· Public charity
Michigan Humanities Council
The MICHIGAN HUMANITIES COUNCIL connects people and communities by fostering and creating quality cultural programs
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.
The 17 grants below total $254,240 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $396,380 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $142,140 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k1 grant · $9k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $245k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LIBRARY OF MICHIGAN FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN | $20,000 |
| WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY | $20,000 |
| GRAND RAPIDS CHILDREN'S MUSEUM | $20,000 |
| 826MICHIGAN | $20,000 |
| PLOWSHARES THEATRE COMPANY | $20,000 |
| LAWRENCE TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY | $20,000 |
| NEXT | $19,500 |
| ALLIED MEDIA PROJECTS | $15,815 |
| MICHIGAN TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| MARYGROVE CONSERVANCY | $10,000 |
| ALMA COLLEGE | $10,000 |
| MICHIGAN STAGE | $10,000 |
| THE CHARLES H MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY | $10,000 |
| CAPITAL CITY FILM FESTIVAL | $10,000 |
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, $107k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 70% 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 +41% since the first grant, against +27% for the ones you funded once.
91 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2025, 79 since wound down; 5 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, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $74k 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
- LOLIBRARY OF MICHIGAN FOUNDATION6× · 2017–2025 · $115k · revenue +37%
- URUNDERGROUND RAILROAD SOCIETY OF CASS COUNTY5× · 2018–2023 · $104k · revenue +52% · 28% of their budget
DETROIT PUBLIC THEATRE6× · 2017–2023 · $95k · revenue +164%
Funded once
- HSHISTORICAL SOCIETY OF GREATER LANSINGone grant, 2023 · $25k
- TDTHE DETROIT PUBLIC LIBRARY FRIENDS FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2018 · $24k · revenue -19%
- RHRaven Hill Discovery Centergraduatedone grant, 2020 · $23k · revenue +27%
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 promote historical study and preserve the lighthouse museum
To educate the public on the history of Manistee County
Maintain historical museum
Education the museum functions as a time capsule using everday object and images to tell stories collected from the daily lives of the men, women, and families who built our community. the museum allows visitors to re-connect with the…
Natural and cultural history interpretation and preservation
The historical society of saginaw county is committed to serve the community by telling the continuing story of the people of the saginaw region through exploration, preservation and presentation of their historical and cultural heritage.
Motion picture exhibition
To provide a cultural center and museum for the city of port huron and environs, and to encourage and solicit the giving of objects of art, scientific, or historic interest for display and exhibitions.
Inspire awareness, appreciation and passion for michigan's history and stories, culture and environment through the arts.
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.
Preserve and honor the history and traditions of the Michigan State Police (MSP).
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Templearts 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 33 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) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
151 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 151 of the 281 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 LIBRARY OF MICHIGAN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNDERGROUND RAILROAD SOCIETY OF CASS COUNTY ↗
- Who funds DETROIT PUBLIC THEATRE ↗
- Who funds YOUTH ARTS UNLOCKED ↗
- Who funds TROY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds HOPE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Detroit Historical Society ↗
- Who funds ARAB COMMUNITY CENTER FOR ECONOMIC AND S ↗
- Who funds WILD SWAN THEATER ↗
- Who funds LAWRENCE TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Long Haul Productions Inc ↗
- Who funds DETROIT PUBLIC MEDIA ↗
- Who funds BEAVER ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds CALVIN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Kalamazoo Institute of Arts ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL CITY FILM FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds DETROIT PUPPET COMPANY ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY ↗
- Who funds 826 MICHIGAN INC ↗
- Who funds PLOWSHARES THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES ↗
- Who funds ALMA COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds TEMPLEARTS ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN ENVIROMENTAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds Real People Media Inc ↗
- Who funds Grandville Avenue Arts and Humanities Inc ↗
- Who funds CROOKED TREE ARTS COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds Historical Society of Michigan ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF HISTORICAL HAMTRAMCK ↗
- Who funds Friends of Theodore Roethke Foundation ↗
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 Fred & Barbara Erb Family Foundation · Dte Energy Foundation · Culturesource · Hudson-Webber Foundation · The Skillman Foundation · The Kresge Foundation · Consumers Energy Foundation · Community Foundation for Muskegon County · Kalamazoo Community Foundation · The Meijer Foundation · Irving S Gilmore 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 Michigan Humanities Council 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.