· Private foundation
Merle & Sheri Dewitt Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
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 $10k22 grants · $49k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $161k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MUSEUM OF THE BIBLE | $40,000 |
| OTTAWA REFORMED CHURCH | $31,000 |
| WESTERN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY | $25,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN COLLEGE | $25,000 |
| FOCUS ON THE FAMILY | $10,000 |
| MULTIPLICATION NETWORK | $10,000 |
| MISSION INDIA | $10,000 |
| AMERICAN VALUES | $10,000 |
| CHILDREN'S ADVOCACY CENTER | $9,780 |
| Individual grant recipient | $8,500 |
| ZEELAND CHRISTIAN | $5,500 |
| BORCULO CHRISTIAN SCHOOL | $4,500 |
| HOSPICE OF HOLLAND | $2,000 |
| BLVD CHURCH | $2,000 |
| UPWARD BOUND | $2,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $61k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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 +45% since the first grant, against +13% for the ones you funded once.
48 repeat relationships — 25 still active in FY2024, 23 since wound down; 5 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6k 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
- BCBORCULO CHRISTIAN SCHOOL8× · 2017–2024 · $157k · revenue +220%
- NCNORTHWESTERN COLLEGE8× · 2017–2024 · $92k · revenue +26%
- SFSociety for Christian Instruction Zeeland8× · 2017–2024 · $75k · revenue +25%
Funded once
- FOFRIENDS OF AMERICAN MISSION HOSPITAL INCone grant, 2022 · $50k · revenue -92%
- GSGENERAL SYNOD COUNCIL OF THE REFORMED CHURCH IN AMERICAone grant, 2018 · $16k
- MRMCBAIN RURAL AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $3k · revenue -42%
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.
Beacon of hope's mission is to be god's hand offering christ-centered, inclusive, accessible and professional mental health counseling.
Arborbrook Christian Academy partners with parents to equip, empower, and encourage students to cultivate godly character, pursue life-long learning, and love the Lord Jesus Christ.
At heritage christian school, we exist to serve christ by partnering with parents to provide biblically faithful, academically excellent education.
Summit Classical Christian School is a PreK-12 school that exists to cultivate generations of joyful disciples of Christ by partnering with faithful Christian families to educate their children from a Biblical worldview using classical…
Trinity oaks christian academny partners with the christian home and church in the training of children maximizing their potential to lead christian lives according to biblical standards.
To provide biblical based counseling
Bring connection to churches for ministry and education in local and global mission
Faith-based education and care of children
Private, christian education: pre-kindergarten - 12th grade. our mission is to build a solid foundation for life by providing students with an excellent education that integrates academic achievement, biblical truth, and christ-like…
The mission of heritage christian school is to glorify god through the discipleship of students and the pursuit of excellence in education with the bible as the foundation and jesus christ as our focus.
Landmark christian school partners with christian families by equipping college-bound students to embrace a christ-centered worldview, grow as servant leaders, and steward god's unique purpose for their lives.
Biblical counseling
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Kids' Food Basket Inc and the most unlike its peers is Mikas Lunch Inc. 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 28 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 10% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
32 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. 32 of the 67 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 BORCULO CHRISTIAN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds NORTHWESTERN COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Society for Christian Instruction Zeeland ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF AMERICAN MISSION HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF THE BIBLE ↗
- Who funds MULTIPLICATION NETWORK MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE OF HOLLAND INC ↗
- Who funds CRAN-HILL MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds MIDTOWN COUNSELING SERVICES ↗
- Who funds LAKESHORE PREGNANCY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Kids Hope USA ↗
- Who funds OUT SIDE IN INC ↗
- Who funds SHIELDS OF HOPE ↗
- Who funds BENJAMIN'S HOPE ↗
- Who funds HOPE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds RESILIENCE ADVOCATES FOR ENDING VIOLENCE ↗
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: The Community Foundation of the Holland/Zeeland Area Inc · Marvin G & Jerene L Dewitt Family Foundation · De Witt Families Conduit Foundation · Grand Haven Area Community Foundation Inc · Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation · Douglas & Sandra Dekock Family Foun · Barnabas Foundation · Howard Miller Foundation · Onequest Foundation · Jim and Ginger Jurries Foundation · Peter C & Emajean Cook Foundation · John and Judy Spoelhof 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 Merle & Sheri Dewitt 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Merle & Sheri Dewitt Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Merle & Sheri Dewitt 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.