· Public charity
Great Lakes Fishery Trust Inc
Provide funding to enhance, protect, and rehabilitate great lakes fishery resources.
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 11 grants below total $3,143,320 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $3,314,439 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $171,119 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
- $10k–50k1 grant · $44k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $680k
- $250k+6 grants · $2.4M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MICHIGAN DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES | $750,000 |
| CARLETON UNIVERSITY | $423,340 |
| THE RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR SUNY AT BROCKPORT | $403,982 |
| CONSERVATION RESOURCE ALLIANCE | $315,000 |
| MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY EXTENSION | $276,837 |
| LITTLE TRAVERSE BAY BANDS OF ODAWA INDIANS | $250,000 |
| TROUT UNLIMITED INC | $200,000 |
| GREAT LAKES ST LAWRENCE GOVERNORS & PREMIERS | $183,098 |
| CENTRAL MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY | $172,340 |
| BAY MILLS INDIAN COMMUNITY | $125,000 |
| HURON RIVER WATERSHED COUNCIL | $43,723 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 57% of your 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 9% of Great Lakes Fishery Trust Inc’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, 84% of the giving stays in MI; read by stated purpose it is 80% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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.
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 +92% since the first grant, against +31% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2024, 18 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, 38% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2.0M 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
- CRCONSERVATION RESOURCE ALLIANCE6× · 2018–2024 · $1.2M · revenue +1%
- GLGREAT LAKES FISHERY COMMISSION2× · 2020–2022 · $908k · revenue +19%
- HPHURON PINES RESOURCE CONSERVATION & DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL INC6× · 2018–2023 · $629k · revenue +63%
Funded once
- NRNATURAL RESOURCES DEPARTMENTone grant, 2017 · $430k
- PMPERE MARQUETTE CHARTER TOWNSHIPone grant, 2022 · $317k
- TOTRUSTEES OF PURDUE UNIVERSITYone grant, 2019 · $299k
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 coalition to protect michigan resources's mission is to be a strong voice for the equitable co-management of michigan's fisheries, with both the great lakes and inland lakes and streams, to insure that conservation principles remain in…
Our mission is to enrich the lives of all people in northeast ohio by conserving natural habitats, restoring the ecological value of our region's lands and waters, and expanding opportunities to connect people from all cultures to…
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…
The minnesota environmental partnership is a coalition that strengthens member effectiveness and builds collective power to secure a healthy environment for all minnesotans.
Preserving and enhancing the scenic and environmental quality of the ecosystem of the chagrin river, lake erie and other ohio watersheds in a manner which assures a sustainable future for people, plants and animals.
Provide local leadership for developing and carrying out a plan for the orderly conservation, improvement, development and wise use of the natural resources of the upper peninsula of michigan.
The program mission of the quebec-labrador foundation u.s. is defined by a regional component (new england and eastern canada), and an international component, which ties our regional model to a global conservation network. qlf's program…
The work program of metropolitan affairs coalition ("mac") is driven by its coalition of business, labor, government, and education leaders; this coalition is dedicated to equity and sustainability, creating economic opportunity, improving…
We safeguard the earth: its people, its plants and animals, and (see schedule o) the natural systems on which all life depends. we work to restore the integrity of the elements that sustain life - air, land, and water - to defend…
We work to protect and improve water quality in the lakes and streams of the upper tippecanoe river watershed. we do this by implementing solutions to stop pollution, engaging youth & adults and uniting partners.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
Conservation minnesota's mission is to turn our shared conservation values into state priorities and provide you with the information you need to make decisions for your family, community and future.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Conservation Resource Alliance and the most unlike its peers is University of Notre Dame du Lac. 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 42 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% 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 11% 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.
24 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. 24 of the 57 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 CONSERVATION RESOURCE ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds GREAT LAKES FISHERY COMMISSION ↗
- Who funds TIP OF THE MITT WATERSHED COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds HURON PINES RESOURCE CONSERVATION & DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS PUBLIC MUSEUM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CARLETON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds The Research Foundation for The State University of New York ↗
- Who funds TROUT UNLIMITED INC ↗
- Who funds Council of Great Lakes Governors Inc ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR NORTHEAST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds DISCOVERY CENTER GREAT LAKES ↗
- Who funds University of Notre Dame du Lac ↗
- Who funds INLAND SEAS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Flint River Watershed Coalition ↗
- Who funds SUPERIOR WATERSHED PARTNERSHIP ↗
- Who funds HURON RIVER WATERSHED COUNCIL ↗
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: Consumers Energy Foundation · National Fish and Wildlife Foundation · Dte Energy Foundation · Charles Stewart Mott Foundation · Inter-Tribal Council of Michigan Inc · The Fred & Barbara Erb Family Foundation · The Nature Conservancy · Frey Foundation · Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative · The Herrington-Fitch Family Foundation Inc C/O Leslie Lee · Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan · The Brookby 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 Fishery Trust Inc 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.