· Private foundation
The Pokagon Fund Inc
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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k86 grants · $295k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $174k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $620k
- $250k+1 grant · $300k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $300,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $213,333 |
| CITY OF NEW BUFFALO | $150,000 |
| NEIGHBOR BY NEIGHBOR | $150,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $106,667 |
| CITY OF NEW BUFFALO | $37,500 |
| RIVER VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT | $22,605 |
| Individual grant recipient | $18,483 |
| SENIOR NUTRITION SERVICESMEALS ON WHEEL SW MI | $18,000 |
| RIVER VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT | $15,000 |
| CARING CONNECTION | $15,000 |
| NEW BUFFALO AREA SCHOOLS | $15,000 |
| FEEDING AMERICA WEST MI | $12,000 |
| TEMPLE BNAI SHALOM UNITED THROUGH MOTHERHOOD | $10,000 |
| SCHOOL OF AMERICAN MUSIC | $10,000 |
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 (FY18–25, $1.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 24% of The Pokagon Fund Inc’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, 92% of the giving stays in MI; read by stated purpose it is 68% — 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 +21% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
108 repeat relationships — 42 still active in FY2025, 66 since wound down; 24 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $112k 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
- NBNeighbor by Neighbor4× · 2022–2025 · $751k · revenue +21% · 47% of their budget
- FAFEEDING AMERICA WEST MICHIGAN9× · 2017–2025 · $101k · revenue +38%
- UOUniversity of Michigan7× · 2017–2025 · $85k · revenue +202%
Funded once
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF GREATER SOUTHWEST MICHIGANone grant, 2022 · $60k · revenue +8%
- VOVILLAGE OF GRAND BEACHone grant, 2022 · $58k
- TPTHE POKAGON FUND INCone grant, 2019 · $47k · revenue +19%
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.
Saint xavier university, a catholic institution inspired by the heritage of the sisters of mercy, educates persons to search for truth, think critically, communicate effectively and serve wisely and compassionately in support of human…
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
Through innovative learning opportunities, individual student attention, and an unwavering commitment to inclusive educational access, simpson college cultivates a diverse community of learners to lead lives of meaning and purpose.
Xavier is a jesuit catholic university rooted in the liberal arts tradition. our mission is to educate each student intellectually, morally, and spiritually. we create learning opportunities through rigorous academic and professional…
The mission of kalamazoo college is to prepare its graduates to better understand, live sucessfully within, and provide enlightened leadership to a richly diverse and increasingly complex world. as a highly selective, nationally renowened…
Benedictine University is an inclusive academic community dedicated to teaching and learning, scholarship and service, truth and justice, as inspired by the Catholic intellectual tradition, the social teaching of the Church, and the…
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
Bradley university empowers students for immediate and sustained success in their personal and professional endeavors by combining professional preparation, liberal arts and sciences, and co-curricular experiences. alongside our dedication…
Illinois college is a co-educational institution of higher education learning providing a four-year educational program leading to the baccalaureate degree. illinois college is a community committed to the highest standards of scholarship…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The mission of madonna university, a catholic and franciscan institution of higher learning, is to instill in its students christain humanistic values, intellectual inquiry, a respect for university and a committment to serving others…
The mission of baker college is to provide an inclusive, innovative, and transformative educational experience which allows students to positively impact their lives and the world around them.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is United Way of St Joseph County Inc and the most unlike its peers is Mishawaka Troop Town Inc. 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 38 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.7% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
104 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. 104 of the 274 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 Neighbor by Neighbor ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN GATEWAY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds RIVER VALLEY SENIOR CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds FEEDING AMERICA WEST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds SCHOOL OF AMERICAN MUSIC ↗
- Who funds THE AVENUE FAMILY NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF GREATER SOUTHWEST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds BLESSINGS IN A BACKPACK INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHOLD DANCE THEATER INC ↗
- Who funds THE POKAGON FUND INC ↗
- Who funds CAMP MILLHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds SENIOR NUTRITION SERVICES REG IV INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF SOUTHWEST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds POTAWATOMI ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds THE NEW BUFFALO RAILROAD MUSEUM ↗
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 · Community Foundation of St Joseph County Inc · Carroll F V Char Tr-Main · Judd Leighton Foundation Inc · 1st Source Bank Foundation Inc Xxx-Xx-Xxxx · United Way of St Joseph County Inc · University of Notre Dame du Lac · Muessel Ellison Mem Irr Tua · Klockow Harvey R and Doris Fdn · Clark Sa & Fp Mem Fd Irr Tua · Asante Foundation Inc · Fields Foundation Irr Tua
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 Pokagon Fund Inc 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.
- Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Inc — 3% of income from government
- Jacksonville University — 3% of income from government
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.