· Public charity
Superior Health Foundation
Our mission is to proactively support organizations and initiatives across the upper peninsula to improve health and well-being.
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.
The 35 grants below total $930,983 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $987,280 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $56,297 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 · FY2024
- Under $10k10 grants · $80k
- $10k–50k20 grants · $357k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $494k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GiveDirectly | $150,000 |
| Michigan State University - Dept of Peds & Human Develop | $135,930 |
| Great Lakes Recovery Centers Inc | $80,000 |
| Fork Farms Foundation | $65,099 |
| Upper Peninsula Health Care Solutions Inc | $62,680 |
| Growing Forward Together | $48,732 |
| OSF St Francis | $29,300 |
| Catholic Social Services of the Upper Peninsula | $25,000 |
| Superior Child Advocacy Center | $24,948 |
| Gogebic Community College | $24,923 |
| Live Life Loud Resources | $20,000 |
| Marquette Alger RESA | $20,000 |
| Greater Ishpeming Commission on Aging | $18,580 |
| Unite UP | $18,561 |
| Women's Center Inc | $15,028 |
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, $1.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
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 Superior Health 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, 93% of the giving stays in MI; read by stated purpose it is 79% — 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 +22% for the ones you funded once.
37 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2024, 19 since wound down; 13 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, 63% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $344k 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
- USUPCAP SERVICES INC3× · 2021–2023 · $788k · revenue +11%
- GLGREAT LAKES RECOVERY CENTERS INC8× · 2017–2024 · $667k · revenue +69%
- MTMICHIGAN TRANSPORTATION CONNECTION2× · 2019–2023 · $425k · revenue +61% · 50% of their budget
Funded once
- EUEASTERN UPPER PENINSULA OPIOID RESPONSE CONSORTIUMone grant, 2021 · $150k
- WUWESTERN UPPER PENISULA DHDone grant, 2021 · $150k
- AIASPIRUS IRONWOOD HOSPITAL & CLINICS INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $107k · revenue +56%
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 provide high quality community-oriented, patient-centered health services for all.
Creating healthy communities - together
Assisting the community mental health boards of michigan in developing methods for mental health planning, care and treatment.
Creating healthy communities - together
Creating healthy communities - together
To provide high quality health care to individuals and community groups in Saginaw, Bay, and other nearby counties. Services are provided without regard to race, beliefs or ability to pay.
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.
To act as a vehicle to provide access to organized systems of health care and improve the health status of individuals in the community.
Creating healthy communities - together
Mclaren health care corporation, along with its subsidiaries, will be michigan's best value in healthcare as defined by quality outcomes and cost.
To promote cooperative medical services throughout marquette county and the upper peninsula of michigan that would provide a continuum of care for qualifying, uninsured, and/or under-insured persons.
The organization's mission is to support community-based, stakeholder driven training for care teams including physicians, care managers, care coordinators, medical assistants and behavioral health specialists; facilitate training and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Upper Peninsula Health Care Solutions Inc and the most unlike its peers is West End Health 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 31 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
64 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. 64 of the 95 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 UPCAP SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds GREAT LAKES RECOVERY CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN TRANSPORTATION CONNECTION ↗
- Who funds PARTRIDGE CREEK FARM INC ↗
- Who funds Catholic Social Services of the Upper Peninsula Inc ↗
- Who funds UPPER PENINSULA HEALTH CARE SOLUTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds EASTERN UPPER PENINSULA OPIOID RESPONSE CONSORTIUM ↗
- Who funds GIVEDIRECTLY INC ↗
- Who funds FEEDING AMERICA WEST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds ASPIRUS IRONWOOD HOSPITAL & CLINICS INC ↗
- Who funds THE CAREGIVER INCENTIVE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MARQUETTE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds TRILLIUM HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds Superior Connections Recovery Community Organization ↗
- Who funds GROWING FORWARD TOGETHER ↗
- Who funds LAKE SUPERIOR HOSPICE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Schoolcraft Memorial Hospital ↗
- Who funds THE LAKES COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Eversight ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INTERNATIONAL INC MARQUETTE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds CEDAR TREE ↗
- Who funds WEST END HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE ISHPEMING CANCER SOCIETY SERVING MARQUETTE CO ↗
- Who funds CHIPPEWA COUNTY FAMILY PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds DAR BOYS & GIRLS CLUB ↗
- Who funds 906 ADVENTURE TEAM ↗
- Who funds HOPE ANIMAL-ASSISTED CRISIS RESPONSE ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S CENTER 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: Michigan Health Endowment Fund · West End Health Foundation · United Way of Marquette County · Community Foundation of Marquette County · Phyllis & Max Reynolds Foundation · Robert & Jeanine Dagenais Foundation · Ray & Peg Hirvonen Charitable Foundation · Copper Shores Community Health Foundation · Frazier Fund Inc · Michigan Center for Rural Health · Feeding America West Michigan · Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan
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 Superior Health 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 Superior Health Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Superior Health 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.