· Public charity
United Way of Northwest Michigan
To improve lives by connecting and mobilizing the caring power of communities in our region to advance the common good.
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.
The 2 grants below total $19,500 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $60,691 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $41,191 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k1 grant · $8k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $11k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SALVATION ARMY | $11,250 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $8,250 |
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 (FY17–22, $97k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 41% 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.
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 +95% since the first grant, against +77% for the ones you funded once.
13 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2025, 11 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- WRWOMEN'S RESOURCE CENTER GRAND TRAVERSE AREA3× · 2017–2019 · $33k · revenue +123%
- TGThe Great Lakes Childrens Museum2× · 2018–2021 · $30k · revenue +43%
- JAJUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT USA2× · 2019–2022 · $25k · revenue +125%
Funded once
- VNVARIOUS NON-PROFIT AGENCIESone grant, 2017 · $28k
- MFMUNSON FOUNDATIONone grant, 2018 · $22k
- TBTRAVERSE BAY CHILDRENS ADVOCACY CENTERone grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue +2%
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 gw homeless services of northern michigan, inc is to provide safe, supportive shelter to individuals experiencing homelessness.the 2023 990 was for 10/1-12/31/23 due to an accounting period change.
Goodwill believes that work has the power to transform lives and plays a critical role in achieving security, independence, self-worth, pride, and respect. goodwill's vision is that every person has a pathway to meaningful and sustaining…
Changing lives through the power of work.
To provide opportunities for vocational training, job placement assistance, and the developement of independent living skills for people with disabilities or other barriers to employment.
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.
Focusing community resources to meet community needs the United Way of Marquette County works to advance the common good by connecting people with health and human care issues they are concerned about and to provide the oversight the…
Partner to alleviate hunger one meal at a time, to create a future where everyone has access to nourishing food.
To provide Northeast Michigan with referrals and information to assist with essential needs.
Mid michigan community action guides local residents on the path to self-sufficiency through empowerment, education and community enrichment.
Michigan Family Resources mission is to deliver holistic family-centered services to children that promote their well-being and development.
To help provide safe, accessible, and affordable housing in Northwest Michigan.
Support other community human service agencies through mini grant process and to facilitate programs to meet the needs of the communities the organization serves.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Goodwill Industries of Northern Michigan Inc and the most unlike its peers is Newtons Road Northwest. 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 33 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 7% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 37 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 WOMEN'S RESOURCE CENTER GRAND TRAVERSE AREA ↗
- Who funds The Great Lakes Childrens Museum ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT USA ↗
- Who funds FATHER FRED FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GRAND TRAVERSE REGIONAL COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOOLS OF NORTHWEST MICHIGAN INC ↗
- Who funds TRAVERSE BAY CHILDRENS ADVOCACY CENTER ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY - GRAND TRAVERSE REGION ↗
- Who funds MUNSON HEALTHCARE FOUNDATIONS ↗
- Who funds CADILLAC AREA HABITAT FOR HUMANITY ↗
- Who funds SEEDS ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST MICHIGAN SUPPORTIVE HOUSING ↗
- Who funds GROW BENZIE INC ↗
- Who funds GOODWILL INDUSTRIES OF NORTHERN MICHIGAN INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF NORTHWEST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds GENERATIONS AHEAD ↗
- Who funds Newtons Road Northwest ↗
- Who funds ADDICTION TREATMENT SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds Womens Resource Center of Northern Michigan Inc ↗
- Who funds DANNS HOUSE ↗
- Who funds ACME CHRISTIAN THRIFT STORE &FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds LEELANAU CHRISTIAN NEIGHBORS INC ↗
- Who funds BENZIE AREA CHRISTIAN NEIGHBORS 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 Traverse Regional Community Foundation · Oleson Foundation · The Art and Mary Schmuckal Family Foundation · Rotary Charities of Traverse City · Consumers Energy Foundation · The Broad Family Foundation · The Carls Foundation · Dte Energy Foundation · Les & Ann Biederman Foundation Inc · Impact 100 of Traverse City Inc · The Herrington-Fitch Family Foundation Inc C/O Leslie Lee · Jim and Diana Huckle Family 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 United Way of Northwest Michigan 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.