· Private foundation
The Mercantile Bank Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2022–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k134 grants · $222k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $89k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MEL TROTTER MINISTRIES | $25,000 |
| AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION | $23,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF KENT COUNTY | $20,500 |
| CHERRY HEALTH FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| BBB EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| MOUNT PLEASANT AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $8,300 |
| HISPANIC CENTER OF WESTERN MICHIGAN | $8,000 |
| BETHANY CHRISTIAN SERVICES | $5,000 |
| GERALD R FORD FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| GRAND RAPIDS COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| BLANDFORD NATURE CENTER | $5,000 |
| NMC FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| JUNIOR LEAGUE OF GRAND RAPIDS | $5,000 |
| WEST MICHIGAN ASIAN AMERICAN ASSOCIATION | $5,000 |
| GRAND RAPIDS CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS | $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 (FY22–25, $161k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 98% 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 +8% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
68 repeat relationships — 58 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 79 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, 63% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $111k 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
- MTMEL TROTTER MINISTRIES3× · 2023–2025 · $125k · revenue +8%
- AHAmerican Heart Association Inc3× · 2023–2025 · $27k · revenue +16%
- HCHISPANIC CENTER OF WESTERN MICHIGAN INC3× · 2023–2025 · $26k · revenue +42%
Funded once
- GRGRAND RAPIDS URBAN LEAGUEgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $40k · revenue +267%
- WMWEST MICHIGAN SPORTS COMMISSIONone grant, 2023 · $30k · revenue -15%
- GVGRAND VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITYone grant, 2023 · $18k
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.
Mid michigan community action guides local residents on the path to self-sufficiency through empowerment, education and community enrichment.
To assist people with low or moderate income to obtain safe and affordable housing
Assisting the community mental health boards of michigan in developing methods for mental health planning, care and treatment.
The mission of great lakes community action partnership is to create partnerships and opportunites to help individuals, families and communities thrive.
Through internal expertise, external partnerships, and advocacy, the area agency on aging of western michigan provides older adults, adults with disabilities, and their caregivers equitable access to services that promote independence and…
To promote conditions favorable to job creation and business success in michigan.
To provide high quality community-oriented, patient-centered health services for all.
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.…
We advance the missions of michigan nonprofit organizations that serve low income individuals and communities through pro bono and low cost legal and other professional services, organizational development, and trusted guidance.
The right place is the economic development organization that drives current and long-term economic prosperity in west michigan.
The michigan christian home dba beacon hill at eastgate, a not-for-profit corporation, provides housing and health services in a christian environment for older adults, thus enabling them to meet their ongoing physical, social and…
To eliminate sub-standard housing and homelessness from lapeer county.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Northwest Michigan Community Action and the most unlike its peers is Ogemaw Orioles. 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 30 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
218 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. 218 of the 279 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 MEL TROTTER MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds HEART OF WEST MICHIGAN UNITED WAY ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF KENT COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS URBAN LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds WEST MICHIGAN SPORTS COMMISSION ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds HISPANIC CENTER OF WESTERN MICHIGAN INC ↗
- Who funds Opportunity Resource Fund ↗
- Who funds BLANDFORD NATURE CENTER ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREATER CENTRAL MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWEST MICHIGAN FIRST CORP ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAS ↗
- Who funds ANGELS OF ACTION INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY HOMEWORKS INC ↗
- Who funds ICCF COMMUNITY HOMES ↗
- Who funds Mt Pleasant Area Community Fnd ↗
- Who funds TURNING POINT INC ↗
- Who funds WINNING FUTURES ↗
- Who funds START GARDEN INC ↗
- Who funds SAGINAW FUTURE INC ↗
- Who funds GENESIS NON-PROFIT HOUSING CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU OF MICHIGAN EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds STARLIGHT MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds West Michigan Asian American Association Inc ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF THE MICHIGAN GREAT LAKES INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY REHABILITATION ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds Kalamazoo Neighborhood Housing Serv ↗
- Who funds KALAMAZOO VALLEY HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds LINC UP NONPROFIT HOUSING CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Habitat for Humanity of Michigan 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: Grand Rapids Community Foundation · Consumers Energy Foundation · Frey Foundation · Heart of West Michigan United Way · The Wege Foundation · Cdv5 Foundation · Douglas & Maria Devos Foundation · The Meijer Foundation · Peter C & Emajean Cook Foundation · Steelcase Foundation · Feeding America West Michigan · Dick and Betsy Devos 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 Mercantile Bank 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 Mercantile Bank Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Mercantile Bank 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.