· Public charity
Council of Michigan Foundations
To lead, strengthen and support michigan's community of philanthropy.
Read this first · the figures below need context
92% of Council of Michigan Foundations’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Sanilac County Community Foundation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 1 organization directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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.
The 10 grants below total $98,091 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $136,674 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $38,583 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 $10k7 grants · $53k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $45k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SANILAC COUNTY COMMUNITY | $20,000 |
| STURGIS AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $13,850 |
| BATTLE CREEK COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $11,000 |
| MICHIGAN GATEWAY COMMUNITY | $8,459 |
| BRANCH COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $8,250 |
| OTSEGO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $8,250 |
| CANTON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $7,627 |
| CITY OF HAZEL PARK | $7,500 |
| LENAWEE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $7,280 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR OCEANA COUNTY | $5,875 |
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 (FY21–23, $852k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 48% 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 52% of Council of Michigan Foundations’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
6 repeat relationships — 0 still active in FY2025, 6 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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $8k 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
- CSCHARLES STEWART MOTT FOUNDATION6× · 2017–2023 · $939k · revenue +14%
- MSMICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY3× · 2018–2020 · $750k
LAUNCH MICHIGAN2× · 2023–2024 · $635k · 32% of their budget
Funded once
We the People of Detroitgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $38k · revenue +63%
Council on Foundations Incone grant, 2018 · $25k · revenue -70%- CFCommunity Foundation for St Clair Countyone grant, 2017 · $25k
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.
Awarding grants and scholarships.
The mission of the Montgomery County Community Foundation (MCCF) is to provide leadership in Montgomery County by directing sustainable financial resources that strengthen our community and improve the quality of life for current and…
To identify, activate, and support informed and passionate philanthropists who strive to improve the quality of life in our community. we accomplish this by:- building a permanent source of charitable funding- cultivating strategic…
The community foundation responds to the changing needs of the community by making grants to local nonprofit organizations, awarding scholarships to help local students, working together with donors to build community endowment and…
Inspire individuals and organizations to invest in their community to improve the quality of life.
Cooperatively empowering credit unions to increase financial well-being by supporting community enrichment, financial education, and credit union development initiatives
The nmu foundation will establish and foster relationships to generate resources that benefit the strategic goals of northern michigan university.
The greater cedar rapids community foundation (the community foundation) partners with donors, funders, and other community collaborators to achieve high-impact philanthropy, supports nonprofit organizations that address our community's…
Our mission at the community foundation for ocala/marion county is to enhance the quality of life for all residents of our community by fostering philanthropy and stewarding charitable resources. we strive to identify and address the most…
To lead, serve and collaborate to mobilize enduring philanthropy for a better arizona.
Receive and Administer funds for the public welfare of the people of Huron County, Michigan
To promote philanthropy to make santa cruz county a better place to live, now and in the future.we bring together people, ideas, and resources to inspire philanthropy and accomplish great things.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan and the most unlike its peers is Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 34 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 7% 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.
46 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. 46 of the 52 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 COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF GREATER FLINT ↗
- Who funds CHARLES STEWART MOTT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds KALAMAZOO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BATTLE CREEK COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LAUNCH MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds TIDES CENTER ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MARQUETTE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds ONE LOVE GLOBAL ↗
- Who funds ANN ARBOR AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN NONPROFIT ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BAY AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LEGACY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GRAND TRAVERSE REGIONAL COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SHIAWASSEE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Fremont Area Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds STURGIS AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds We the People of Detroit ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF THE HOLLAND/ZEELAND AREA INC ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Council on Foundations Inc ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF THE UPPER PENINSULA ↗
- Who funds MACKINAC ISLAND COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OTSEGO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR MUSKEGON COUNTY ↗
- Who funds SANILAC COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LENAWEE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BRANCH COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CANTON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LAPEER COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL REGION COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR OCEANA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds FOUR COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds EUP COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ALLIANCE I ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR NORTHEAST MICHIGAN ↗
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: Consumers Energy Foundation · Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan · Charles Stewart Mott Foundation · Michigan College Access Network · WK Kellogg Foundation · Michigan Health Endowment Fund · Dte Energy Foundation · Edward Jones Foundation · The Skillman Foundation · Michigan Nonprofit Association · Frey Foundation · Kalamazoo Community 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 Council of Michigan Foundations 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.