· Public charity
Great Lakes Energy People Fund
The GREAT LAKES ENERGY PEOPLE FUND exists to support humanitarian, charitable, scientific, educational, community development, and benevolent purposes by making distributions to organizations qualifying under internal revenue code section 501(c)(3) or as tax exempt organizations.
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 $10k4 grants · $26k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $235k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GRANTS LESS THAN 5000 | $235,422 |
| VETERANS EDUCATION TRAINING AND SUP | $7,000 |
| BANKS TOWNSHIP FIRE AND RESCUE | $7,000 |
| NW MI HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $6,000 |
| LINCOLN TWP FIRE DEPT | $6,000 |
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, $77k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 76% 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.
6 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2024, 4 since wound down; 3 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $20k 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
- GLGRANTS LESS THAN 50008× · 2017–2024 · $1.6M
- CHCharlevoix Historical Society3× · 2019–2023 · $19k · revenue +149%
- SLSTONY LAKE THERAPEUTIC RIDING CENTER3× · 2020–2022 · $18k
Funded once
- NCNEWAYGO COUNTY COMPASSION HOME FOR THE TERMINALLY ILLgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $15k · revenue +179%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $12k
- ISINJURED SOLDIERS INCone grant, 2017 · $10k · revenue -45%
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 help provide safe, accessible, and affordable housing in Northwest Michigan.
To provide housing and end of life care and support to terminally ill individuals.
To protect scenic and natural lands in northern Michigan.
Rescue, care for, and release abandoned and injured birds.
To protect and restore central michigan's land, water, and wildlife resources to improve the quality of life for all.
To educate the public on the history of Manistee County
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…
To preserve, record and maintain the historical information of the area between michigan's upper and lower peninsulas, known as michilimackinac.
To facilitate connecting the Leelanau county community of seniors with services and activities that promote a healthy independent and fulfilled lifestyle while aging.
Oconto area humane society is an open-admission shelter dedicated to providing protection, care and shelter for abandoned and homeless campanion animals
A provider of the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) which is a community-based, long-term care delivery program that provides comprehensive, coordinated, managed care to eligible participants.
Our mission is to promote the humane treatment and responsible care of animals in west michigan through education, example, placement and protection.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Friendship Centers of Emmet County Inc and the most unlike its peers is Newaygo County Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect. 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 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 16% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
32 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. 32 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 Charlevoix Historical Society ↗
- Who funds STONY LAKE THERAPEUTIC RIDING CENTER ↗
- Who funds NEWAYGO COUNTY COMPASSION HOME FOR THE TERMINALLY ILL ↗
- Who funds HARMONIZED HEALING COUNSELING SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds THE MANNA FOOD PROJECT INC DBA - THE MANNA FOOD PROJECT ↗
- Who funds INJURED SOLDIERS INC ↗
- Who funds ZERO DAY INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF BARRY COUNTY ↗
- Who funds TRAVERSE AREA RECREATION & TRANSPORTATION TRAILS INC ↗
- Who funds SAFE HARBOR CHILDREN'S ADVOCACY CENTER ↗
- Who funds NEWAYGO COUNTY PREVENTION OF CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT ↗
- Who funds Raven Hill Discovery Center ↗
- Who funds SPIRITUAL CARE CONSULTANTS OF WEST MICHIGAN INC ↗
- Who funds CHALLENGE MOUNTAIN OF WALLOON HILLS INC ↗
- Who funds WINGS HOME ↗
- Who funds BEAVER ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds WINGS OF HOPE HOSPICE & PALLIATIVE CARE INC ↗
- Who funds CROOKED TREE ARTS COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds VETERANS EDUCATION TRAINING & SUPPORT INC ↗
- Who funds WOMENS INFORMATION SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds Little Traverse Conservancy Inc ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST MI HABITAT FOR HUMANITY ↗
- Who funds SYLVIA'S PLACE ↗
- Who funds Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat Network and Fund Inc ↗
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: Charlevoix County Community Foundation · Fremont Area Community Foundation · Consumers Energy Foundation · Petoskey-Harbor Springs Area Community Foundation · Frey Foundation · Oleson Foundation · Triford Foundation · Charles Stewart Mott Foundation · Allegan County United Way · Charles M and Joan R Taylor Foundation Inc · The Allegan County Community Foundation · The Offield Family 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 Great Lakes Energy People Fund 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 Great Lakes Energy People Fund?
Find your warmest path to Great Lakes Energy People Fund 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.