· Public charity
Heart of West Michigan United Way
We unite community resources to invest in solutions that reduce poverty in west michigan.
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 114 grants below total $5,124,712 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $6,530,868 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $1,406,156 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 $10k31 grants · $220k
- $10k–50k53 grants · $1.2M
- $50k–250k28 grants · $2.6M
- $250k+2 grants · $1.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SALVATION ARMY KENT COUNTY | $726,531 |
| HEALTH NET OF WEST MICHIGAN | $345,368 |
| ICCF COMMUNITY HOMES | $226,379 |
| MEL TROTTER MINISTRIES | $164,507 |
| NEW CITY KIDS | $137,222 |
| WEST MICHIGAN CENTER FOR ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY | $129,246 |
| FAMILY PROMISE OF WEST MICHIGAN | $126,689 |
| STEM GREENHOUSE | $112,200 |
| AYA YOUTH COLLECTIVE | $112,176 |
| OUR HOPE ASSOCIATON | $109,579 |
| MICHIGAN MIGRANT LEGAL ASSOCIATION | $108,404 |
| PINE REST CHRISTIAN MENTAL HEALTH | $108,292 |
| LITERACY CENTER OF WEST MICHIGAN | $95,025 |
| YOUNG MONEY FINANCE | $94,550 |
| YMCA OF GREATER GRAND RAPIDS | $93,529 |
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, $9.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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 +32% since the first grant, against +4% for the ones you funded once.
137 repeat relationships — 82 still active in FY2025, 55 since wound down; 31 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, 77% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.2M 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
- FPFAMILY PROMISE OF GRAND RAPIDS9× · 2017–2025 · $3.1M · revenue +208%
- GIGOODWILL INDUSTRIES OF GREATER GRAND RAPIDS INC9× · 2017–2025 · $2.4M · revenue +32%
- YWYWCA WEST CENTRAL MICHIGAN9× · 2017–2025 · $2.2M · revenue +18%
Funded once
- KCKENT COUNTY COMMUNITY ACTION AGENCYone grant, 2022 · $788k · revenue +2%
- FSFIRST STEPS KENTgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $221k · revenue +653%
- FFFAMILY FUTURESgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $177k · revenue +83%
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.
Focusing community resources to meet community needs the United Way of Marquette County works to advance the common good by connecting people with health and human care issues they are concerned about and to provide the oversight the…
Catholic Social Services of Washtenaw County D/B/A Catholic Charities Washtenaw County provides diverse, holistic social services including adoption and pregnancy counseling, food and basic needs assistance, domestic and child abuse…
United way connects people and resources to improve the quality of life in the midlands. united way invests in a broad range of community programs that increase access to health care, improve student success, assist people in crisis to…
Seeking to build a stronger, more caring community by forming partnerships with businesses, community experts, education & health & human service agencies to achieve targeted outcomes & sustained changes in community conditions which will…
Through internal expertise, external partnerships, and advocacy, the area agency on aging of western michigan provides older adults, adults with disabilities, and their caregivers equitable access to services that promote independence and…
With the mission of "helping people move from crisis to hope," common ground is dedicated to helping youths, adults and families by providing programs and services in three distinct impact areas: responding to crisis; providing safety and…
To enable african americans and people in need to reach their full human potential
To unite the community by developing resources to meet the community needs.
United Way improves lives by uniting the caring power of our community.
Standing with our neighbors, Lakeshore Legal Aid fights poverty and injustice through advocacy and by providing meaningful and dignified access to the legal system.
United way of the midlands mission is "we unite our community's caring spirit to build a stronger tomorrow".
In order to mobilize community resources to help people measurably improve their lives - we work collaboratively with our community to identify priorities, and then decide which strategies, dollars, and partnerships should be used to bring…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is United Way of Southwest Michigan and the most unlike its peers is Community of Hearts. 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 34 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
207 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. 207 of the 250 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 FAMILY PROMISE OF GRAND RAPIDS ↗
- Who funds GOODWILL INDUSTRIES OF GREATER GRAND RAPIDS INC ↗
- Who funds YWCA WEST CENTRAL MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds Cherry Street Services Inc ↗
- Who funds DA BLODGETT - ST JOHN'S ↗
- Who funds Health Net of West Michigan ↗
- Who funds ACCESS OF WEST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds MIGRANT LEGAL AID INC ↗
- Who funds Legal Aid of Western Michigan ↗
- Who funds ICCF COMMUNITY HOMES ↗
- Who funds HOPE NETWORK ↗
- Who funds BETHANY CHRISTIAN SERVICES ↗
- Who funds WEST MICHIGAN CENTER FOR ARTS & TECHNOLOGY ↗
- Who funds GREATER OTTAWA COUNTY UNITED WAY ↗
- Who funds THE ARBOR CIRCLE CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS URBAN LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY REBUILDERS ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF KENT COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds KENT COUNTY COMMUNITY ACTION AGENCY ↗
- Who funds DWELLING PLACE OF GRAND RAPIDS NONPROFIT ↗
- Who funds HISPANIC CENTER OF WESTERN MICHIGAN INC ↗
- Who funds CAMP BLODGETT ↗
- Who funds PINE REST CHRISTIAN MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES WEST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds Women's Resource Center ↗
- Who funds STEEPLETOWN NEIGHBORHOOD SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS WESTERN MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds The Refugee Education Center ↗
- Who funds AYA YOUTH COLLECTIVE ↗
- Who funds SENIOR NEIGHBORS INC ↗
- Who funds Literacy Center of West Michigan ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF THE LAKESHORE ↗
- Who funds BAXTER COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds The Young Men's Christian Association of Greater Grand Rapids (3019) ↗
- Who funds United Way of Montcalm-Ionia Counties ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MONEY FINANCES ↗
- Who funds ROCKFORD COMMUNITY SERVICE CENTER ↗
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: Grand Rapids Community Foundation · Frey Foundation · The Wege Foundation · Douglas & Maria Devos Foundation · Corewell Health Group Return · Steelcase Foundation · Cdv5 Foundation · The Mercantile Bank Foundation · Peter C & Emajean Cook Foundation · The Community Foundation of the Holland/Zeeland Area Inc · Consumers Energy Foundation · Feeding America West Michigan
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 Heart of West Michigan United Way 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.