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Lake Michigan Bird Observatory at a glanceMostly funded, not a grantmaker: see who funds it →

· Public charity

Lake Michigan Bird Observatory

Bird research and conservation in the western lake michigan region of the united states.

$64k
Granted FY2023
7
Grants FY2023
1
States reached
$8k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its fieldRead
04Through PlinthRead
01What it funds
01FY2023 · 7 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

How this is measured
The 7 grants below total $56,000, the rows itemized in this filing. The $64,100 headline is the total grant expense on the return; the other $8,100 is giving the schedule does not break out (grants under the $5,000 itemization floor, grants to individuals, grants on other schedules). Every figure below describes the itemized rows only.
$8,000
Median grant
1
States reached
$328k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
Wild Rivers Conservancy of the St Croix and Namekagan$8,000
Mississippi Valley Conservancy$8,000
Sauk Prairie Conservation Alliance$8,000
Bayfield County Forestry$8,000
Driftless Area Land Conservancy$8,000
UW Green Bay Cofrin Center for Diversity$8,000
Valley Stewardship Network$8,000
02The need
02

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 (FY23–23) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 100% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 9%Wild Rivers Conservancy of the St Croix and Namekagan: $8k → 9%Driftless Area Land Conservancy: $8k → 9%Sauk Prairie Conservation Alliance: $8k → 9%UW Green Bay Cofrin Center for Diversity: $8k → 10%Bayfield County Forestry: $8k → 11%Valley Stewardship Network: $8k → 15%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 field
03the grantee network

6 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

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 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 6 of the 7 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)
3
Early backer (in before they grew)
6/6
Grantees still filing
4/6
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

DRIFTLESS AREA LAND CONSERVANCY INC: $8,000 · EnvironmentDRIFTLESS AREA LAND CONSERVANCY INCWILD RIVERS CONSERVANCY OF THE ST CROIX & NAMEKAGON: $8,000 · EnvironmentWILD RIVERS CONSERVANCY OF THE ST CROIX & NAMEKAGONSAUK PRAIRIE CONSERVATION ALLIANCE INC: $8,000 · EnvironmentSAUK PRAIRIE CONSERVATION ALLIANCE INCVALLEY STEWARDSHIP NETWORK INC: $8,000 · EnvironmentVALLEY STEWARDSHIP NETWORK INCMISSISSIPPI VALLEY CONSERVANCY INC: $8,000 · EnvironmentMISSISSIPPI VALLEY CONSERVANCY INCUNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - GREEN BAY FOUNDATION INC: $8,000 · EducationUNIVERSITY OF WI…BAYFIELD COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES: $8,000 · OtherBAYFIELD COUNTY …
Environment$40,000Education$8,000Other$8,000

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

25%50%75%100%$100k$1.0M$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetDRIFTLESS AREA LAND CONSERVANCY INC: $8,000 over 1y, 0.8% of budgetWILD RIVERS CONSERVANCY OF THE ST CROIX & NAMEKAGON: $8,000 over 1y, 0.7% of budgetSAUK PRAIRIE CONSERVATION ALLIANCE INC: $8,000 over 1y, 15% of budgetVALLEY STEWARDSHIP NETWORK INC: $8,000 over 1y, 1.6% of budgetUNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - GREEN BAY FOUNDATION INC: $8,000 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetMISSISSIPPI VALLEY CONSERVANCY INC: $8,000 over 1y, 0.3% 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.

Alliant Energy Founda…Donor Advised Charita…Fidelity Investments …Amazonsmile Foundation
Alliant Energy Foundation IncWI13.3× affinity4 shared granteesties to 3 of 3Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · 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 Lake Michigan Bird Observatory funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Lake Michigan Bird Observatory. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%1%4%8%15%funder's share of their income ↑0%25%50%75%100%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    1report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    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.
    04Through Plinth

    Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

    How do I get to Lake Michigan Bird Observatory?

    Find your warmest path to Lake Michigan Bird Observatory 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.

    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 7 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 e-file return for fiscal year 2023, released 2023. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2024) is on record and reports $5k of grant expense, but none of it to a named recipient. On a Form 990 that can mean grants abroad, filed by region only (Schedule F), grants under $5,000, which are not itemized, or a schedule referenced as an attachment the e-file does not carry. The figures above are therefore from FY2023, the most recent year this funder named its grantees.

    Source object · view filing

    Play a game based on Lake Michigan Bird Observatory’s filings →

    More from the funding graph

    The unnamed billions
    grants reported with no recipient in the public record
    The regranting layer
    51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
    The DAF merry-go-round
    $9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
    The endowment market
    who holds foundation money, and what just moved
    The camps
    funders cluster by geography, not ideology
    By state
    where grant money is based, and what stays home