· Private foundation
The S L Hickman Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k5 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $65k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $200k
- $250k+2 grants · $1.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000,000 |
| ADRIAN COLLEGE | $500,000 |
| MACKINAC CENTER | $100,000 |
| LENAWEE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION - IMAGINATION LIBRARY | $100,000 |
| TUNNELS TO TOWERS FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| MONTESSORI CHILDREN'S HOUSE | $15,000 |
| HOPE COMMUNITY CENTER | $10,000 |
| UNITED WAY - LOWCOUNTRY | $10,000 |
| GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| ADRIAN KIWANIS FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| LENAWEE JUVENILE COUNTY COURT | $3,000 |
| ADRIAN ARMORY COMMUNITY CENTER | $1,000 |
| K-1 ACTIVITY | $41 |
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 (FY19–24, $32k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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 +50% since the first grant, against +30% for the ones you funded once.
25 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 17 since wound down; 5 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $143k 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
- ACADRIAN COLLEGE6× · 2019–2024 · $2.4M · revenue +6%
- SHSIENA HEIGHTS UNIVERSITY6× · 2017–2023 · $1.3M · revenue +8%
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF LENAWEE INC6× · 2017–2023 · $1.0M · revenue +100% · 41% of their budget
Funded once
- HOHOSPICE OF LENAWEEone grant, 2023 · $100k · revenue +3%
- LPLINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETYgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $50k · revenue +30%
- CICOMMUNITIES IN SCHOOOLS OF NORTHWEST MICHIGAN INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue +41%
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.
To promote lenawee county as a destination providing contemporary amenities to transient guests in a historical and cultural setting for the economic benefit of the community.
To conserve the land, water and scenic character of leelanau county, and to provide educational programs to develop an understanding and appreciation of leelanau county's natural heritage.
The aso is dedicated to the advancement of classical music appreciation by providing a variety of presentations including classical, pops, and family concerts.
The lake leelanau lake association is dedicated to protecting and enhancing the quality and beauty of lake leelanau and its surrounding watershed for current and future generations.
The lansing art gallery & education center provides public awareness, education and enjoyment of the visual arts by promoting the work of michigan artists.
to advance housing stability and affordable opportunities for low income people especially those in crisis or at risk individuals and families within Lenawee County
To promote lenawee area businesses
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…
Informing and educating the public and decision makers about environmental issues.
Lenawee christian school is an educational organization which maintains a regular faculty and curriculum and normally has a regularly enrolled body of students in attendance at the school facility. lenawee christian schools exist in…
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.…
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.…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Lenawee Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Grand Teton National Park Foundation. 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 39 years old; the field is 17. 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 — 4% lost their exemption, against 16% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 60 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 ADRIAN COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds SIENA HEIGHTS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LENAWEE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF LENAWEE INC ↗
- Who funds Lenawee Humane Society ↗
- Who funds MACKINAC CENTER ↗
- Who funds CROSWELL OPERA HOUSE & FINE ARTS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE OF LENAWEE ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HOPE COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MONTESSORI CHILDRENS HOUSE OF LENAWEE INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOOLS OF NORTHWEST MICHIGAN INC ↗
- Who funds ADRIAN SCHOOLS EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GRASS RIVER NATURAL AREA INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE LOWCOUNTRY INC ↗
- Who funds LENAWEE CHAMBER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Sigma Alpha Epsilon Foundation ↗
- Who funds FREE2PLAY ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds HENRY FORD HEALTH SYSTEM ↗
- Who funds TORCH LAKE PROTECTION ALLIANCE ↗
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: Farver Foundation · Lenawee Community Foundation · Bell Trust · Douglas and Mary Kapnick Family Foundation · Premier Bank Foundation · Maurice&Dorothy Stubnitz Foundation · Sage Foundation · The Murray Family Foundation · Tlc Community Credit Union · Consumers Energy Foundation · The Robert E & Rosemary Price Foundation · Elizabeth Ruthruff Wilson 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 S L Hickman 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
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Find your warmest path to The S L Hickman Family 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.