· Private foundation
Cook Family Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k11 grants · $277k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $772k
- $250k+3 grants · $1.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SHIAWASSEE DISTRICT LIBRARY | $705,000 |
| VARIOUS OTHERS | $310,026 |
| VARIOUS OTHERS | $281,991 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN | $217,681 |
| Individual grant recipient | $183,986 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF SHIA & GENES | $101,000 |
| SHIAWASSEE ECONOMIC DEV PARTNERS | $99,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN | $90,146 |
| SAFECENTER (RAVE) | $80,000 |
| LEBOWSKY CENTER | $40,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $40,000 |
| VOICES FOR CHILDERN ADVOCACY CENTER | $40,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF GENESSE COUNTY | $35,000 |
| CORUNNA PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $35,000 |
| SHIAWASSEE ARTS CENTER | $25,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $277k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 98% 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.
22 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 6 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, 59% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $962k 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
- UOUniversity of Michigan9× · 2017–2025 · $2.0M · revenue +202% · 93% of their budget
- NNNONPROFIT NETWORK6× · 2017–2022 · $203k · revenue +86%
- MHMEMORIAL HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION4× · 2017–2020 · $120k · revenue +77%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2024 · $70k
- OCOWOSSO COMMUNITY IMPACT AND INNOVATone grant, 2017 · $26k
- GLGREATER LAINGSBURG RECYCLERS CORPORATIONone grant, 2021 · $17k
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 promote public health, safety, and welfare through the improvement of the quality and quantity of drinking water and the development and furtherance of understanding of the problems relating thereto.
To provide resources and networking to all members, future members and their customers in order to enhance quality of service.
Nacwa is the national voice of public clean water utilities, shaping water policy, convening a vibrant peer network, and empowering water leaders.
Be and create stewards for the water environment of michigan. provide high quality education for michigan's water professionals. educate and inform policy makers and the general public. promote scientifically sound environmental practices…
Promote, represent & advocate for the cooperative way of doing business
Health care services for the people of western nebraska and eastern wyoming.
To be a catalyst for economic and community progress within the great lakes bay region.
Improving access to and the effectiveness of services through facilitation and coordination of community services and provision of information and referral services.
Informing and educating the public and decision makers about environmental issues.
The door county land trust is a local, non-governmental non-profit organization whose mission is to preserve door county's exceptional lands and waters forever.
None
Assisting the community mental health boards of michigan in developing methods for mental health planning, care and treatment.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Memorial Healthcare Foundation and the most unlike its peers is The Nature Conservancy. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
8 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. 8 of the 34 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 University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds NONPROFIT NETWORK ↗
- Who funds MEMORIAL HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GENESEE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds RESPITE VOLUNTEERS OF SHIAWASSEE ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE SHIAWASSEE RIVER ↗
- Who funds REFUGEE DEVELOPMENT CENTER ↗
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: Charles Stewart Mott Foundation · 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 Cook Family 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 Cook Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Cook Family 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.