· Community foundation
Grand Rapids Community Foundation
Our mission is to build and manage our community's permanent endowment and lead the community to strengthen the lives of its people.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 377 grants below total $21,985,289 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $24,180,887 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $2,195,598 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 · FY2025
- Under $10k69 grants · $492k
- $10k–50k199 grants · $4.3M
- $50k–250k97 grants · $10M
- $250k+12 grants · $7.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GRAND HAVEN AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $2,362,673 |
| CHICAGO COMMUNITY TRUST CO CHARITABLE GIVING SOLUTIONS NORTHERN TRUST | $1,023,366 |
| MARY FREE BED REHABILITATION HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $590,456 |
| KENT SCHOOL SERVICES NETWORK | $465,000 |
| HEART OF WEST MICHIGAN UNITED WAY | $440,184 |
| MICHIGAN IMMIGRANT RIGHTS CENTER | $429,250 |
| COREWELL HEALTH | $322,788 |
| UNITED METHODIST COMMUNITY HOUSE | $322,138 |
| GRAND RAPIDS AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES | $300,000 |
| EARTH UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $290,519 |
| URBAN CORE COLLECTIVE | $279,850 |
| KCONNECT | $250,000 |
| GRAND RAPIDS PRIDE CENTER | $245,075 |
| BAXTER COMMUNITY CENTER | $223,000 |
| AQUINAS COLLEGE | $222,380 |
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 (FY17–25, $12.5M) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 97% 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.
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.
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 +37% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
447 repeat relationships — 254 still active in FY2025, 193 since wound down; 90 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2.9M 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
- UCURBAN CORE COLLECTIVE6× · 2018–2025 · $3.5M · revenue +249% · 87% of their budget
- KSKENT SCHOOL SERVICES NETWORK9× · 2017–2025 · $2.1M · revenue +88%
- KK-CONNECT6× · 2017–2025 · $2.0M · revenue +6% · 96% of their budget
Funded once
- DUDAVENPORT UNIVERSITYone grant, 2022 · $325k · revenue -3%
- FSFIRST STEPS KENTgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $270k · revenue +527%
- CUCornerstone Universityone grant, 2019 · $250k · revenue -13%
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 nmu foundation will establish and foster relationships to generate resources that benefit the strategic goals of northern michigan university.
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.…
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.…
To promote conditions favorable to job creation and business success in michigan.
Inspire individuals and organizations to invest in their community to improve the quality of life.
The right place is the economic development organization that drives current and long-term economic prosperity in west michigan.
Inspire awareness, appreciation and passion for michigan's history and stories, culture and environment through the arts.
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.
Informing and educating the public and decision makers about environmental issues.
For all state residents, diverse civic stakeholders and philanthropy, the center for michigan (the center) and its nonprofit newsrooms - bridge michigan and bridgedetroit - make michigan better through high-quality, nonpartisan journalism…
Changing lives through the power of work.
CEC works with diverse stakeholders across Detroit to develop critical resources and system-level solutions that address common challenges faced by Detroit families in accessing quality education.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Living With Communities and the most unlike its peers is Bissell Pet 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.
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 32 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) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
588 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 588 of the 772 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
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.
- Who funds URBAN CORE COLLECTIVE ↗
- Who funds GRAND HAVEN AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds KENT SCHOOL SERVICES NETWORK ↗
- Who funds HEART OF WEST MICHIGAN UNITED WAY ↗
- Who funds K-CONNECT ↗
- Who funds HISPANIC CENTER OF WESTERN MICHIGAN INC ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS URBAN LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds AFRICAN-AMERICAN HEALTH INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds FEEDING AMERICA WEST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF KENT COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds BAXTER COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds DA BLODGETT - ST JOHN'S ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS YOUTH COMMONWEALTH INC ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES ↗
- Who funds The Chicago Community Trust ↗
- Who funds MARY FREE BED REHABILITATION HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MARY FREE BED REHABILITATION HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds Land Conservancy of West Michigan ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS SYMPHONY SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds START GARDEN INC ↗
- Who funds KENT COUNTY YOUTH AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE DIATRIBE INC ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds 70 X 7 LIFE RECOVERY ↗
- Who funds UNITED METHODIST COMMUNITY HOUSE ↗
- Who funds PROJECT GREEN ↗
- Who funds The Young Men's Christian Association of Greater Grand Rapids (3019) ↗
- Who funds COREWELL HEALTH FOUNDATION WEST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds AQUME FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MEL TROTTER MINISTRIES ↗
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: Frey Foundation · Heart of West Michigan United Way · The Wege Foundation · Douglas & Maria Devos Foundation · Peter C & Emajean Cook Foundation · The Meijer Foundation · Cdv5 Foundation · Steelcase Foundation · Corewell Health Group Return · The Mercantile Bank Foundation · Dick and Betsy Devos Family Foundation · The Community Foundation of the Holland/Zeeland Area 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 Grand Rapids 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.