· Public charity
Early Learning Neighborhood Collaborative
Early Learning Neighborhood Collaborative's mission is to create and provide partners with support to increase the accessibility of early educational resources for vulnerable children in Grand Rapids, MI.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2021.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2021
- $10k–50k3 grants · $79k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $555k
- $250k+4 grants · $1.7M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| The Refugee Education Center | $743,452 |
| The Other Way Ministries | $430,345 |
| YMCA | $292,457 |
| Secom Resource Center | $252,472 |
| Hispanic Center of West Michigan | $189,536 |
| GRCC | $186,900 |
| Catching the Dream Learning Center | $178,800 |
| New Level Sports Ministry | $30,000 |
| Sugar and Spice | $25,600 |
| Pre K International Child Care Center | $23,700 |
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 (FY17–21, $4.2M) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +118% since the first grant, against +109% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2021, 4 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (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 FY2021, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $203k 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
- TRThe Refugee Education Center3× · 2019–2021 · $1.7M · revenue +140% · 39% of their budget
- SNSTEEPLETOWN NEIGHBORHOOD SERVICES INC4× · 2017–2020 · $1.5M · revenue +38% · 28% of their budget
- TOTHE OTHER WAY MINISTRIES4× · 2017–2021 · $1.4M · revenue +107% · 37% of their budget
Funded once
- AAnchoRRagraduatedone grant, 2020 · $50k · revenue +109%
- CTCatching the Dreamone grant, 2020 · $40k
GRACE HEALTH INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $30k · revenue +67%
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.
Giggles & grace early learning center, inc., with community, parents and teachers, is committed to providing a safe, nurturing christian environment emphasizing the total development of each child; spiritual, intellectual, emotional,…
The Small People Child Development Center is organized to provide early childhood education, care, and developmental services to infants, toddlers, and preschool-aged children. The organization supports working families by offering a safe,…
To meet the needs of the community by providing quality child care that encourages individual development in a safe, nuturing environment
Thrive family resource center's mission is to help break the cycle of poverty by offering high quality child care and family support. we are building community, one family at a time.
In 2001, Joyful Learning Educational Development Center (Joyful Learning EDC) was founded with a clear vision to provide accessible, high-quality childcare that meets the diverse needs of every child.
Provide child care services to the community for children ages 16 weeks to 12 years.
To promote each child's development by providing high quality early childhood education.
Our mission is to prepare the children of our community for the road ahead. We take a whole-child approach that blends personalized care plans with physical play, social development, and academic readiness.
The mission of Kids Community Learning Center is to provide a nurturing environment in which kids grow together outside of school time through creative exploration, meaningful relationships, and fun. After-school and summer programs…
The center provides quality care and education to children of working parents and is licensed to care for 44 children from ages 6 weeks to 5 years old.
Provide a nurturing, safe environment where children can explore and learn about their world. by recognizing each child as a unique individual, children will learn to respect others, be kind, cooperate, and share while developing a strong…
Head start, preschool
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Other Way Ministries and the most unlike its peers is New Level Sports. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
13 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. 13 of the 17 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 The Refugee Education Center ↗
- Who funds STEEPLETOWN NEIGHBORHOOD SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds THE OTHER WAY MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds SOUTH END COMMUNITY OUTREACH MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds UNITED METHODIST COMMUNITY HOUSE ↗
- Who funds HISPANIC CENTER OF WESTERN MICHIGAN INC ↗
- Who funds The Young Men's Christian Association of Greater Grand Rapids (3019) ↗
- Who funds BAXTER COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS EARLY DISCOVERY CENTER ↗
- Who funds CATCHING THE DREAM LEARNING CENTER ↗
- Who funds NEW LEVEL SPORTS ↗
- Who funds AnchoRRa ↗
- Who funds GRACE HEALTH INC ↗
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: WK Kellogg Foundation · Heart of West Michigan United Way · The Wege Foundation · Grand Rapids Community Foundation · The Young Men's Christian Association of Greater Grand Rapids (3019) · Corewell Health Group Return · Feeding America West Michigan · Consumers Energy Foundation · Steelcase Foundation · Douglas & Maria Devos Foundation · Frey Foundation · Krw 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 Early Learning Neighborhood Collaborative 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 Early Learning Neighborhood Collaborative?
Find your warmest path to Early Learning Neighborhood Collaborative 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.