· Private foundation
Tri-Star Charitable Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k12 grants · $60k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $112k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SAGINAW COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH | $20,000 |
| CAN COUNCIL | $20,000 |
| BARB SMITH SUICIDE RESOURCE AND RESPONSE NETWORK | $12,000 |
| SAGINAW VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| SAGINAW COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| LOVE FOR A CHILD | $10,000 |
| UNDERGROUD RAILROAD INC | $10,000 |
| THE ROCK CENTER FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| GREAT LAKES BAY HEALTH CENTER | $5,400 |
| BIERLEIN COMPANIES FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| ADOPTION OPTION INC | $5,000 |
| MICHIGAN PUBLIC HEALTH INSTITUTE | $5,000 |
| RESCUE MINISTRIES OF MID-MICHIGAN | $5,000 |
| WELLSPRING LUTHERAN FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
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 (FY22–24, $66k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 61% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of Tri-Star Charitable Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 93% of the giving stays in MI; read by stated purpose it is 89% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
4 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2024, 0 since wound down; 16 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, 20% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $130k 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
- BSBARB SMITH SUICIDE RESOURCE AND RESPONSE NETWORK2× · 2022–2024 · $28k
- ROReaching Our Community Kids2× · 2022–2024 · $26k · revenue +61%
- RMRescue Ministries of Mid-Michigan2× · 2023–2024 · $25k · revenue 0%
Funded once
- SBSTRIKEOUT BASEBALLone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue +23% · 34% of their budget
- CACHILD AND FAMILY CHARITIES OF LANSINGone grant, 2022 · $20k
- SCSAGINAW COOPERATIVE HOSPITALS INC DBA/CMU MEDICAL EDUCATION PARTNERSone grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue +16%
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.
A voice of the building industry in Michigan. The primary purpose is to positively influence the legislative, regulatory and legal issues that affect the industry.
Our mission is to assist our affiliates to increase capacity to build simple decent homes in partnership with people in need in the State of Michigan.
The mission of the Center for Family Health is opening the door to health care for all.
Assisting the community mental health boards of michigan in developing methods for mental health planning, care and treatment.
Creating healthy communities - together
To be a catalyst for economic and community progress within the great lakes bay region.
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.…
To provide high quality community-oriented, patient-centered health services for all.
Seeking to put God's love into action, Habitat for Humanity of Oakland County brings people together to build homes, communities and hope.
Creating healthy communities - together
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.…
To eliminate sub-standard housing and homelessness from lapeer county.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Mymichigan Health Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Bierlein Companies 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 43 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 7% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
36 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. 36 of the 50 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 Saginaw Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds Reaching Our Community Kids ↗
- Who funds STRIKEOUT BASEBALL ↗
- Who funds Rescue Ministries of Mid-Michigan ↗
- Who funds SAGINAW COOPERATIVE HOSPITALS INC DBA/CMU MEDICAL EDUCATION PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds Child & Family Service of Saginaw ↗
- Who funds BAY AREA WOMEN'S CENTER ↗
- Who funds CHILD ABUSE & NEGLECT COUNCIL GREAT LAKES BAY REGION ↗
- Who funds Shelterhouse Volunteer Group Inc ↗
- Who funds SELF LOVE BEAUTY ↗
- Who funds BAY AREA SOCCER ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE GREAT LAKES BAY REGION ↗
- Who funds GREATER LANSING FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF HOYT PARK ↗
- Who funds TEMPLEARTS ↗
- Who funds UNDERGROUND RAILROAD INC ↗
- Who funds Great Lakes Bay Health Centers ↗
- Who funds Midland's Open Door ↗
- Who funds BIERLEIN COMPANIES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Child and Family Charities ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE & SEXUAL ASSAULT ↗
- Who funds BAY COUNTY HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN PUBLIC HEALTH INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds GREAT LAKES BAY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CARE FREE MEDICAL INC ↗
- Who funds ADOPTION OPTION INC ↗
- Who funds The Arc of Midland ↗
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 · Saginaw Community Foundation · Bierlein Companies Foundation · Midland Area Community Foundation · Consumers Energy Foundation · Morley Foundation · Boutell Memorial Fund · Yeo & Yeo Foundation · Frank N Andersen Foundation · Wm McNally Family Foundation · Nickless Family Charitable Foundation · Dow Company 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 Tri-Star Charitable 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 Tri-Star Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Tri-Star Charitable 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.