· Private foundation
Herm and Shirley Geers 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k5 grants · $29k
- $10k–50k17 grants · $351k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $126k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MISSION INDIA | $75,000 |
| DWELLINGSNOW | $51,375 |
| FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF BELLEVUE | $35,000 |
| GROWING HOPE GLOBALLY | $30,000 |
| THE GIDEONS INTERNATIONAL | $30,000 |
| WORLD RENEW | $30,000 |
| GREATER LANSING FOOD BANK | $30,000 |
| CONGO PEACE | $25,000 |
| SISTER INDIA FUND | $25,000 |
| RIVER TERRACE CHURCH | $25,000 |
| HIAWATHA YOUTH CAMP | $20,000 |
| CHOSEN VISION | $16,000 |
| SET FREE CHURCH | $15,000 |
| THE TIMOTHY INITIATIVE | $15,000 |
| PREBORN | $15,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $325k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 28% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 18% of Herm and Shirley Geers Foundation’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, 48% of the giving stays in MI; read by stated purpose it is 32% — 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.
38 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2025, 21 since wound down; 7 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; $79k 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
- CVCHOSEN VISION INC9× · 2017–2025 · $425k · revenue +25%
- WRWorld Renew9× · 2017–2025 · $210k · revenue +47%
- FOFriends of Agape7× · 2019–2025 · $152k · revenue +192%
Funded once
- AMALTERNATIVE MISSIONSDWELLINGSone grant, 2017 · $70k
- ECEASTSIDE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLone grant, 2024 · $35k · revenue +2%
- CRCITY RESCUE MISSIONone grant, 2020 · $20k
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.
Since 1816, american bible society has been fulfilling its mission of making the bible available to every person in a language and format each can understand and afford so all people may experience its life-changing message.
Christian Mission for the United Nations Community is a ministry aimed at leading the head of every nation and other top leaders to faith in Jesus Christ and helping them to walk in dependence upon God as they discharge the…
Redeemer City to City (RCTC) exists to multiply churches and Christian leaders committed to a shared vision for gospel movements in the great cities of the world.
To get the good news to every nation this generation by showing and sharing god's love by providing opportunities and supporting christian missionaries in over fifty seven countries around the world.
Global City Mission Initiative is dedicated to cross-cultural evanglism, disciplemaking, church planting among diverse diaspora populations in strategic cities reaching out evangelistically to start multiply churches, training believers to…
To glorify god, show christian love, and experience god's presence as christians share each other's medical bills.
World reach is a global, evangelical missions organization serving fields in east africa, central and south america, europe and the u.s. our purpose is to fulfill the the great commission of jesus christ by reaching the world with the…
Our mission is to accelerate the great commission by equipping leaders, developing networks, and catalyzing collaboration toward spiritual breakthroughs among the least reached peoples and places of the world.
Christianity Today is a global community inspired by evangelical conviction to advance the stories and ideas of the kingdom of God. Our mission is to elevate the storytellers and sages of the global church.
To provide strategic teaching about prayer, prophecy, and intercession in the US and abroad. Books, manuals, and audio teachings are also used to equip Christians in strategic level spiritual prayer and warfare.
Our mission is to go into all the world and preach the Gospel through all forms of media and broadcast. We are a Christian organization spreading the word of God to the ends of the earth.
We save children's lives by transforming pediatric heart care in underserved parts of the world.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Growing Hope Globally and the most unlike its peers is Blood Cancer United Inc. 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 33 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 6% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
28 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. 28 of the 60 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 CHOSEN VISION INC ↗
- Who funds World Renew ↗
- Who funds Friends of Agape ↗
- Who funds ABUNDANT LIFE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GROWING HOPE GLOBALLY ↗
- Who funds GREATER LANSING FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds DWELLINGSNOW INC ↗
- Who funds THE TIMOTHY INITIATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds FORGOTTEN MAN MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds AMYOTROPHIC LATERAL SCLEROSIS ASSN ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds HOLY CROSS SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds EASTSIDE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds CALVIN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds CONGO PEACE ↗
- Who funds HEARTLAND BAPTIST MISSION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds SMILE TRAIN 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: Barnabas Foundation · The US Charitable Gift Trust · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Stewardship Foundation · Grand Haven Area Community Foundation Inc · Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Servant Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Enterprise Holdings Foundation · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · American Endowment 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 Herm and Shirley Geers 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Herm and Shirley Geers Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Herm and Shirley Geers 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.