· Private foundation
Feather Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $10k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CRYSTAL COMMUNITY SKI CLUB | $10,000 |
| CHATHAM EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| INLAND SEAS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION | $5,000 |
| LELAND PUBLIC SCHOOL | $5,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 14% of your 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.
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 +159% since the first grant, against +44% for the ones you funded once.
6 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 67% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k 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
- LCLEELANAU CHRISTIAN NEIGHBORS INC6× · 2017–2023 · $45k · revenue +355%
- CCCRYSTAL COMMUNITY SKI CLUB3× · 2019–2024 · $25k · revenue +159%
- FPFISHTOWN PRESERVATION SOCIETY INC4× · 2019–2023 · $24k · revenue +132%
Funded once
- TTTitle Trackone grant, 2021 · $15k · revenue -60%
- TBTRAVERSE BAY ARE YOUTH SOCCERone grant, 2017 · $8k
- WOWINGS OF WONDER INCone grant, 2018 · $6k · revenue -79%
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 protect scenic and natural lands in northern Michigan.
To foster the physical, mental and emotional growth and development of michigan's youth through the sport of soccer by providing the governing structure to administer youth soccer in the state of michigan and to provide information to…
The mission of gtrlc is to protect significant natural, scenic and farm lands and advance land stewardship now and for future generations.
Little Traverse Conservancy protects land in northern Michigan by owning it as Nature Preserves and Working Forest Reserves, and through Conservation Easements (perpetual, voluntary agreements that guard the conservation values of the…
To conserve, sustain, and connect natural areas, land, and waters that make the places we live special
Heart of the Lakes provides technical assistance, leadership training, and strategic communication tools that help organizations thrive - from grassroots land conservancies to larger regional conservation groups. Programs such as peer…
A member driven organization committed to providing quality professional park and recreation programs and services with fiscal integrity and progressive leadership to michigans recreation and parks trade.
Swedetown Trails Club (STC) is dedicated to providing the best trail experiences possible at the Swedetown Recreation Area in Calumet, Michigan. Club members work to connect people to trails, nature, and each other through outdoor…
Our mission is conserving West Michigans ecologically critical land. We protect land by creating public nature preserves, providing support to communities and local governments in creating natural areas, and helping private landowners…
The Center's mission is to inspire, entertain, educate, and serve all in Northern Michigan year-round by presenting exceptional experiences across the full spectrum of the performing arts and offering impactful educational opportunities.
We advocate and facilitate the development of a network of multipurpose recreational trails in Northern Lower Michigan.
The coalition to protect michigan resources's mission is to be a strong voice for the equitable co-management of michigan's fisheries, with both the great lakes and inland lakes and streams, to insure that conservation principles remain in…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Traverse City Junior Golf Association and the most unlike its peers is Title Track. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
16 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. 16 of the 22 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 LEELANAU CHRISTIAN NEIGHBORS INC ↗
- Who funds CRYSTAL COMMUNITY SKI CLUB ↗
- Who funds FISHTOWN PRESERVATION SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds Title Track ↗
- Who funds INLAND SEAS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CHATHAM EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WINGS OF WONDER INC ↗
- Who funds TRAVERSE CITY JUNIOR GOLF ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds TRAVERSE AREA RECREATION & TRANSPORTATION TRAILS INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CENTRAL CAROLINA ↗
- Who funds LEELANAU CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds GRAND TRAVERSE HOCKEY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Traverse Bay Area Youth Soccer Inc ↗
- Who funds LEELANAU COUNTY SOCCER CLUB ↗
- Who funds MICHAEL'S PLACE ↗
- Who funds Pittsboro Elementary School PTA ↗
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: The Art and Mary Schmuckal Family Foundation · Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation · Oleson Foundation · Hp Foundation · Les & Ann Biederman Foundation Inc · Green Brick Foundation Inc · Rotary Charities of Traverse City · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn 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 Feather 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 Feather Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Feather 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.