· Private foundation
The Porter Family 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k21 grants · $50k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $55k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MICHIGAN CLIMATE ACTION NETWORK | $35,259 |
| SOLARDARITY | $10,000 |
| MIEIBC | $10,000 |
| Ecology Center | $6,850 |
| MICHIGAN ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL | $6,500 |
| FLOW FOR LOVE OF WATER | $5,000 |
| FOOD AND WATER WATCH | $4,500 |
| National Wildlife Federation | $4,000 |
| Center for Michigan | $3,500 |
| DISCOVERY CENTER & PIER | $3,000 |
| U OF M SARAH MILLS FUND | $2,500 |
| ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND POLICY | $2,500 |
| EMPIRE AREA COMMUNITY CENTER | $2,500 |
| COUNCIL OF MICHIGAN FOUNDATIONS | $2,025 |
| MIDWEST BUILDING DECARBONIZATION COALITION | $1,000 |
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 (FY19–20, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 21%, 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.
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 +33% since the first grant, against +23% for the ones you funded once.
30 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 8 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, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $17k 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
- ECECOLOGY CENTER7× · 2019–2025 · $52k · revenue +136%
- SSOULARDARITY4× · 2021–2025 · $35k · revenue +328%
- MEMICHIGAN ENVIROMENTAL COUNCIL3× · 2017–2025 · $34k · revenue +145%
Funded once
- MMICANone grant, 2019 · $25k
FRESH ENERGY2× · 2021–2023 · $15k · revenue -14%- ELENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND POLICY CENTER OF THE MIDWESTone grant, 2021 · $13k · revenue +22%
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.
Our mission is conserving West Michigans ecologically critical land. We protect land by creating public nature preserves, providing support to communities and local governments in creating natural areas, and helping private landowners…
To accelerate the transition to clean transportation in michigan. we advocate for the suite of alternative fuels including biofuels, hydrogen, propane, natural gas, and electric vehicles.
Works to end environmental injustice by empowering communities at the grassroots level.the corporation is organzied exclusively for charitable, religious, educational and scientific purposes, including for such purposes, the makeing of…
Be and create stewards for the water environment of michigan. provide high quality education for michigan's water professionals. educate and inform policy makers and the general public. promote scientifically sound environmental practices…
To protect and restore land, air, water, and diversity of life through informed personal and public action.
The minnesota center for environmental advocacy is a nonprofit organization that uses law, science and research to protect minnesota's environment, its natural resources and the health of its people.
Mn350 unites minnesotans with the global movement to end the pollution damaging our climate, speed the transition to clean energy, and create a just and healthy future for all.
To permanently protect and improve natural environments in Mid-Michigan by leading and inspiring actions that conserve vital habitats and waterways for the benefit of our entire community.
Wmeac's mission is to "inform and engage an inclusive community which acts together to protect natural resources and create a climate resilient west michigan."
The greening of detroit's mission is the sustainable growth of a healthy urban community through trees, green spaces, healthy living, education, training and job opportunities.
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
Heart of the Lakes provides technical assistance, leadership training, and strategic communication tools that help organizations thrive - from grassroots land conservancies to larger regional conservation groups. Programs such as peer…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Alliance for the Great Lakes and the most unlike its peers is National Wildlife Federation. 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 20 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) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 28% 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 61 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 Michigan Climate Action Network ↗
- Who funds ECOLOGY CENTER ↗
- Who funds SOULARDARITY ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN ENVIROMENTAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds FOR LOVE OF WATER ↗
- Who funds TRAVERSE AREA RECREATION & TRANSPORTATION TRAILS INC ↗
- Who funds EcoWorks ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION ↗
- Who funds DISCOVERY CENTER GREAT LAKES ↗
- Who funds FRESH ENERGY ↗
- Who funds THE HEIDELBERG PROJECT ↗
- Who funds DETROITERS WORKING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND POLICY CENTER OF THE MIDWEST ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN LEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS INC ↗
- Who funds ANN ARBOR AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL OF MICHIGAN FOUNDATIONS ↗
- Who funds DEDHAM SCHOOL OF MUSIC INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds FOOD & WATER WATCH ↗
- Who funds CAURA FUTURES INC ↗
- Who funds MOTHER BROOK ARTS AND COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds MAKE FOOD NOT WASTE ↗
- Who funds EMPIRE AREA COMMUNITY 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: Charles Stewart Mott Foundation · The Fred & Barbara Erb Family Foundation · United States Energy Foundation · Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan · Natural Resources Defense Council Inc · The Kresge Foundation · Michigan Enviromental Council · Americana Foundation · The Energy Foundation · The Ralph C Wilson Jr Foundation · The Minneapolis Foundation · WK Kellogg 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 Porter 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.