· Private foundation
Jack and Lija Romence Family 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 55% of JACK AND LIJA ROMENCE FAMILY FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k24 grants · $32k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $175k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CURE INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN'S HOSPITALS | $50,000 |
| HELEN DEVOS CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $45,000 |
| POTTERS HOUSE | $40,000 |
| DA BLODGETT ST JOHNS HOME | $20,000 |
| VAN ANDEL INSTITUTE | $20,000 |
| COURT APPOINTED SPECIAL ADVOCATES | $20,000 |
| ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL | $20,000 |
| GRAND VALLEY UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| UNITY SPIRITUAL COMMUNITY CHURCH | $5,000 |
| MAP INTERNATIONAL | $4,000 |
| PROJECT HOPE | $4,000 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $2,000 |
| FIRST HAND FOUNDATION | $2,000 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS | $2,000 |
| LATVIAN CLUB OF SAGINAW | $1,500 |
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, $15k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 1% 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.
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 +23% for the ones you funded once.
51 repeat relationships — 24 still active in FY2025, 27 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, 72% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $72k 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
- TPThe Potters House5× · 2021–2025 · $90k · revenue +72%
- CUCALVIN UNIVERSITY5× · 2017–2024 · $80k · revenue +6%
- VAVAN ANDEL INSTITUTE8× · 2017–2025 · $38k · revenue +25%
Funded once
- DCDEVOS CHILDRENS HOSPITALone grant, 2021 · $10k
- PNPROJECT NEW HOPE INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue +152%
- CMCARIBBEAN MEDICAL AND HUMANITARIAN RELIEF CORPgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $1k · revenue +86%
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.
A nonprofit scientific research organization that develops vaccines and antibodies for hiv, tuberculosis, and emerging infectious diseases.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
To serve our communities by provding innovative and compassionate healthcare.
Help improve policy and decision making through research and analysis.
Alight builds a meaningful life for and with the displaced. not simply addressing basic needs, but building a life filled with joy, dignity, connection, and purpose. we walk with them along their entire journey of displacement and deliver…
Wri is committed to creating change that improves people's lives and ensures the natural world can thrive. (see schedule o)wri's bold vision requires a formula for success we call "count it. change it. scale it.":- count it: our work is…
TO MANAGE AN INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, HEALTH, AND RELIEF FOCUSED FAMILY OF ORGANIZATIONS HELPING PEOPLE AND COMMUNITIES LIFT THEMSELVES OUT OF POVERTY, SUPPORT WELL-BEING OF INDIVIDUALS, FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES, AND PROVIDE…
Assist banner health complete its mission to make health care easier so life can be better by providing integrated & coordinated care & population health management.
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
People inc. provides health and human services that enrich lives and communities through innovation and supportive services. with a goal to help people achieve greater independence and quality of life, people inc. provides day,…
As the parent entity of a blended health organization, highmark health seeks to improve the health and well-being of the people and communities it serves by providing affordable, accessible and high-quality healthcare.
To provide exceptional healthcare services in a safe and trustful environment through the expertise, committment, and compassion of our family of caregivers.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Catholic Medical Mission Board Inc and the most unlike its peers is Kent Medical Foundation. 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 54 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
54 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. 54 of the 100 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 The Potters House ↗
- Who funds CALVIN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds DA BLODGETT - ST JOHN'S ↗
- Who funds VAN ANDEL INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds Hospice of Michigan Inc ↗
- Who funds MAP International Inc ↗
- Who funds PROJECT NEW HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds ORACLE HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds MEL TROTTER MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds SUSAN MAST ALS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YOUNG LIFE ↗
- Who funds PANCREATIC CANCER ACTION NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GILDA'S CLUB GRAND RAPIDS ↗
- Who funds SAFE HAVEN MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds ALICE LLOYD COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds GUIDING LIGHT MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds HOPE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds HELP Pregnancy Crisis Aid Inc ↗
- Who funds Kent Medical Foundation ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN WORLD RELIEF INC ↗
- Who funds CARIBBEAN MEDICAL AND HUMANITARIAN RELIEF CORP ↗
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 · Peter C & Emajean Cook Foundation · Douglas & Maria Devos Foundation · Cdv5 Foundation · The Meijer Foundation · Dick and Betsy Devos Family Foundation · Heart of West Michigan United Way · Ge Aerospace Foundation · Jct Foundation · The Mercantile Bank Foundation · The David and Carol Van Andel Family Foundation · Steve & Amy Van Andel 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 Jack and Lija Romence Family 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.
- Mercy Corps — 47% of income from government
- Lutheran World Relief Inc — 47% of income from government
- The National Federation of the Blind — 2% of income from government
- Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation — 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.