· Private foundation
Gary Sisters 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 $10k23 grants · $93k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| KALAMAZOO VALLEY COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $20,080 |
| KALAMAZOO JUNIOR GOLF ASSOCIATION | $9,500 |
| OPEN DOORS KALAMAZOO | $6,000 |
| COMMUNITY HOMEWORKS | $5,000 |
| KALAMAZOO CIVIC THEATRE | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| KALAMAZOO HOUSING ADVOCATES | $5,000 |
| KALAMAZOO DROP-IN CHILD CARE | $5,000 |
| SLD READ | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| FIRST DAY SHOE FUND | $5,000 |
| SPECIAL OLYMPICS MICHIGAN | $4,500 |
| GIRL SCOUTS HEART OF MICHIGAN | $4,000 |
| KALAMAZOO EASTSIDE BOXING | $4,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $4,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $36k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 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.
29 repeat relationships — 19 still active in FY2024, 10 since wound down; 5 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $18k 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
- KVKALAMAZOO VALLEY COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION3× · 2017–2019 · $55k · revenue +250%
- KJKALAMAZOO JUNIOR GOLF ASSOCIATION7× · 2018–2024 · $47k · revenue +25%
- KCKalamazoo Civic Theatre7× · 2018–2024 · $26k · revenue +13%
Funded once
- CACOVENANT ACADEMIES FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue +36%
- CNCHILDRENS NATURE PLAYSCAPE CO FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHone grant, 2021 · $5k
- OOUTFRONTone grant, 2022 · $5k
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.
The mission of the kalamazoo foundation for excellence is to support the goals of the city of kalamazoo, fund aspirational investments in the city, and empower kalamazoo residents to achieve the lives they want for themselves and their…
An independent school providing a supportive, challenging and creative academic environment for talented and motivated students to prepare them for life long achievement.
The mission of the kalamazoo humane society is to nuture the wellbeing of animals and people in our communities.
The mission of kalamazoo college is to prepare its graduates to better understand, live sucessfully within, and provide enlightened leadership to a richly diverse and increasingly complex world. as a highly selective, nationally renowened…
Activating inclusive programs, resources, and physical space to support our community's diverse entrepreneurs and small business owners.
Supporting organization to kalamazoo community foundation
Probation residential center - alternative correctional facility and outpatient treatment facility
It is the mission of Kalamazoo Neighborhood Housing Services (KNHS), together with residents and community partners, to revitalize neighborhoods and promote comprehensive strategies that foster homeownership.
To promote the arts of book printing, binding, printmaking, papermaking, and creative writing through a community workshop, teaching classes, publishing, and exhibitions
Assist downtown development authority in implementing the arcadia creek plan.
To improve and enhance the physical, social, and economic environment of the eastside section of the city of kalamazoo, michigan to the ends that the community may have a more pleasant, attractive, safe and convenient place to live and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Open Doors Kalamazoo and the most unlike its peers is Kalamazoo Housing Advocates. 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 39 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
23 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. 23 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 KALAMAZOO VALLEY COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds KALAMAZOO JUNIOR GOLF ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds OPEN DOORS KALAMAZOO ↗
- Who funds HOUSING RESOURCES INC ↗
- Who funds SPECIALIZED LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Kalamazoo Civic Theatre ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS MICHIGAN INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY HOMEWORKS INC ↗
- Who funds FIRST DAY SHOE FUND ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUTS HEART OF MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF KALAMAZOO INC ↗
- Who funds GRYPHON PLACE ↗
- Who funds AACORN FARM INC ↗
- Who funds PRETTY LAKE VACATION CAMP INC ↗
- Who funds KALAMAZOO COUNTY READY 4S ↗
- Who funds KALAMAZOO HOUSING ADVOCATES ↗
- Who funds KALAMAZOO JUNIOR GIRLS ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds COVENANT ACADEMIES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE DISABILITY NETWORK ↗
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: Kalamazoo Community Foundation · Dorothy U Dalton Foundation Inc · Harold and Grace Upjohn Foundation · Irving S Gilmore Foundation · Tyler-Little Family Foundation · Marvin and Rosalie Okun Foundation · The Ronda E Stryker and William D Johnston Foundation · The Burdick-Thorne Foundation · United Way of South Central Michigan · Ws & Lois Vandalson Foundation · H P & Genevieve Connable Fund · WK Kellogg 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 Gary Sisters 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 Gary Sisters Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Gary Sisters 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.