· Private foundation
Mitchell and Sarah Miller Foundation
Its FY2025 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 48% of MITCHELL AND SARAH MILLER FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k11 grants · $27k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $112k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| IMPACT CHURCH | $35,000 |
| DAIRY DISCOVERY | $27,500 |
| BRODYS BE CAFE | $22,500 |
| FLAT RIVER OUTREACH MINISTRIES | $16,667 |
| ASPIRE OUTREACH MINISTRIES | $10,000 |
| LOWELL WRESTING CLUB | $8,550 |
| BAYSIDE COMMUNITY CHURCH | $6,000 |
| PINKY SWEAR FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| LOWELL HIGH SCHOOL | $2,500 |
| GOPHER WRESTLING CLUB | $1,000 |
| LONGBOAT KEY GARDEN CLUB | $1,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| LOWELL LACROSS CLUB | $600 |
| MSU WRESTLING CLUB | $500 |
| CORNELL UNIVERSTIY WRESTLING | $500 |
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 US giving — 88% of grant dollars ($519k). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 12% that went abroad ($69k) is mapped below.
Your human-services grants (FY21–25, $67k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
Which US states your grants reach
Beyond the US — 12% of all-years giving ($69k)
1 country, by the recipient’s country on the filing.
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. International giving is mapped by the recipient’s country from the same 990 filings; comparable need data isn’t available at that grain.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 11% of Mitchell and Sarah Miller 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, 75% of the giving stays in MI; read by stated purpose it is 68% — 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 +42% since the first grant, against +13% for the ones you funded once.
17 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 8 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, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $15k 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
- LWLOWELL WRESTLING CLUB5× · 2021–2025 · $79k · revenue +141%
- BCBE CAFE4× · 2022–2025 · $57k · revenue +203%
- FRFLAT RIVER OUTREACH MINISTRIES INC4× · 2021–2025 · $37k · revenue +51%
Funded once
- GEGOLDEN ERA SCHOOLone grant, 2024 · $69k
- VVVAIL VETERANS FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2021 · $8k · revenue -69%
- LCLOWELL COMMUNITY WELLNESSone grant, 2023 · $5k · revenue -96%
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.
Youth baseball and softball recreational league
Greater lowell road runners club promotes adult and youth running in the greater lowell area and organizes road races and running events
Youth sports
Little league baseball organization.
Little league baseball for youth
Youth baseball league
Little league believes in the power of youth baseball and softball to teach life lessons tht build stronger individuals and communities
Youth Baseball Instruction, Competition, and Tournament
Youth recreational soccer
Beverly lacrosse boosters association is formed to promote lacrosse in beverly, massachusetts and support all levels from youth to high school lacrosse programs for boys and girls. the objectives include promotion of competiive lacrosse,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is First Liberty Institute and the most unlike its peers is Lowell Youth Sports 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 25 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
18 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. 18 of the 39 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 LOWELL WRESTLING CLUB ↗
- Who funds DAIRY DISCOVERY ↗
- Who funds BE CAFE ↗
- Who funds FLAT RIVER OUTREACH MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds PINKY SWEAR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VAIL VETERANS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LOWELL COMMUNITY WELLNESS ↗
- Who funds LOWELL YOUTH SPORTS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CASA of Kent County Inc ↗
- Who funds FEEDING AMERICA WEST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds LONGBOAT KEY GARDEN CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds Gopher Wrestling Club ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds FIRST LIBERTY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds CRYSTAL LAKE AND WATERSHED ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THORNAPPLE VALLEY BASEBALL LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds JORDAN LAKE TRAIL BOARD ↗
- Who funds Belmont University ↗
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 Rapids Community Foundation · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Amazonsmile 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 Mitchell and Sarah Miller 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.