· Private foundation
The Ludington Family Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ALBION COLLEGE ENDOWMENT | $5,000 |
| PETOSKEY-HARBOR SPRINGS AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| MIDLAND FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH | $5,000 |
| PURDUE FOUNDATION | $1,500 |
| UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO SCHOOL OF LAW | $1,500 |
| CENTER FOR THE ARTS MIDLAND MICHIGAN | $1,500 |
| UNITED WAY OF MIDLAND COUNTY | $1,200 |
| SVSU FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| SANFORD LAKE ASSOCIATION | $1,000 |
| MIDLAND OPEN DOOR | $600 |
| GERALD R FORD PRESIDENTIA FOUNDATION | $500 |
| JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF CENTRAL MICHIGAN | $500 |
| MIDLAND COMMUNITY FORMER OFFENDERS ADVOCACY AND REHABILITATION | $500 |
| ADOPTION OPTION | $500 |
| UNITED WAY OF BAY COUNTY | $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 human-services grants (FY20–25, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 73% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +42% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
35 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2025, 12 since wound down; 4 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, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO5× · 2020–2025 · $8k · revenue +42%
- MCMidland Center for the Arts Inc5× · 2020–2024 · $7k · revenue +107%
- UWUNITED WAY OF BAY COUNTY6× · 2020–2025 · $3k · revenue +121%
Funded once
- BCBAY CITY DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITYone grant, 2023 · $3k
- BCBAY CITY DOWNTOWN MAGNET AUTHORITYone grant, 2020 · $800
- NMNORTHWESTERN MICHIGAN COLLEGE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2024 · $700 · revenue +21%
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.
The nmu foundation will establish and foster relationships to generate resources that benefit the strategic goals of northern michigan university.
To promote conditions favorable to job creation and business success in michigan.
Business leaders for michigan is a nonprofit, nonpartisan statewide organization driven by ceos from the state's leading employers, all working toward a shared goal: making michigan a top 10 state for jobs, talent and a thriving economy.…
Cooperatively empowering credit unions to increase financial well-being by supporting community enrichment, financial education, and credit union development initiatives
The Detroit Historical Society tells Detroit's stories and why they matter through its exhibits, programs, outreach, and the preservation and dissemination of its artifacts and collections.
MCF is a vibrant philanthropic community connecting, strengthening and mobilizing the power of philanthropy to advance prosperity and equity.
The mission of the michigan science center is to inspire curious minds of all ages to discover, explore and appreciate science, technology, engineering and math in a creative, dynamic learning environment.
Business leaders for michigan is a nonprofit, nonpartisan statewide organization driven by ceos from the state's leading employers, all working toward a shared goal: making michigan a top 10 state for jobs, talent and a thriving economy.…
Assisting the community mental health boards of michigan in developing methods for mental health planning, care and treatment.
Michigan farm bureau (mfb) is a member directed agricultural organization whose purpose is to represent, protect, and enhance the business, economic, social, and educational interests of our members located throughout the state of michigan.
To advance the field of health for the public good.
Mid michigan community action guides local residents on the path to self-sufficiency through empowerment, education and community enrichment.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is West Midland Family Center and the most unlike its peers is Alzheimers Research Association. 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 49 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) — 0% 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.
30 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. 30 of the 60 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 MIDLAND AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds United Way of Midland County ↗
- Who funds Midland Center for the Arts Inc ↗
- Who funds PETOSKEY-HARBOR SPRINGS AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF BAY COUNTY ↗
- Who funds SAGINAW BAY COMMUNITY SAILING ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MIDLAND COMMUNITY FORMER OFFFENDER ADVOCADY & REHABILITATION ↗
- Who funds The Little Forks Conservancy Inc ↗
- Who funds ADOPTION OPTION INC ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS MICHIGAN INC ↗
- Who funds University of Illinois Foundation ↗
- Who funds WEST MIDLAND FAMILY CENTER ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN BAR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GERALD R FORD PRESIDENTIAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE & SEXUAL ASSAULT ↗
- Who funds Midland's Open Door ↗
- Who funds Reece Endeavor of Midland ↗
- Who funds NORTHWESTERN MICHIGAN COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN SUPREME COURT HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds HARBOR SPRINGS CHAMBER 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: Midland Area Community Foundation · The Patricia and David Kepler Foundation · Rollin M Gerstacker Foundation · Harry a and Margaret D Towsley Foundation · Consumers Energy Foundation · The Charles J Strosacker Foundation · Bay Area Community Foundation · Bill and Linda Stavropoulos Family Foundation · The Herbert H & Grace a Dow Foundation · The Doan Family Foundation · Laura Ludington Hollenbeck Foundation · Edward and Elyse Rogers Family 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 The Ludington Family 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 Ludington Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Ludington Family 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.