· Private foundation
Determan Balk Family Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k10 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $130k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NORTHWESTERN COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES | $25,000 |
| NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK | $15,000 |
| RAGDALE FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| REFUGEE ONE | $15,000 |
| GORTON COMMUNITY CENTER | $10,000 |
| ADIRONDACK COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| WILD CENTER | $10,000 |
| PENDRAGON THEATER | $10,000 |
| UPPER SARANAC LAKE FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| CHURCH OF THE HOLY SPIRIT FOOD PANTRY | $2,500 |
| NORTH SCOTT HIGH SCHOOL | $2,000 |
| ADIRONDACK RAIL TRAIL ASSOCIATION | $1,000 |
| HISTORIC SARANAC LAKE | $1,000 |
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, $19k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
25 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2025, 12 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $15k 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
Northwestern University2× · 2017–2021 · $45k · revenue +41%- RREFUGEEONE4× · 2022–2025 · $45k · revenue +41%
- NHNATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM OF THE ADIRONDACKS5× · 2021–2025 · $25k · revenue +2%
Funded once
- CCCATHOLIC CHARITIES ALEXANDRIAone grant, 2022 · $10k
- CBCORNELL BAJA RACING TEAMone grant, 2017 · $8k
MANNA FOOD BANK INCgraduatedone grant, 2024 · $5k · revenue +141%
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.
Bates is a college of the liberal arts and sciences, and is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual, and access to…
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
The Foundation was created to assist in the promotion, development and enhancement of the financial resources for Washburn University of Topeka, as well as to receive and hold in trust any assets given in benefit of the University.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
The nmu foundation will establish and foster relationships to generate resources that benefit the strategic goals of northern michigan university.
Lake forest academy strives to embody in its practices - and to cultivate in its students -excellence of character, scholarship, citizenship, and responsibility.
Wheaton college provides a transformative liberal arts education, combining theory and practice, for intellectually curious students within a collaborative and vibrant extended community and network that values and strives to create an…
Lake erie college provides an excellent, inclusive, and highly personalized education grounded in the liberal arts tradition. guided by hope and care, our students are empowered to lead lives of personal significance and professional…
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
To educate men & women to lead responsible lives by means of a curriculum grounded in liberal arts learning and complemented and extended by professional and practical experience, through the total academic and co-curricular experience,…
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Lake County Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is International Rescue Committee Inc. 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 36 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 72 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 NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds REFUGEEONE ↗
- Who funds ADIRONDACK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM OF THE ADIRONDACKS ↗
- Who funds READING POWER INC ↗
- Who funds Gorton Community Center ↗
- Who funds Cornell University ↗
- Who funds Ragdale Foundation ↗
- Who funds WAYLAND ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds UPPER SARANAC LAKE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Mothers Trust Foundation ↗
- Who funds MANNA FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds PAUL SMITHS COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds CAMPING AND EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE LAKE COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Waukegan To College NFP ↗
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: Butler Family Foundation · John and Kathleen Schreiber Foundation D/B/A Schreiber Philanthropy · Little Orchard Foundation · The Gorter Family Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · National Philanthropic Trust · American Endowment Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc
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 Determan Balk 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.