· Private foundation
The Thelen 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| Midland Street Merchants Association | $2,500 |
| Good Sumaritan Rescue Mission of Bay City | $2,059 |
| Corpus Christi Parish | $2,000 |
| New Beginnings Christian Church | $2,000 |
| All Saints Central High School | $2,000 |
| Bangor Central Elementary School | $2,000 |
| Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church | $2,000 |
| Resurrection of the Lord Parish | $1,500 |
| St Stanislaus Church | $1,500 |
| ARC of Bay County | $1,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $615 |
| Pullen Elementary School | $500 |
| McGuire PTO | $500 |
| Essexville-Hampton Public Schools | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 94% of your 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.
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 +40% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 6 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, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- BABAY AREA WOMEN'S CENTER6× · 2018–2023 · $13k · revenue +69%
- BHBRIAN'S HOUSE COMMUNITY GROUP INC4× · 2019–2023 · $6k · revenue +13%
PARKINSON'S FOUNDATION INC2× · 2022–2023 · $2k · revenue +67%
Funded once
- EGEWTN Global Catholic Networkone grant, 2020 · $1k
- ALAMYOTROPHIC LATERAL SCLEROSIS ASSNone grant, 2024 · $1k · revenue -46%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $1k
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 goal is to encourage full-citizenship and personal growth for all people, especially those with disabilities who live in the nine county area that comprises the eastern shore of maryland.
To provide specialized residential services to mentally ill and disabled individuals in order to assist each person to meet personal goals by providing the highest quality services that are unique to each person's wishes, needs, and…
Care of developmentally disabled adults.
Bayside community network, inc. provides rehabilitative care, room and board, and vocational training to individuals with developmental disabilities.
To provide residential community based supports to individuals with developmental challenges.
Aiding the developmentally disabled.
Brian's House specializes in the care and treatment of people with disabilities. Brian's House provides a broad range of human services to people with special needs and challenges. The primary goal is to maximize each individual's…
The mission of the susan mast als foundation is to provide excellent support to als patients, families and caregivers living in west michigan. our services focus on all areas of need for the regional als community.
The arc of columbia county shall exist to work for the well-being of all persons with developmental and related disabilities, regardless of race, creed or color, by promoting quality of life through the advocacy for education of people…
To enrich the lives of adults with autism and developmental disabilities
To discover treatments and a cure for als, and to serve, advocate for, and empower people affected by als to live their lives to the fullest.
Baywater animal rescue is a no-kill shelter dedicated to improving the lives of people and pets
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Bay Area Women's Center and the most unlike its peers is Xavier Degroat Autism Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
10 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. 10 of the 41 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 BAY AREA WOMEN'S CENTER ↗
- Who funds BRIAN'S HOUSE COMMUNITY GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds MIDLAND STREET MERCHANTS ↗
- Who funds BAY COUNTY HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds PARKINSON'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SAGINAW VALLEY ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds AMYOTROPHIC LATERAL SCLEROSIS ASSN ↗
- Who funds THE ARC OF BAY COUNTY ↗
- Who funds XAVIER DEGROAT AUTISM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHOSEN VISION 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: Bay Area Community Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Thelen 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.