· Private foundation
The Samuel L Westerman 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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k130 grants · $335k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $199k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GRAND VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY | $30,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $22,000 |
| HENRY FORD HEALTH SYSTEMS | $17,000 |
| EASTER SEALS OF MI | $15,000 |
| GRAND RAPIDS CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS | $15,000 |
| OHIO WESLEYEN UNIVERSITY | $15,000 |
| ORCHARD LAKE COMMUNITY CHURCH PRESBYTERIAN | $12,500 |
| DOWN SYNDROME ASSOCIATION OF WEST MICHIGAN | $12,000 |
| VAN ANDEL INSITUTE | $10,000 |
| ALLENDALE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| NEW ERA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| NOORTHOEK ACADEMY - GRAND RAPIDS COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $10,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME | $10,000 |
| WAYBIRDS OF GLORY MUSEUM | $9,500 |
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, $105k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 40% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +34% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
162 repeat relationships — 125 still active in FY2025, 37 since wound down; 15 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; $36k 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
- HFHENRY FORD HEALTH SYSTEM6× · 2020–2025 · $81k · revenue +48%
- VAVAN ANDEL INSTITUTE6× · 2020–2025 · $75k · revenue +25%
- OWOHIO WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY5× · 2021–2025 · $75k · revenue +46%
Funded once
- FUFINLANDIA UNIVERSITYone grant, 2020 · $10k · revenue +6%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $5k
- WIWAYCROSS INCone grant, 2024 · $5k · revenue 0%
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.
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.
Engages, equips and empowers learners to explore their vocations, fulfill their potential and serve the world.
As a christian university, we provide education and research opportunities preparing global leaders to partner with local communities.
Evangel is a comprehensive christian university that is committed to excellence in educating and equipping students to become spirit empowered servants of god who will impact the church and society globally.
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…
To serve our communities by provding innovative and compassionate healthcare.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
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…
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
Provide post-secondary education leading to a baccalaureate degree. Program service expenditures are made in conjunction with the operation of a liberal arts college spread over 107 acres with approximately 63 educational and support…
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Innocent. 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 — 0.9% 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.
108 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. 108 of the 216 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 HENRY FORD HEALTH SYSTEM ↗
- Who funds VAN ANDEL INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds OHIO WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds Indiana University Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NEW ERA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE SOCIETY FOR CHRISTIAN INSTRUCT ALLENDALE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds DOWN SYNDROME ASSOCIATION OF WEST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds CALVIN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds DePauw University ↗
- Who funds University of Notre Dame du Lac ↗
- Who funds HOPE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Culver Educational Foundation ↗
- Who funds Spring Arbor University ↗
- Who funds DETROIT OPERA ↗
- Who funds Cedarville University ↗
- Who funds JUDICIAL WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds WEST MICHIGAN SYMPHONY ↗
- Who funds Westside Christian Academy ↗
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 Haven Area Community Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of the Holland/Zeeland Area Inc · Grand Rapids Community Foundation · Consumers Energy Foundation · Dick and Betsy Devos Family Foundation · Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation · Peter C & Emajean Cook Foundation · Frey Foundation · Community Foundation for Muskegon County · Michigan Health Endowment Fund · Jim and Ginger Jurries Foundation · Barnabas 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 Samuel L Westerman 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 Samuel L Westerman Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Samuel L Westerman 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.