· Private foundation
The Marzke 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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k37 grants · $63k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FRIENDS OF BERRIEN COUNTY TRAILS | $10,000 |
| LAKE MICHIGAN CATHOLIC SCHOOLS | $5,000 |
| YMCA - BENTON HARBOR - ST JOSEPH | $5,000 |
| READINESS CENTER | $5,000 |
| OUR LADY OF THE LAKE CATHOLIC SCHOOL | $3,500 |
| CURIOUS KIDS MUSEUM | $3,100 |
| CATHOLIC COMMUNITY CENTER | $3,000 |
| LORY'S PLACE | $3,000 |
| SACRED HEART SERENITY HILLS RECOVERY & WELLNESS CENTER | $2,500 |
| THE SOUP KITCHEN | $2,500 |
| THERAPEUTIC EQUESTRIAN CENTER | $2,000 |
| ST JOSEPH CATHOLIC PARISH | $2,000 |
| BERRIEN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $2,000 |
| AREA AGENCY ON AGING | $2,000 |
| BIRTHRIGHT OF ST JOSEPH | $2,000 |
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 (FY19–25, $39k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, 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.
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 +31% since the first grant, against -8% for the ones you funded once.
47 repeat relationships — 30 still active in FY2025, 17 since wound down; 5 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- TATWIN-CITY AREA CATHOLIC SCHOOL FUND3× · 2019–2021 · $20k · revenue +27%
- RCREADINESS CENTER INC7× · 2019–2025 · $20k · revenue +4%
- TETherapeutic Equestrian Center7× · 2019–2025 · $15k · revenue +127%
Funded once
- LMLAKE MICHIGAN COLLEGE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2019 · $13k · revenue -22%
- KAKRASL ART CENTER INCone grant, 2019 · $5k · revenue -8%
- FOFRIENDS OF BERRIEN COUNTY TRAILSone grant, 2022 · $3k
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 promote business and economic development for eight towns in southwest michigan.
Safeguard southern michigan's land and water to support diverse, resilient, and thriving communities - forever
The nmu foundation will establish and foster relationships to generate resources that benefit the strategic goals of northern michigan university.
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.
To conserve the land, water and scenic character of leelanau county, and to provide educational programs to develop an understanding and appreciation of leelanau county's natural heritage.
Arbor research collaborative for health is committed to improving patient care through research that shapes medical policies and practice. in particular, arbor research conducts health outcomes research on chronic disease and end-stage…
Assisting the community mental health boards of michigan in developing methods for mental health planning, care and treatment.
United way of southwest michigan works in berrien, cass, and van buren counties to sustain a united community where everyone contributes, belongs, and thrives.
Awarding grants and scholarships.
Brighton marine, inc. provides military and veteran families with comprehensive campus-based quality health care, as well as affordable and supportive housing for at-risk veterans and their families.
Operation of a nautical history museum.
To enhance health and serve our community to improve health, inspire hope, and save lives.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Berrien Community Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Paws of Hope. 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 45 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% 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 15% 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 66 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 TWIN-CITY AREA CATHOLIC SCHOOL FUND ↗
- Who funds READINESS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Therapeutic Equestrian Center ↗
- Who funds The Soup Kitchen Inc ↗
- Who funds BIRTHRIGHT OF ST JOSEPH INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF BERRIEN COUNTY TRAILS ↗
- Who funds LAKE MICHIGAN COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CURIOUS KIDS MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds ST JOSEPH JUNIOR FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Michigan Colleges Alliance ↗
- Who funds GHOSTLIGHT PRODUCTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds SACRED HEART ACADEMY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BERRIEN COUNTY CANCER SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds ANDREWS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CORNERSTONE ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds KRASL ART CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds THE AVENUE FAMILY NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds Jupiter Medical Center Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds BERRIEN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SARETT NATURE CENTER ↗
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: Berrien Community Foundation Inc · Fettig Family Foundation · Whirlpool Foundation · Hanson Family Foundation · Degroot Family Foundation · The Covia Foundation · American Electric Power Foundation · The Thomas and Maria Yeager Family Foundation · Ronald and Eva Kinney Family Foundation · The Schalon Foundation · 1st Source Bank Foundation Inc Xxx-Xx-Xxxx · David and Barbara Whitwam 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 Marzke 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.