· Public charity
Blue Water Community Action
To plan, establish, coordinate, operate programs and conduct activities which give promise of progress toward eliminating and attacking the cause of poverty in st.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 7 grants below total $486,495 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,737,029 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $1,250,534 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 $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $80k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $401k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BHK COMMUNITY ACTION | $195,670 |
| OTTAWA COMMUNITY ACTION | $128,836 |
| COMMUNITY ACTION AGENCY OF SOUTH CENTRAL MICHIGAN | $76,620 |
| THE HARBOR | $37,896 |
| DETROIT RESCUE MISSION | $27,498 |
| HUMAN DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION | $14,875 |
| CHIPPEWA-LUCE-MACKINAW COMMUNITY ACTION AGENCY | $5,100 |
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 (FY18–25, $1.6M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 69% 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 +16% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
8 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 2 since wound down; 1 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- BCBARAGA-HOUGHTON-KEWEENAW COMMUNITY ACTION AGENCY INC6× · 2020–2025 · $820k · revenue +23%
- CYCOMPREHENSIVE YOUTH SERVICES INC8× · 2018–2025 · $446k · revenue +14%
- CACOMMUNITY ACTION AGENCY OF SOUTH CENTRAL MICHIGAN6× · 2020–2025 · $292k · revenue +11%
Funded once
- TYTHE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF THE BLUE WATER AREAone grant, 2023 · $114k · revenue 0%
- MFMACOMB FOOD PROGRAMone grant, 2021 · $24k · revenue 0%
- GCGOGEBIC-ONTONAGON COMMUNITY ACTION AGENCYone grant, 2024 · $16k · revenue +14%
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.
Mid michigan community action guides local residents on the path to self-sufficiency through empowerment, education and community enrichment.
Provide resources for low income clients.
Our mission is to reduce the causes and adverse consequences of poverty and to empower low-income individuals, families and communities to achieve self-sufficiency through advocacy, resource utilization and service delivery.
Community Action of Allegan County will serve, advocate, and engage individuals, families, and communities to overcome the effects of poverty and encourage self-reliance.
Through internal expertise, external partnerships, and advocacy, the area agency on aging of western michigan provides older adults, adults with disabilities, and their caregivers equitable access to services that promote independence and…
Provide service and assistance to low income residents of armstrong county.
Promote self sufficiency within Jackson, Lenawee and Hillsdale Counties.
To provide assistance to low-income families through various social programs related to nutrition, weatherization, utility assistance, housing, and other various programs.
Community assistance
Caasnm is a 60 year-old new mexico statewide health and social services not for profit with a mission of uplifting low-income families by connecting communities, encouraging family wellness, empowering families, and bridging resources.
Administers grants and contracts to help the lives of those individuals who fall below the poverty level.
Administration of federal, state and local awards and grants for the poverty sector of a 7 county area in alabama, providing headstart education, food, shelter, maintenance, and weatherization programs.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chippewa-Luce-Mackinac Community Action Human Resource Authorityinc and the most unlike its peers is Helping Hands Ministries. 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 12 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 BARAGA-HOUGHTON-KEWEENAW COMMUNITY ACTION AGENCY INC ↗
- Who funds COMPREHENSIVE YOUTH SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY ACTION AGENCY OF SOUTH CENTRAL MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries ↗
- Who funds THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF THE BLUE WATER AREA ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWEST MICHIGAN COMMUNITY ACTION AGENCY ↗
- Who funds Human Development Commission ↗
- Who funds HELPING HANDS MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds MACOMB FOOD PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds GOGEBIC-ONTONAGON COMMUNITY ACTION AGENCY ↗
- Who funds CHIPPEWA-LUCE-MACKINAC COMMUNITY ACTION HUMAN RESOURCE AUTHORITYINC ↗
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: Michigan Community Action Inc · Feeding America West Michigan · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Blue Water Community Action 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.