· Private foundation
Les & Ann Biederman Foundation Inc
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k19 grants · $80k
- $10k–50k21 grants · $360k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NMC FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| MAYO CLINIC | $30,000 |
| ST CLAIR BUTTERFLY FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $25,000 |
| GT REGIONAL LAND CONSERVANCY | $25,000 |
| FOOD RESCUE (GOODWILL INDUSTRIES) | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| MT HOLIDAY INC | $20,000 |
| INLAND SEAS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION | $15,000 |
| HOSPICE OF MICHIGAN | $15,000 |
| MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY | $15,000 |
| THOMPSONVILLE AREA REVITALIZATION | $15,000 |
| TBAYS (YOUTH SOCCER) | $12,100 |
| CHILD & FAMILY SERVICES | $12,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $149k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 100% 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.
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 +62% since the first grant, against +35% for the ones you funded once.
53 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2025, 30 since wound down; 17 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, 60% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $182k 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
- ISINLAND SEAS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION9× · 2017–2025 · $156k · revenue +100%
- MHMT HOLIDAY INC6× · 2018–2025 · $148k · revenue +144%
- HFHABITAT FOR HUMANITY6× · 2020–2025 · $135k · revenue +149%
Funded once
- GRGT REGIONAL LAND CONCERVANCYone grant, 2021 · $50k
- GTGRAND TRAVERSE LAND CONSERVANCYone grant, 2019 · $50k
- CFCOMMUNITY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $38k
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 Center's mission is to inspire, entertain, educate, and serve all in Northern Michigan year-round by presenting exceptional experiences across the full spectrum of the performing arts and offering impactful educational opportunities.
We advocate and facilitate the development of a network of multipurpose recreational trails in Northern Lower Michigan.
The mission of gtrlc is to protect significant natural, scenic and farm lands and advance land stewardship now and for future generations.
To stimulate and sustain a vibrant regional economy by facilitating economic growth and prosperity.
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…
To conserve the land, water and scenic character of leelanau county, and to provide educational programs to develop an understanding and appreciation of leelanau county's natural heritage.
Inspire awareness, appreciation and passion for michigan's history and stories, culture and environment through the arts.
To protect scenic and natural lands in northern Michigan.
To permanently protect and improve natural environments in Mid-Michigan by leading and inspiring actions that conserve vital habitats and waterways for the benefit of our entire community.
Safeguard southern michigan's land and water to support diverse, resilient, and thriving communities - forever
Liaa is a community service organization working to increase the sustainability of communities and expand civic engagement. our mission statement is: helping people to shape better communities through: participation, education, information…
A member driven organization committed to providing quality professional park and recreation programs and services with fiscal integrity and progressive leadership to michigans recreation and parks trade.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Old Town Playhouse Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Dynamic Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 30 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 8% 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.
47 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. 47 of the 125 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 MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds INLAND SEAS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MT HOLIDAY INC ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY ↗
- Who funds TRAVERSE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA D/B/A TRAVERSE CITY PHILHARMONIC ↗
- Who funds MID MICHIGAN HONOR FLIGHT INC ↗
- Who funds The Great Lakes Childrens Museum ↗
- Who funds FOR LOVE OF WATER ↗
- Who funds SEEDS ↗
- Who funds INTERLOCHEN CENTER FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds CIVIL AIR PATROL INC ↗
- Who funds Grand Traverse Pavilions Foundation ↗
- Who funds TRAVERSE AREA RECREATION & TRANSPORTATION TRAILS INC ↗
- Who funds FATHER FRED FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BENZIE AREA CHRISTIAN NEIGHBORS INC ↗
- Who funds GENERATIONS AHEAD ↗
- Who funds OLD TOWN PLAYHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds ST CLAIR BUTTERFLY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TRAVERSE BAY CHILDRENS ADVOCACY 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 Traverse Regional Community Foundation · Oleson Foundation · The Art and Mary Schmuckal Family Foundation · Rotary Charities of Traverse City · Consumers Energy Foundation · Jim and Diana Huckle Family Foundation · The Broad Family Foundation · Green Brick Foundation Inc · Kegley Family Foundation · Barton J Ingraham & Gail G Ingraham Foundation · William G Janis & Susanne M Janis Family Foundation · The Julius H and Barbara B Beers Family 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 Les & Ann Biederman Foundation Inc 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.