· Private foundation
Worthington 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 $10k2 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $232k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OLD TOWN PLAYHOUSE | $46,615 |
| MSU OPERA THEATRE | $33,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $29,000 |
| INLAND SEAS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION | $25,000 |
| SCENIC CITY CLAY ARTS | $25,000 |
| W VIRGINIA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $20,000 |
| AU SABLE INSTITUTE | $20,000 |
| ECOLOGY CENTER | $18,395 |
| WASHTENAW INTERNATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL | $14,000 |
| SEEDS | $9,000 |
| ARCHING OAKS JAPANESE ART CENTER | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 14%. 58% 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 +38% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
17 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 9 since wound down; 3 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, 76% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $59k 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
- OTOLD TOWN PLAYHOUSE INC8× · 2017–2024 · $304k · revenue +38%
- ISINLAND SEAS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION8× · 2017–2024 · $174k · revenue +100%
- ASAU SABLE INSTITUTE8× · 2017–2024 · $167k · revenue +38%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $27k
- LSLANSING SYMPHONY ASSOCIATIONgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $20k · revenue +159%
- THTHE HERMITAGE MUSEUM AND GARDENSone grant, 2021 · $20k · revenue +21%
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 Center's mission is to inspire, entertain, educate, and serve all in Northern Michigan year-round by presenting exceptional experiences across the full spectrum of the performing arts and offering impactful educational opportunities.
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…
To engage and inspire, encouraging stewardship of wildlife and water.
To conserve, sustain, and connect natural areas, land, and waters that make the places we live special
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 mission of the michigan science center is to inspire curious minds of all ages to discover, explore and appreciate science, technology, engineering and math in a creative, dynamic learning environment.
Informing and educating the public and decision makers about environmental issues.
The mission of the dahlem conservancy is to provide environmental education and outdoor experiences to the people of south central michigan.
Inspire awareness, appreciation and passion for michigan's history and stories, culture and environment through the arts.
The museum is an educational corporation formed to ignite a life-long passion for exploring, discovering, and valuing nature and science.
To protect and restore land, air, water, and diversity of life through informed personal and public action.
Be and create stewards for the water environment of michigan. provide high quality education for michigan's water professionals. educate and inform policy makers and the general public. promote scientifically sound environmental practices…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Au Sable Institute and the most unlike its peers is Grass River Natural Area Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
18 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. 18 of the 30 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 OLD TOWN PLAYHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds INLAND SEAS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds DETROIT OPERA ↗
- Who funds AU SABLE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds ECOLOGY CENTER ↗
- Who funds Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra Inc ↗
- Who funds GRASS RIVER NATURAL AREA INC ↗
- Who funds SCENIC CITY CLAY ARTS ↗
- Who funds SEEDS ↗
- Who funds LANSING SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds WEST VIRGINIA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds THE HERMITAGE MUSEUM AND GARDENS ↗
- Who funds THE STUDENT CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds NORTE YOUTH CYCLING ↗
- Who funds ECOLOGY PROJECT INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds LESLIE SCIENCE AND NATURE CENTER ↗
- Who funds GLEN ARBOR ARTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds Kalamazoo Nature Center ↗
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 · The Art and Mary Schmuckal Family Foundation · Harry a and Margaret D Towsley Foundation · Oleson Foundation · Rotary Charities of Traverse City · Barton J Ingraham & Gail G Ingraham Foundation · Dte Energy Foundation · Charles Stewart Mott Foundation · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Charities Aid Foundation America
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 Worthington 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
How do I get to Worthington Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Worthington 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.