· Private foundation
Margaret Dunning Foundation
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 FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k25 grants · $687k
- $50k–250k8 grants · $425k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HARTLAND CONSOLIDATED SCHOOLS | $70,000 |
| SOUTH REDFORD SCHOOL DISTRICT | $55,000 |
| METHODIST CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY | $50,000 |
| LIVING AND LEARNING ENRICHMENT CENTER | $50,000 |
| ARC OF NORTHWEST WAYNE COUNTY | $50,000 |
| VISION TO LEARN | $50,000 |
| MI WORK MATTERS | $50,000 |
| FIRST STEP | $50,000 |
| FITZGERALD PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $48,000 |
| PLYMOUTH-CANTON COMMUNITY SCHOOLS | $45,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE PENN | $45,000 |
| UTICA COMMUNITY SCHOOLS | $43,000 |
| NEW HAVEN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS | $36,000 |
| LAKEVIEW SCHOOLS | $30,000 |
| NEW HOPE CENTER FOR GRIEF SUPPORT | $30,000 |
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 (FY18–25, $926k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 82% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 10% of Margaret Dunning 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, 90% of the giving stays in MI; read by stated purpose it is 81% — 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 +26% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
46 repeat relationships — 20 still active in FY2025, 26 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, 76% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $239k 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
COLLEGE FOR CREATIVE STUDIES7× · 2018–2024 · $1.0M · revenue +26%- PPPLYMOUTH PARC INC4× · 2018–2022 · $305k · revenue +24%
- PHPLYMOUTH HISTORICAL SOCIETY6× · 2018–2025 · $285k · revenue +3% · 31% of their budget
Funded once
- GAGENEVIEVE AND DONALD S GILMORE FDNone grant, 2018 · $115k · revenue +12%
THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTSone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue +14%- OSOAKLAND SCHOOL EDUCATION FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $86k · revenue +38%
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.
Informing and educating the public and decision makers about environmental issues.
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.…
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.…
To promote conditions favorable to job creation and business success in michigan.
The nmu foundation will establish and foster relationships to generate resources that benefit the strategic goals of northern michigan university.
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.
The corporation is organized and shall be operated exclusively for charitable, educational and scientific purposes by conducting or supporting activites exclusively for the benefit of, to perform the functions of, or to carry out the…
Assisting the community mental health boards of michigan in developing methods for mental health planning, care and treatment.
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…
Cooperatively empowering credit unions to increase financial well-being by supporting community enrichment, financial education, and credit union development initiatives
Henry ford health macomb hospital (hfmh) is an affiliate of henry ford health system dba henry ford health ("hf health") serving the northeastern metropolitan detroit michigan communities. as an integrated component of one of the nation's…
To encourage and support its members as professionals responsible for the delivery of patient-focused care.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan and the most unlike its peers is Genevieve and Donald S Gilmore Fdn. 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 40 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 17% 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.
48 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. 48 of the 86 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 COLLEGE FOR CREATIVE STUDIES ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds VEHICLES FOR CHANGE INC ↗
- Who funds PLYMOUTH PARC INC ↗
- Who funds PLYMOUTH HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Flint Cultural Center Corporation ↗
- Who funds GULF COAST COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE JEWISH FEDERATION OF SARASOTA-MANATEE INC ↗
- Who funds THE ARC OF NORTHWEST WAYNE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds LIVING & LEARNING ENRICHMENT CENTER ↗
- Who funds PLYMOUTH COMMUNITY ARTS COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds First Step The Western Wayne County Project Domestic Assault ↗
- Who funds GENEVIEVE AND DONALD S GILMORE FDN ↗
- Who funds VISTA MARIA ↗
- Who funds GROWTH WORKS INC ↗
- Who funds NEW HOPE CENTER FOR GRIEF SUPPORT INC ↗
- Who funds VISION TO LEARN ↗
- Who funds THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS ↗
- Who funds Kettering University ↗
- Who funds OAKWOOD HEALTHCARE INC ↗
- Who funds OAKLAND SCHOOL EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MACOMB COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE PENN INC ↗
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 · Dte Energy Foundation · Ford Philanthropy · United Way for Southeastern Michigan · The Wilcox Foundation · Orsa Foundation · Consumers Energy Foundation · Canton Community Foundation Inc · The Kresge Foundation · Community Financial Credit Union · Charles Stewart Mott Foundation · Children's Hospital of Michigan 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 Margaret Dunning 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.
- Vehicles for Change Inc — 16% 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 Margaret Dunning Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Margaret Dunning 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.