· Private foundation
The Shine 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 $10k4 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k19 grants · $556k
- $50k–250k17 grants · $1.8M
- $250k+1 grant · $258k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COMMUNITY ACTION HOUSE | $258,000 |
| ICCF COMMUNITY HOMES | $200,000 |
| AYA YOUTH COLLECTIVE | $200,000 |
| NEW CITY NEIGHBORS | $190,000 |
| JUBILEE MINISTRIES INC | $160,000 |
| NEW CITY KIDS | $150,000 |
| ESCAPE MINISTRIES | $111,500 |
| LATIN AMERICANS UNITED FOR PROGRESS INC | $105,000 |
| DANA-FABER CANCER INSTITUTE | $101,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY KENT COUNTY | $100,000 |
| GOOD SAMARITAN MINISTRIES | $100,000 |
| MICHIGAN IMMIGRANT RIGHTS CENTER | $100,000 |
| AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FUND OF MICHIGAN | $75,000 |
| LIGHTHOUSE IMMIGRANT ADVOCATES | $50,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF GRAND RAPIDS | $50,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $1.8M) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 48% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 +45% since the first grant, against +28% for the ones you funded once.
50 repeat relationships — 25 still active in FY2025, 25 since wound down; 16 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, 65% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $929k 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
- ONODC NETWORK2× · 2021–2022 · $500k · revenue +109%
- GRGRAND RAPIDS YOUTH COMMONWEALTH INC4× · 2022–2025 · $475k · revenue +4%
- CACOMMUNITY ACTION HOUSE5× · 2020–2025 · $458k · revenue +177%
Funded once
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUB INDIAN RIVERone grant, 2019 · $300k
- WHWELL HOUSEone grant, 2024 · $100k · revenue 0%
- GLGODFREY LEE PUBLIC SCHOOLSone grant, 2020 · $75k
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 mission of great lakes community action partnership is to create partnerships and opportunites to help individuals, families and communities thrive.
Standing with our neighbors, Lakeshore Legal Aid fights poverty and injustice through advocacy and by providing meaningful and dignified access to the legal system.
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
Mid michigan community action guides local residents on the path to self-sufficiency through empowerment, education and community enrichment.
The African Resource Center informs connects and equips African immigrants in West Michigan with people and resources to foster a flourishing community in which recent African immigrants can prosper emotionally economically and socially.
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 partner with children and adults with disabilities and their families so they may live more meaningful, healthy, and independent lives in their homes and communities.
The right place is the economic development organization that drives current and long-term economic prosperity in west michigan.
Empowering people with disabilities by providing services that promote independence, equality and intergration, enhancing their quality of life.
Helping families and neighborhoods succeed by providing a place and support to assure kids ages 0-5 are school ready and families are healthy and stable.
Local circles offers young detroiters an employment opportunity in youth- led research. by employing youth to do research, local circles intervenes on two simultaneous social issues facing young detroiters today: youth unemployment and…
Building a movement of diverse, upwardly mobile college grads overcoming underemployment through digital skills and peer connections.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Grand Rapids Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Better Wiser Stronger Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 21 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
85 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. 85 of the 106 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 Branch Interfaith Hospitality Network ↗
- Who funds The Livestrong Foundation ↗
- Who funds ODC NETWORK ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS YOUTH COMMONWEALTH INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY ACTION HOUSE ↗
- Who funds Bridge Street House of Prayer ↗
- Who funds AYA YOUTH COLLECTIVE ↗
- Who funds NEW CITY KIDS INC ↗
- Who funds GOOD SAMARITAN MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds LATIN AMERICANS UNITED FOR PROGRESS INC ↗
- Who funds Women's Resource Center ↗
- Who funds NEW CITY NEIGHBORS ↗
- Who funds Treetops Collective ↗
- Who funds Escape YFGK ↗
- Who funds STOREHOUSE OF COMMUNITY RESOURCES ↗
- Who funds WEST MICHIGAN CENTER FOR ARTS & TECHNOLOGY ↗
- Who funds LIGHTHOUSE IMMIGRANT ADVOCATES ↗
- Who funds ICCF COMMUNITY HOMES ↗
- Who funds FAMILY PROMISE OF GRAND RAPIDS ↗
- Who funds JUBILEE MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds BENJAMIN'S HOPE ↗
- Who funds I AM ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds AFFINITY MENTORING ↗
- Who funds BAXTER COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS NEHEMIAH PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Grandville Avenue Arts and Humanities Inc ↗
- Who funds Early Learning Neighborhood Collaborative ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S CANCER RESEARCH FUND ↗
- Who funds LAKESHORE NONPROFIT ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds WELL HOUSE ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF KENT COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds Michigan Advocacy Program ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NO SURRENDER RUNNING CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds KIDS' FOOD BASKET 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 · Frey Foundation · The Community Foundation of the Holland/Zeeland Area Inc · Heart of West Michigan United Way · Larry and Karen Mulder Foundation · Douglas & Maria Devos Foundation · Cdv5 Foundation · Steelcase Foundation · Corewell Health Group Return · The Wege Foundation · WK Kellogg Foundation · The Mercantile Bank 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 Shine 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.
- World Relief Corp of National Association of Evangelicals — 67% of income from government
- Pan-Massachusetts Challenge Inc — 0% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Shine Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Shine 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.