· Private foundation
Nickless Family Charitable Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 57% of NICKLESS FAMILY CHARITABLE 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 $10k10 grants · $36k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $386k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $200k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CAN COUNCIL | $100,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE GREAT LAKES BAY REGION | $50,000 |
| MUNSON HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| UNDERGROUND RAILROAD INC | $40,000 |
| YWCA EVANSTONNORTHSHORE | $40,000 |
| CHILDRENS CABINET INC | $40,000 |
| SAGINAW ARTS AND SCIENCES ACADEMY | $38,000 |
| FOSTER FAMILIES NAVIGATION AND RESOURCE CENTER | $30,000 |
| CAN COUNCIL | $30,000 |
| BAY CITY CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL | $29,876 |
| ENDEX | $25,000 |
| BAY AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| TRI-COUNTY COMMUNITY ADJUCATION PROGRAM | $20,000 |
| WOMEN OF QUAL CREEK | $15,000 |
| FOOD BANK OF NORTHERN NEVADA | $15,000 |
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, $548k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 74% 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
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 7% of Nickless Family Charitable 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, 67% of the giving stays in MI; read by stated purpose it is 61% — 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 +56% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
46 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 32 since wound down; 12 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, 65% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $206k 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
- GGGUARDIAN GROUP4× · 2021–2024 · $321k · revenue +56%
- URUNDERGROUND RAILROAD INC8× · 2017–2025 · $295k · revenue +39%
- FBFood Bank of Eastern Michigan5× · 2017–2021 · $255k · revenue +43%
Funded once
- BABAY AREA SOCCER ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2024 · $150k · revenue -27% · 34% of their budget
- BCBAY COUNTY HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue +76% · 75% of their budget
- HFHABITAT FOR HUMANITYgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $99k · revenue +136% · 43% of their budget
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.
We, trinity health-michigan and trinity health, serve together in the spirit of the gospel as a compassionate and transforming healing presence within our communities. trinity health-michigan is a member of trinity health.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
We, trinity health grand haven hospital and trinity health, serve together in the spirit of the gospel as a compassionate and transforming healing presence within our communities.trinity health grand haven hospital is a member of trinity…
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
We, mercy health and trinity health, serve together in the spirit of the gospel as a compassionate and transforming healing presence within our communities.mercy health partners is a member of mercy health and trinity health.
Mclaren health care, through its subsidiaries, will be the best value in health care as defined by quality outcomes and cost.
To enhance the health and well-being of the communities we serve.
Primary functions are the coordination and delivery of health care resources and services, health care education for the hospital service area, long range analysis of health care needs and development of programs, and arranging for…
Our mission is to help people to live longer, healthier lives with dignity, and to use all of our resources to give them everything they expect and deserve in comprehensive cardiovascular care for their families and themselves.
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
We, trinity senior living communities and trinity health, serve together in the spirit of the gospel as a compassionate and transforming healing presence within our communities.trinity continuing care services (d/b/a trinity health senior…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Hope Community Services Inc and the most unlike its peers is Tri-Star Charitable Foundation. 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 42 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
55 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. 55 of the 126 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 GUARDIAN GROUP ↗
- Who funds UNDERGROUND RAILROAD INC ↗
- Who funds Food Bank of Eastern Michigan ↗
- Who funds BAY AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHILD ABUSE & NEGLECT COUNCIL GREAT LAKES BAY REGION ↗
- Who funds MUNSON HEALTHCARE FOUNDATIONS ↗
- Who funds Great Lakes Bay Health Centers ↗
- Who funds BAY AREA SOCCER ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ALTERNATIVES INC ↗
- Who funds MUNSON HEALTHCARE MANISTEE HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds BAY COUNTY HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds DOW BAY AREA FAMILY YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY ↗
- Who funds HOPE COMMUNITY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF NORTH LAKE TAHOE ↗
- Who funds University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds RYE YOUTH COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds EDDY HOUSE ↗
- Who funds TRI-STAR CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MCLAREN BAY MEDICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE GREAT LAKES BAY REGION ↗
- Who funds BAY VETERANS 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: Consumers Energy Foundation · Bay Area Community Foundation · The Kantzler Foundation · Gougeon Employees Foundation · Bierlein Companies Foundation · Russell H & Maxine E Smith Charitable Foundation · Tri-Star Charitable Foundation · Saginaw Community Foundation · Richard Barton Law Memorial Trust · Weinlander Fitzhugh Foundation Inc · Michigan College Access Network · Boutell Memorial Fund
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 Nickless Family Charitable 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.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% 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.