Foundation of America — 22% 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 Bierlein Companies Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Bierlein Companies 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.