How much did Frey Foundation grant in FY2024?

Education$9.2MPhilanthropy$4.9MArts & Culture$4.1MEnvironment$4.0MHousing & Shelter$3.9MCommunity Improvement$3.2MHealth$2.6MRecreation & Sports$2.4MOther$0

02FY2024 · 195 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2024

Under $10k124 grants · $321k
$10k–50k49 grants · $785k
$50k–250k17 grants · $1.7M
$250k+5 grants · $2.0M

$5,000

Median grant

States reached

$162M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
Grand Action Foundation 20	$500,000
Grand Valley State University	$500,000
Young Men's Christian Association of Greater Grand Rapids	$390,000
Pine Rest Foundation	$300,000
Mary Free Bed Hospital and Rehabilitation Center	$300,000
Habitat for Humanity of Kent County Inc	$200,000
Grand Rapids Public Museum Foundation	$200,000
West Michigan Trails & Greenways Coalition	$150,000
The Michigan Women's Foundation	$100,000
Housing North	$100,000
West Michigan Sports Commission	$100,000
Mosaic Counseling	$100,000
Children's Healing Center	$100,000
Petoskey-Harbor Springs Area Community Foundation	$90,500
North Central Michigan College Foundation	$90,000

02The need

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY17–24, $2.5M) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 88% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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.

Where the work is directed

The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.

About 13% of Frey Foundation’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. Read by recipient address, 93% of the giving stays in MI; read by stated purpose it is 88% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.

Frey Foundationlessmore of its giving

Placed by recipient address

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.

03Your edge

repeat funding

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.

84%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.

$31M · 260 repeat orgs$6.2M to everyone else

And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +52% since the first grant, against +31% for the ones you funded once.

260 repeat relationships — 107 still active in FY2024, 153 since wound down; 46 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

260

186

Total granted

$31M

$5.5M

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+52%

+31%

Still filing today

77%

72%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $706k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

EducationHuman ServicesArts & CultureHealthEnvironmentPhilanthropyOther

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

GA
GRAND ACTION FOUNDATION 20
3× · 2021–2024 · $1.3M · revenue ×35
WM
WEST MICHIGAN HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY INC DBA FREDERIK MEIJER GARDENS
4× · 2018–2022 · $1.0M · revenue +49%
K
K-CONNECT
6× · 2018–2023 · $955k · revenue +203% · 33% of their budget

Funded once

MS
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
one grant, 2018 · $1.0M
GA
GRAND ACTION FOUNDATION
one grant, 2017 · $450k
DB
DA BLODGETT - ST JOHN'S
one grant, 2019 · $350k · revenue -36%

Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Your field

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.

The Northern Michigan University Foundation

The nmu foundation will establish and foster relationships to generate resources that benefit the strategic goals of northern michigan university.

Education

Business Leaders for Michigan

Business leaders for michigan is a nonprofit, nonpartisan statewide organization driven by ceos from the state's leading employers, all working toward a shared goal: making michigan a top 10 state for jobs, talent and a thriving economy.…

—

Mid Michigan Community Action Agency Inc

Mid michigan community action guides local residents on the path to self-sufficiency through empowerment, education and community enrichment.

—

Business Leaders for Michigan Foundation

Community Improvement

Great Lakes Community Action Partnership

The mission of great lakes community action partnership is to create partnerships and opportunites to help individuals, families and communities thrive.

Human Services

Michigan Chamber of Commerce

To promote conditions favorable to job creation and business success in michigan.

—

Michigan Enviromental Council

Informing and educating the public and decision makers about environmental issues.

Environment

Michigan Legacy Art Park

Inspire awareness, appreciation and passion for michigan's history and stories, culture and environment through the arts.

Arts & Culture

The Little Forks Conservancy Inc

To permanently protect and improve natural environments in Mid-Michigan by leading and inspiring actions that conserve vital habitats and waterways for the benefit of our entire community.

Environment

Lake Superior Community Partnership Inc

To stimulate and sustain a vibrant regional economy by facilitating economic growth and prosperity.

—

The Right Place Inc

The right place is the economic development organization that drives current and long-term economic prosperity in west michigan.

—

Saginaw County Chamber of Commerce

To be a catalyst for economic and community progress within the great lakes bay region.

—

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Michigan Humanities Council and the most unlike its peers is The Reid Family Foundation. 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.

the sector your giving your giving is ahead of the sector the sector’s ahead of you· dot size = how much the theme matters to each side

Ordered by the change in your giving — leaning in on top, pulling back at the bottom. The bar between the two dots is how out of step you are with the sector. Hover any row for detail.

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 33 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% lost their exemption, against 12% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund

0.9%4/427

the rest of the field

12%

6,508/53,429

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.

05the grantee network

387 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. 387 of the 506 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.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

135

Early backer (in before they grew)

378/387

Grantees still filing

268/387

Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

Other$17,265,000Philanthropy$6,405,628Education$5,826,241Arts & Culture$3,059,214Human Services$2,713,952Environment$2,292,000Recreation & Sports$2,142,167

Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.

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.

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.

Grand Rapids Community FoundationMI235.4× affinity164 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Grand Rapids Community Foundation · The Wege Foundation · Douglas & Maria Devos Foundation · The Meijer Foundation · Heart of West Michigan United Way · Cdv5 Foundation · Steelcase Foundation · Consumers Energy Foundation · The Mercantile Bank Foundation · Peter C & Emajean Cook Foundation · Dick and Betsy Devos Family Foundation · Daniel & Pamella Devos 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 Frey 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.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

5get no government money at all

69report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

typical government reliance, FY20–25

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.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to Frey Foundation?

Find your warmest path to Frey 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.

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home

State money flows

the interactive map of money crossing state lines