· Private foundation
Herbert H and Barbara C Dow Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k1 grant · $6k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $385k
- $50k–250k13 grants · $1.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PAUL OLIVER MEMORIAL HOSPITAL FOUNDATION AND MUNSON HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION | $175,000 |
| MUNSON HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION | $150,000 |
| GRAND TRAVERSE BAY YMCA(WEST) | $150,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $85,000 |
| HERITAGE FOUNDATION | $75,000 |
| TGEN FOUNDATION | $70,000 |
| BARROW NEUROLOGICAL FOUNDATION | $60,000 |
| PALM BEACH SYMPHONY | $50,000 |
| ELIZABETH LANE OLIVER CENTER FOR THE ARTS | $50,000 |
| FRIENDS OF POINT BETSIE LIGHTHOUSE | $50,000 |
| BENZIE AREA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC | $50,000 |
| HOUSING TRUST OF BENZIE | $50,000 |
| INTERLOCHEN CENTER FOR THE ARTS | $50,000 |
| BENZIE AREA CHRISTIAN NEIGHBORS | $40,000 |
| PARADISE VALLEY COMMUNITY FOOD BANK | $40,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $340k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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.
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 +39% since the first grant, against +34% for the ones you funded once.
32 repeat relationships — 22 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 5 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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $210k 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
- MHMUNSON HEALTHCARE FOUNDATIONS3× · 2023–2025 · $430k · revenue +57%
- AHArizona Humane Society6× · 2020–2025 · $417k · revenue +82%
- BABENZIE AREA CHRISTIAN NEIGHBORS INC6× · 2020–2025 · $410k · revenue +32%
Funded once
- FAFRANKFORT AREA COMMUNITY LAND TRUSTgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $100k · revenue +26% · 56% of their budget
- MMMUNSON MEDICAL CENTERone grant, 2022 · $100k · revenue +11%
- BSBENZIE SHORES LIBRARYone grant, 2020 · $75k
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 lead, serve and collaborate to mobilize enduring philanthropy for a better arizona.
Assist banner health complete its mission to make health care easier so life can be better by providing integrated & coordinated care & population health management.
To perform the functions of, or to carry out the purposes of the arizona community foundation, an az nonprofit corporation, so long as the arizona community foundation, inc. remains a qualified organization.
To serve our communities by provding innovative and compassionate healthcare.
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
Museum has a mission to create opportunties for everyone to experience art that broadens understanding of the past, fosters community connections to the present, and creates diverse possbilities for the future.
Naples zoo is accredited by the american zoo & aquarium association (aza) and has numerous animal exhibits placed on its 45-acre site. (continued on schedule o)each exhibit is unique and designed to simulate typical conditions for the…
The nmu foundation will establish and foster relationships to generate resources that benefit the strategic goals of northern michigan university.
To cultivate and develop an expansive collection of trees, gardens, and plants for all to explore, enjoy and study; and to provide through education and stewardship, a greener, healthier, more beautiful environment.
To enhance the health and well-being of the communities we serve.
Greater phoenix chamber of commerce (the chamber) catalyzes regional prosperity with forward-thinking public policy, intentional economic growth, and diverse, prepared talent.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Hillsdale College. 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 36 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 29% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 16% 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.
35 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. 35 of the 49 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 MUNSON HEALTHCARE FOUNDATIONS ↗
- Who funds INTERLOCHEN CENTER FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds Arizona Humane Society ↗
- Who funds BENZIE AREA CHRISTIAN NEIGHBORS INC ↗
- Who funds GRAND TRAVERSE BAY YMCA ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TRAVERSE CITY CURLING CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds BARROW NEUROLOGICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE FRIENDS OF POINT BETSIE LIGHTHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds THE ELIZABETH LANE OLIVER CENTER FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds HONORHEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds BENZIE SENIOR RESOURCES ↗
- Who funds FRESH START WOMEN'S FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FRANKFORT AREA COMMUNITY LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE BETSIE VALLEY TRAIL ↗
- Who funds MUNSON MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds GREATER PARADISE VALLEY COMMUNITY ASSISTANCE TEAM INC ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA SCIENCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE PALM BEACH SYMPHONY SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds GRAND TRAVERSE REGIONAL LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL DISASTER SEARCH DOG FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds United Way of Midland County ↗
- Who funds TRAVERSE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA D/B/A TRAVERSE CITY PHILHARMONIC ↗
- Who funds BENZIE AREA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds CRYSTAL LAKE AND WATERSHED ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds NRA FOUNDATION 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: Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation · The Seabury Foundation · Oleson Foundation · The Art and Mary Schmuckal Family Foundation · Rotary Charities of Traverse City · David C and Ellen R Petrick Foundation · Hillquist Irrevocable Family Foundation Trust · William F and Patricia a Beck Family Foundation · Harry a and Margaret D Towsley Foundation · Indian River Community Foundation Inc · The Chicago Community Trust · National Philanthropic Trust
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 Herbert H and Barbara C Dow 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.
- The Palm Beach Symphony Society Inc — 0% of income from government
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.
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How do I get to Herbert H and Barbara C Dow Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Herbert H and Barbara C Dow Foundation 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.