· Private foundation
Timothy and Barbara Michels 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k3 grants · $65k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $542k
- $250k+2 grants · $2.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DARTMOUTH COLLEGE | $2,040,000 |
| MEDICAL COLLEGE OF WI | $500,000 |
| SPRING CREEK CHURCH | $200,000 |
| ZACHARIAH'S ACRES INC | $100,000 |
| UNIVERSITY LAKE SCHOOL | $71,500 |
| C2K MINISTRIES | $70,000 |
| CARENET PREGNANCY CENTER OF MILWAUKEE | $50,000 |
| LIFE CHURCH | $50,000 |
| XAVIER HIGH SCHOOL | $25,000 |
| BABSON COLLEGE | $20,000 |
| FORDHAM UNIVERSITY | $20,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $350k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 71% 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.
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 +18% since the first grant, against -5% for the ones you funded once.
14 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 3 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, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $650k 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
Cornell University2× · 2020–2021 · $1.5M · revenue +46%- TMTHE MEDICAL COLLEGE OF WISCONSIN INC2× · 2023–2024 · $1.0M · revenue +18%
- ANAVAIL NYC2× · 2020–2021 · $250k · revenue +43%
Funded once
- NLNORTH LAKE MANAGEMENT DISTRICTone grant, 2023 · $250k
- BSBRUNSWICK SCHOOL INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $233k · revenue +39%
- SOSISTERS OF ST FRANCIS OF ASSISIone grant, 2020 · $150k
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.
As a Catholic, Jesuit university our mission is to search for truth, discover shareknowledge, foster personal professional excellence, promote a life of faith and developleadership expressed in service to others. See Schedule O.
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
Cornell college offers an innovative and rigorous learning community where faculty and staff collaborate with students to develop the intellectual curiosity, creativity and moral courage necessary for a lifetime of learning and engaged…
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
Bates is a college of the liberal arts and sciences, and is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual, and access to…
Depauw university develops leaders the world needs through an uncommon commitment to the liberal arts. depauw's diverse and inclusive learning and living experience, distinctive in its rigorous intellectual engagement and its global and…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Mitchell college educates students through a highly individualized educational approach that brings forward each student's potential, reveals their strengths, and fosters personal growth.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Delivers affordable, accessible, and relevant higher education programs.
See schedule o.drake's mission is to provide an exceptional learning environment that prepares students for meaningful personal lives, professional accomplishments, and responsible global citizenship. the drake experience is distinguished…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Fordham University and the most unlike its peers is Transformed People Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
15 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. 15 of the 27 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 Cornell University ↗
- Who funds THE MEDICAL COLLEGE OF WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY LAKE SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds AVAIL NYC ↗
- Who funds BRUNSWICK SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds C2K MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds Fordham University ↗
- Who funds BABSON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN RIGHT TO LIFE EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds ZACHARIAH'S ACRES INC ↗
- Who funds CARE NET PREGNANCY CENTER OF MILWAUKEE INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE EDUCATION PARTNERSHIP ↗
- Who funds PRO-LIFE WISCONSIN EDUCATION TASK FORCE INC ↗
- Who funds FOND DU LAC AREA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TRANSFORMED PEOPLE 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: Baird Foundation Inc · Vine and Branches Foundation Inc · United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Renaissance Charitable Foundation Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · American Online Giving Foundation Inc
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 Timothy and Barbara Michels 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.
- Babson College — 3% 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 Timothy and Barbara Michels Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Timothy and Barbara Michels 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.