· Private foundation
John a & Marlene L Boll 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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k36 grants · $93k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $160k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PROJECT DANCE FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| THE HELM CENTER AT THE BOLL LIFE CENTER | $20,000 |
| BAPTIST HEALTH | $20,000 |
| OCEAN REEF COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| JT MESTDAGH FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| GROSSE POINTE MEMORIAL CHURCH | $15,000 |
| GROSSE POINTE SOUTH HOCKEY | $10,000 |
| OCEAN REEF CULTURAL CENTER | $10,000 |
| GROSSE POINTE YACHT CLUB FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| GROSS POINTE SHORES IMPROVEMENT | $10,000 |
| HIGH POINT UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| GROSSE POINTE THEATRE | $7,000 |
| YMCA OF METRO DETROIT | $5,000 |
| GROSSE POINTE YOUTH NAUTICAL EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
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 (FY19–24, $551k) land where the poverty rate runs at 21%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 99% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 7% of John a & Marlene L Boll 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 44% — 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +37% since the first grant, against +2% for the ones you funded once.
60 repeat relationships — 36 still active in FY2024, 24 since wound down; 10 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, 81% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $45k 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
- OROCEAN REEF CHAPEL FOUNDATION INC6× · 2019–2024 · $1.0M · revenue ×19
- TJTHE JT MESTDAGH FOUNDATION5× · 2019–2024 · $80k · revenue +37%
- HPHIGH POINT UNIVERSITY6× · 2019–2024 · $60k · revenue +73%
Funded once
YMCA of Metropolitan Detroitone grant, 2021 · $514k · revenue +23%- SCSpringHill Campsone grant, 2021 · $101k · revenue +2%
- THTHE HELM CENTER AT THE BOLL LIFE CENTERSERVICES FOR OLDER CITIZENSone grant, 2019 · $30k
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 restore, preserve, maintain, protect, and repair the detroit yacht club clubhouse, a structure on the national register of historic places. to provide access at designated times for education and public groups to tour the structure with…
To advance pharmacy through education, practice innovation and research focused on patient care, for the improvement and promotion of public health and public education.
Foundation for detroit's future (fdf) shall work to lessen the burdens of government, combat community deterioration, and improve the quality of life of the general public in and around the city of detroit through, among other things,…
To restore, repair, and refurbish the state-owned lansing and mackinac island official residences of the governor of the state of michigan; to restore, repair, and refurbish other buildings and developments of historical significance to…
For all state residents, diverse civic stakeholders and philanthropy, the center for michigan (the center) and its nonprofit newsrooms - bridge michigan and bridgedetroit - make michigan better through high-quality, nonpartisan journalism…
Delta dental fund's mission is to improve the oral health of the public and to advance dental science and the dental profession through research and education.
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.…
The nmu foundation will establish and foster relationships to generate resources that benefit the strategic goals of northern michigan university.
The primary role of the grand rapids public museum foundation is fundraising for the grand rapids public museum, but it also has overall responsibility for the current and long-term viability of the organization.
Supports the operations and programs of the grand rapids symphony society by sustaining the orchestra's concert, music education and accessibility programming across west michigan.
To hold title and perform related functions in connection with a research park and innovation center in support of michigan state university research foundation.
DPSFs mission is to create and enhance educational opportunities for over 50,000 Detroit Public Schools Community Districts students, families and educators. DPS Foundation was organized to ensure DPS, now DPSCD student and families to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Community Foundation of St Clair County and the most unlike its peers is Edsel & Eleanor Ford House. 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 34 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) — 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 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.
44 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. 44 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 OCEAN REEF CHAPEL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit ↗
- Who funds OCEAN REEF COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SpringHill Camps ↗
- Who funds THE JT MESTDAGH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HIGH POINT UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN PARKINSON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHRISTIAN LIGHTHOUSE CHURCH ↗
- Who funds OCEAN REEF CULTURAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds DETROIT SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds GROSSE POINTE THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds HEALTHNETWORK FOUNDATION FKA HEALTH NET FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GROSSE POINTE YACHT CLUB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PROJECT DANCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE VOLUNTEERS IN MEDICINE CLINIC ↗
- Who funds GROSSE POINTE YOUTH NAUTICAL EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DETROIT OPERA ↗
- Who funds DETROIT RIVERFRONT CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds GROSSE POINTE CHAMBER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GROSSE POINTE FOUNDATION FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds THE EVERGLADES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CURE MULTIPLE MYELOMA CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS ↗
- Who funds FORAFRIKA USA ↗
- Who funds Great Lakes Center for the Arts ↗
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: Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan · The Ralph C Wilson Jr Foundation · Dte Energy Foundation · Maibach Family Foundation · George and Ruth Harms Foundation · The John H and Katherine J Weiland Foundation Inc · The Holmes Family Foundation Inc · Elizabeth Allan & Warren Shelden Fund · The Hajim Family Foundation · William & Martha Ford Fund · Henry Ford Southeast Michigan Community Health · Ocean Reef Community Foundation Inc
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 John a & Marlene L Boll 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.
- South Florida Pbs 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to John a & Marlene L Boll Foundation?
Find your warmest path to John a & Marlene L Boll 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.