· Private foundation
The Hough 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 $10k11 grants · $34k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $135k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $135k
- $250k+2 grants · $751k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HILLSDALE COLLEGE | $501,000 |
| BEAUMONT HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN HEALTH SYSTE | $75,000 |
| BIG SKY COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION | $60,000 |
| APOPO US INC | $35,000 |
| WARRIORS AND QUIET WATERS | $25,000 |
| NORTHBROOK PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $25,000 |
| KALAMAZOO COLLEGE | $20,000 |
| SAUGATUCK DUNES COASTAL ALLIANCE | $10,000 |
| CHILDREN'S MIRACLE NETWORK | $10,000 |
| FOUNDATION ST LOUIS ACADEMY | $10,000 |
| HENRY FORD COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $6,500 |
| MOTOR CITY LYRIC OPERA | $5,000 |
| SOCIETY FOR RE-INSTITUTIONALIZATION | $5,000 |
| MARY'S MERCY CENTER | $5,000 |
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 (FY18–24, $74k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 86% 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.
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.
25 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2024, 10 since wound down; 6 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $73k 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
- BPBLANK PARK ZOO FOUNDATION INC2× · 2020–2021 · $200k · revenue +49%
- KCKALAMAZOO COLLEGE8× · 2017–2024 · $150k · revenue +41%
- SDSAUGATUCK DUNES COASTAL ALLIANCE8× · 2017–2024 · $53k · revenue +291%
Funded once
- GCGLEANERS COMMUNITY FOOD BANK OF SOUTHEASTERN MICHIGANone grant, 2020 · $50k · revenue -22%
- LCLORAS COLLEGEone grant, 2017 · $25k · revenue +11%
- GWGANNA WALSKA LOTUSLANDgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $10k · revenue +79%
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.
Creating healthy communities - together
Bridging the gap between early-stage innovation and commercial application. partnering to de-risk, develop and scale-up discoveries into commercially-viable technology packages.
Delta dental fund's mission is to improve the oral health of the public and to advance dental science and the dental profession through research and education.
We honor life through donation.
To improve and save lives through compassionate care, community engagement and advocacy for animals.
We, mercy college of health sciences and trinity health, serve together in the spirit of the gospel as a compassionate and transforming healing presence within our communities. mercy college of health sciences is a member of trinity health.
Promote a health care environment that supports physicians in caring for and enhancing the health of michigan citizens through science, quality, and ethics in the practice of medicine.
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland school of medicine, medical services are rendered by the members of the faculty on behalf of the school of medicine in connection with their duties to provide clinical…
Creating healthy communities - together
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland school of medicine, medical services are rendered by the members of the faculty on behalf of the school of medicine in connection with their duties to provide clinical…
To eradicate lymphoma and serve those touched by this disease.
To provide support for the board of trustees of michigan state university and to promote, sponsor, assist, and carry out educational, scientific, charitable and related activities and objectives of michigan state university.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Fiscal Sponsorship Allies Inc and the most unlike its peers is Warfighter Scuba. 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 21 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 0% 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 49 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 HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds BIG SKY COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds BLANK PARK ZOO FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds KALAMAZOO COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds SAUGATUCK DUNES COASTAL ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds GLEANERS COMMUNITY FOOD BANK OF SOUTHEASTERN MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds HENRY FORD COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOCIETY FOR THE RE-INSITUTIONALIZAT ↗
- Who funds MERCY FOUNDATION OF DES MOINES IOWA ↗
- Who funds APOPO US INC ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds MITOACTION INC ↗
- Who funds WARRIORS & QUIET WATERS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LORAS COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Remembering Cherubs ↗
- Who funds MOTOR CITY LYRIC OPERA ↗
- Who funds PLANT BASED NUTRITION SUPPORT GROUP ↗
- Who funds HOUSE OF PROVIDENCE ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S MIRACLE NETWORK ↗
- Who funds GANNA WALSKA LOTUSLAND ↗
- Who funds CUTANEOUS LYMPHOMA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FONDATION ST LOUIS ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds FISCAL SPONSORSHIP ALLIES INC ↗
- Who funds Mary's Mercy Center ↗
- Who funds ROTARY CLUB OF DES MOINES ↗
- Who funds Gallatin River Task Force ↗
- Who funds YOGA MOVES MS ↗
- Who funds DETROIT DOG RESCUE ↗
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: Foren Family Foundation · Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan · California Community Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust
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 The Hough 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 The Hough Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Hough 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.