· Community foundation
Grand Rapids Area Community Foundation
Inspire individuals and organizations to invest in their community to improve the quality of life.
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.
The 51 grants below total $1,108,999 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,653,430 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $544,431 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k23 grants · $161k
- $10k–50k24 grants · $620k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $328k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WABANA TOWNSHIP | $128,446 |
| SECOND HARVEST NORTH CENTRAL FOOD | $84,408 |
| ITASCA COMMUNITY TELEVISION INC | $60,044 |
| ELDERCIRCLE | $55,153 |
| FIRST CALL FOR HELP 211 | $43,777 |
| GREAT TAILS ANIMAL RESCUE | $42,430 |
| INDEPENDEND SCHOOL DISTRICT 318 | $42,419 |
| ITASCA AREA CANCER CRISIS ENDOWMENT | $40,400 |
| GRAND ITASCA FOUNDATION | $37,942 |
| DISTRICT 318 ENDOWMENT FUND | $36,996 |
| GRAND RAPIDS AREA LIBRARY FOUND | $36,326 |
| ITASCA ORCHESTRA AND STRINGS | $35,143 |
| ITASCA COUNTY FAMILY YMCA | $29,032 |
| CITY OF DEER RIVER | $27,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF GRAND RAPIDS | $26,558 |
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, $587k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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 +35% since the first grant, against +34% for the ones you funded once.
55 repeat relationships — 37 still active in FY2024, 18 since wound down; 9 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, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $193k 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
- SHSECOND HARVEST NORTH CENTRAL FOOD BANK8× · 2017–2024 · $411k · revenue +70%
- EELDERCIRCLE7× · 2017–2024 · $254k · revenue +15%
- FCFIRST CALL FOR HELP OF ITASCA COUNTY4× · 2021–2024 · $234k · revenue +122%
Funded once
- ICItasca Community College Foundationone grant, 2019 · $89k · revenue -12%
- GRGRAND RAPIDS BAND BOOSTERS ASSOCIATIONgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $30k · revenue +97%
- ICITASCA COUNTY HOUSING AND REDEVELOPMENT AUTHORITYone grant, 2023 · $25k
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.
Promote health through skiing
To promote and protect the rights of people with disabilities and their families while supporting inclusion and participation in the community throughout their lifetime.
MNRAAA helps older adults thrive in Southwest MN by enabling older adults to maintain the lifestyle of their choice. MNRAAA strives to ensure that services are available for older adults and caregivers, by providing information and…
The Service Center offers a variety of programs including but not limited to: emergency food shelf and food commodities programs for mothers with small children and seniors; monthly supplemental food programs for seniors and the disabled;…
Glacial Lakes Conservancy, as a land trust, is a nonprofit organization that, as part of its mission, actively works to conserve land by undertaking or assisting in land or conservation easement acquisitions.
To provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations and help build goodwill and peace in the world
To provide grooming of trails and to promote safe snowmobiling
Volunteer fire department and EMT service.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Itasca County Family Ymca Inc and the most unlike its peers is Great Minds Learning Center. 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 38 years old; the field is 26. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 15% 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 7% 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.
55 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. 55 of the 102 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 SECOND HARVEST NORTH CENTRAL FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ELDERCIRCLE ↗
- Who funds FIRST CALL FOR HELP OF ITASCA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds REIF ARTS COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds GREAT TAILS ANIMAL RESCUE ↗
- Who funds Grand Itasca Foundation ↗
- Who funds KOOTASCA COMMUNITY ACTION INC ↗
- Who funds Northland Counseling Center Inc ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN COMMUNITY RADIO INC ↗
- Who funds ITASCA ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPOR ↗
- Who funds Community Cafe Inc ↗
- Who funds ITASCA COUNTY FAMILY YMCA INC ↗
- Who funds ITASCA COMMUNITY TELEVISION INC ↗
- Who funds ITASCA ORCHESTRA & STRINGS PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds Itasca Community College Foundation ↗
- Who funds BOYS' CLUB OF DULUTH ↗
- Who funds Itasca Hospice Foundation ↗
- Who funds ITASCA YOUTH FOR CHRIST ↗
- Who funds NORTH HOMES INC ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS AREA LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Itasca County Habitat for Humanity ↗
- Who funds Itasca County Historical Society ↗
- Who funds FORWARD HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF 1000 LAKES ↗
- Who funds ITASCA DRIFTSKIPPERS SNOWMOBILE CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS BAND BOOSTERS ASSOCIATION ↗
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: C K Blandin Foundation · Minnesota Power Foundation · Northland Foundation · United Way of 1000 Lakes · Second Harvest Northland · Second Harvest North Central Food Bank · Duluth-Superior Area Community Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Smdc Medical Center · United Way of Ne Minnesota · Propel Nonprofits
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 Grand Rapids Area Community 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.