Skip to content

· Private foundation

Iron One 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.

$20k
Granted FY2024still arriving
2
Grants FY2024still arriving
1
States reached
$10k
Largest
01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2024.

Community Improvement$30kEmployment$25kPhilanthropy$20kArts & Culture$11kEducation$8kHuman Services$6kReligion$3kYouth Development$3k
02FY2024 · 2 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

$10,000
Median grant
1
States reached
$173k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
BESSER MUSEUM FOR NORTHEAST MICHIGAN$10,000
INDUSTRIAL ARTS INSTITUTE$10,000
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 47% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Its grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.

area typical 11%HARBOR SPRINGS AREA HISTORICAL SOCIETY: $1k → 9%NORTHWOOD UNIVERSITY: $5k → 9%INLAND LAKES EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION: $1k → 12%INDUSTRIAL ARTS INSTITUTE: $10k → 12%HILLSDALE COLLEGE: $2k → 14%BESSER MUSEUM FOR NORTHEAST MICHIGAN: $10k → 16%MCLAREN FOUNDATION: $20k → 9%INDUSTRIAL ARTS INSTITUTE: $10k → 12%THE SALVATION ARMY: $3k → 16%MCLAREN FOUNDATION: $10k → 9%INDUSTRIAL ARTS INSTITUTE: $5k → 12%BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF ALPENA: $3k → 16%MCLAREN FOUNDATION: $10k → 9%AWAKEN CHURCH: $3k → 12%THE SALVATION ARMY: $3k → 16%MCLAREN FOUNDATION: $10k → 9%PATHWAY OF HOPE - THE SALVATION ARMY: $1k → 16%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

77%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$80k · 3 repeat orgs$23k to everyone else

3 repeat relationships: 1 still active in FY2024, 2 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

3
6

Total granted

$80k
$13k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

-11%
+60%

Still filing today

33%
67%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 50% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’20’21’22’23’24
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’17’18’20’21’22’23’24
EducationArts & CultureOther
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

  • MF
    MCLAREN FOUNDATION
    4× · 2017–2021 · $50k
  • IA
    INDUSTRIAL ARTS INSTITUTE INC
    3× · 2022–2024 · $25k · revenue -11%
  • SA
    SALVATION ARMY
    2× · 2020–2021 · $5k

Funded once

  • NU
    Northwood University
    one grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +6%
  • AC
    AWAKEN CHURCH
    one grant, 2021 · $3k
  • BA
    BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF ALPENAgraduated
    one grant, 2021 · $3k · revenue +61%
How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field
04the grantee network

7 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2026, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 7 of the 11 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
2
Early backer (in before they grew)
7/7
Grantees still filing
5/7
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

MCLAREN FOUNDATION: $50,000 · OtherMCLAREN FOUNDATIONBESSER MUSEUM FOR NORTHEAST MICHIGAN INC: $10,000 · OtherBESSER MUSEUM FOR NORTHEAST MICHIGAN INCSALVATION ARMY: $5,195 · OtherSALVATION ARMYAWAKEN CHURCH: $2,746 · OtherBOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF ALPENA: $2,500 · Other+2 more: $2,090 · OtherINDUSTRIAL ARTS INSTITUTE INC: $25,000 · EducationINDUSTRIAL ARTS INSTITUTE INCNorthwood University: $5,000 · EducationNorthwood UniversityHILLSDALE COLLEGE: $2,000 · EducationHILLSDALE COLLEGEHARBOR SPRINGS AREA HISTORICAL SOCIETY: $1,000 · Arts & Culture
Other$72,531Education$32,000Arts & Culture$1,000

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetINDUSTRIAL ARTS INSTITUTE INC: $25,000 over 3y, 1.3% of budgetBESSER MUSEUM FOR NORTHEAST MICHIGAN INC: $10,000 over 1y, 1.0% of budgetNorthwood University: $5,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetBOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF ALPENA: $2,500 over 1y, 0.3% of budgetHILLSDALE COLLEGE: $2,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetHARBOR SPRINGS AREA HISTORICAL SOCIETY: $1,000 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetINLAND LAKES EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION: $1,000 over 1y, 0.1% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift FundMA4.7× affinity4 shared granteesties to 1 of 1Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Iron One Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Iron One Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%funder's share of their income ↑0%3%5%8%10%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    4report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–10%
    typical government reliance, FY20–25
    How this is measured
    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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 11 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2024, released 2024. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2025) is on record and reports no grant expense, so the figures above are from FY2024, the most recent year this funder made grants.

    Source object · view filing

    Play a game based on Iron One’s filings →

    More from the funding graph