· Private foundation
James and Shirley Balk Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k10 grants · $20k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $67k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $60k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COREWELL - HELEN DEVOS CHIDLREN'S HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $60,000 |
| HOSPICE OF MICHIGAN | $32,500 |
| VAN ANDEL INSTITUTE | $14,200 |
| GRAND RAPIDS CHRISTIAN SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| CASA OF KENT COUNTY INC | $10,000 |
| ROCKFORD HIGH SCHOOL | $4,000 |
| YOUNGLIFE | $3,500 |
| SAN JUAN DIEGO ACADEMY | $3,000 |
| GILDA'S CLUB | $2,500 |
| UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA | $2,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
| FIRST REFORMED CHURCH | $1,000 |
| RED GLASSES MOVEMENT | $500 |
| FREDERIK MEIJER GARDENS | $500 |
| NATIONAL MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SOCIETY | $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 (FY17–24, $416k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 0% 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 +44% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
42 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2024, 31 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- HOHospice of Michigan Inc8× · 2017–2024 · $397k · revenue +46%
- GRGRAND RAPIDS CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS5× · 2017–2024 · $140k · revenue +45%
- HCHOPE COLLEGE2× · 2018–2019 · $101k · revenue +23%
Funded once
- KCKENT COUNTY PARKS FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $1.4M · revenue -66% · 81% of their budget
- SHSPECTRUM HEALTH - HELEN DEVOS CHIDLREN'S HOSPITAL FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $350k
- MSMARCO SCHOOL ACADEMYone grant, 2019 · $150k
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.
The nmu foundation will establish and foster relationships to generate resources that benefit the strategic goals of northern michigan university.
To promote conditions favorable to job creation and business success in michigan.
The michigan christian home dba beacon hill at eastgate, a not-for-profit corporation, provides housing and health services in a christian environment for older adults, thus enabling them to meet their ongoing physical, social and…
The mission of the michigan science center is to inspire curious minds of all ages to discover, explore and appreciate science, technology, engineering and math in a creative, dynamic learning environment.
Mid michigan community action guides local residents on the path to self-sufficiency through empowerment, education and community enrichment.
Creating healthy communities - together
Our mission is conserving West Michigans ecologically critical land. We protect land by creating public nature preserves, providing support to communities and local governments in creating natural areas, and helping private landowners…
Creating healthy communities - together
Business leaders for michigan is a nonprofit, nonpartisan statewide organization driven by ceos from the state's leading employers, all working toward a shared goal: making michigan a top 10 state for jobs, talent and a thriving economy.…
Assisting the community mental health boards of michigan in developing methods for mental health planning, care and treatment.
To encourage and support its members as professionals responsible for the delivery of patient-focused care.
Mifma supports the viability of all community-driven marketplaces so that they can connect all consumers to local farms and businesses.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Kids' Food Basket Inc 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 47 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 11% 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 92 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 KENT COUNTY PARKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Hospice of Michigan Inc ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds HOPE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS CHILDREN'S MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds MARCO ISLAND ACADEMY A PUBLIC CHARTER HIGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds VAN ANDEL INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds CAMP BLODGETT ↗
- Who funds CASA of Kent County Inc ↗
- Who funds TRI CITIES KIWANIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Paws With A Cause ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds ROCKFORD EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YOUNG LIFE ↗
- Who funds KIDS' FOOD BASKET INC ↗
- Who funds ROCKFORD COMMUNITY SERVICE CENTER ↗
- Who funds CATHERINES HEALTH 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 · Peter C & Emajean Cook Foundation · Frey Foundation · Douglas & Maria Devos Foundation · The Sebastian Foundation · The Wege Foundation · Heart of West Michigan United Way · The Mercantile Bank Foundation · Grand Haven Area Community Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of the Holland/Zeeland Area Inc · Barnabas Foundation · Wolverine World Wide 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 James and Shirley Balk 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.
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Find your warmest path to James and Shirley Balk 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.