· Private foundation
Bill and Bea Idema 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $50k–250k5 grants · $400k
- $250k+3 grants · $5.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JOHN BALL ZOO | $3,500,000 |
| GRAND ACTION 20 | $1,030,000 |
| MARY FREE BED FOUNDATION | $1,000,000 |
| WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH FOR CAMP HENRY | $200,000 |
| MACKINAC CENTER | $50,000 |
| OUR HOPE ASSOCIATION | $50,000 |
| AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION INC | $50,000 |
| UPCYCLE BIKES | $50,000 |
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 (FY24–24, $50k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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 +115% since the first grant, against -3% for the ones you funded once.
5 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down; 6 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, 76% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.4M 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
- OCOTTAWA COUNTY PARKS FOUNDATION INC4× · 2020–2023 · $4.5M · revenue -14% · 67% of their budget
- JBJOHN BALL ZOO2× · 2022–2024 · $3.5M · revenue +115%
- GAGRAND ACTION FOUNDATION 202× · 2023–2024 · $1.1M · revenue ×16
Funded once
- GCGILDA'S CLUB GRAND RAPIDSone grant, 2023 · $63k · revenue -15%
- BNBLANDFORD NATURE CENTERone grant, 2023 · $50k · revenue -3%
- TPThe Potters Housegraduatedone grant, 2023 · $50k · revenue +80%
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.
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…
The mission of gtrlc is to protect significant natural, scenic and farm lands and advance land stewardship now and for future generations.
Bird research and conservation in the western lake michigan region of the united states.
Inspire individuals and organizations to invest in their community to improve the quality of life.
A member driven organization committed to providing quality professional park and recreation programs and services with fiscal integrity and progressive leadership to michigans recreation and parks trade.
To conserve, sustain, and connect natural areas, land, and waters that make the places we live special
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.
We connect your life to wildlife while inspiring lifelong learning and conservation action.
The wilds is a conservation center and safari park operating as a not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization on nearly 10,000-acres in southeastern ohio. the wilds specializes in high-quality recreational opportunities that focus on connecting…
To advance the mission of the mackinac center for public policy, a michigan nonprofit corporation.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Grand Rapids Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is American Heart Association Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
11 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. 11 of the 15 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 OTTAWA COUNTY PARKS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds JOHN BALL ZOO ↗
- Who funds GRAND ACTION FOUNDATION 20 ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GILDA'S CLUB GRAND RAPIDS ↗
- Who funds BLANDFORD NATURE CENTER ↗
- Who funds Our Hope Association ↗
- Who funds MACKINAC CENTER ↗
- Who funds UPCYCLE BIKES ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds The Potters House ↗
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: Grand Rapids Community Foundation · Cdv5 Foundation · Frey Foundation · Dick and Betsy Devos Family Foundation · The Sebastian Foundation · The David and Carol Van Andel Family Foundation · The Meijer Foundation · Douglas & Maria Devos Foundation · Peter C & Emajean Cook Foundation · Grand Haven Area Community Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of the Holland/Zeeland Area Inc · The Doornink 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 Bill and Bea Idema 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Bill and Bea Idema Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Bill and Bea Idema 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.