· Private foundation
Ws & Lois Vandalson 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
- Under $10k11 grants · $47k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $282k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $378k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| KALAMAZOO VALLEY COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $150,000 |
| KALAMAZOO LOAVES & FISHES | $63,000 |
| YWCA OF KALAMAZOO | $60,000 |
| BRONSON HEALTH FOUNDATION | $55,000 |
| YWCA OF KALAMAZOO | $50,000 |
| FAMILY & CHILDREN SERVICES INC | $40,000 |
| MINISTRY WITH COMMUNITY | $40,000 |
| KC READY 4S | $35,000 |
| COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF KALAMAZOO | $30,000 |
| KALAMAZOO INSTITUTE OF ARTS | $25,000 |
| CHEFF THERAPEUTIC RIDING CENTER | $20,000 |
| COMSTOCK COMMUNITY CENTER | $20,000 |
| KALAMAZOO REGIONAL EDUCATIONAL SERVICE AGENCY | $20,000 |
| DISABILITY NETWORK SOUTHWEST MICHIGAN | $20,000 |
| DOUGLASS COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION | $12,000 |
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, $536k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 100% 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 +26% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
32 repeat relationships — 22 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 4 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, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $186k 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
- KLKALAMAZOO LOAVES & FISHES INC6× · 2020–2025 · $324k · revenue +33%
- KCKALAMAZOO COLLEGE4× · 2020–2024 · $255k · revenue +26%
- CICOMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF KALAMAZOO6× · 2020–2025 · $180k · revenue +40%
Funded once
- KPKALAMAZOO PARKS FOUNDATION OF ROTA KIWANone grant, 2021 · $125k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $50k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2024 · $36k
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 the kalamazoo humane society is to nuture the wellbeing of animals and people in our communities.
Kalamazoo housing advocate is a nonprofit working to break the cycle of homelessness in kalamazoo county.
It is the mission of Kalamazoo Neighborhood Housing Services (KNHS), together with residents and community partners, to revitalize neighborhoods and promote comprehensive strategies that foster homeownership.
The mission of the kalamazoo foundation for excellence is to support the goals of the city of kalamazoo, fund aspirational investments in the city, and empower kalamazoo residents to achieve the lives they want for themselves and their…
Create relationships & experiences that welcome and inspire people to discover, enjoy, value, and care for nature. Kalamazoo Nature Center envisions a resilient community where all people have strong interconnections with the natural world.
The mission of the Kalamazoo Civic Theatre, with community partners and volunteers, is to create and deliver engaging, inspiring theatrical productions and educational experiences that spark delight, build community, encourage…
Probation residential center - alternative correctional facility and outpatient treatment facility
To promote the arts of book printing, binding, printmaking, papermaking, and creative writing through a community workshop, teaching classes, publishing, and exhibitions
To operate and manage according to law and applicable regulations, a certified home for the ages for qualified residents of Kalamazoo county and its surrounding counties.
To assure housing for socially and economically vulnerable residents of kalamazoo county.
An independent school providing a supportive, challenging and creative academic environment for talented and motivated students to prepare them for life long achievement.
To improve and enhance the physical, social, and economic environment of the eastside section of the city of kalamazoo, michigan to the ends that the community may have a more pleasant, attractive, safe and convenient place to live and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Kalamazoo Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Allegan Homeless Solutions. 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 42 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% 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 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.
41 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. 41 of the 59 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 KALAMAZOO LOAVES & FISHES INC ↗
- Who funds KALAMAZOO COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds FAMILY & CHILDREN SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds MINISTRY WITH COMMUNITY INC ↗
- Who funds Bronson Health Foundation ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF KALAMAZOO ↗
- Who funds CHEFF THERAPEUTIC RIDING CENTER ↗
- Who funds KALAMAZOO VALLEY COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF KALAMAZOO INC ↗
- Who funds COMSTOCK COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE DISABILITY NETWORK ↗
- Who funds KALAMAZOO NONPROFIT ADVOCACY COALITION ↗
- Who funds KALAMAZOO LITERACY COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds KALAMAZOO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DOUGLASS COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds HISPANIC AMERICAN COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds DISABILITY NETWORK SOUTHWEST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds PRETTY LAKE VACATION CAMP INC ↗
- Who funds ECUMENICAL SENIOR CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds KAIROS DWELLING ↗
- Who funds GRYPHON PLACE ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds KALAMAZOO VALLEY HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds Kalamazoo Institute of Arts ↗
- Who funds WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LIFT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Sherman Lake YMCA Outdoor 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: Kalamazoo Community Foundation · Harold and Grace Upjohn Foundation · Dorothy U Dalton Foundation Inc · Irving S Gilmore Foundation · Tyler-Little Family Foundation · United Way of South Central Michigan · Marvin and Rosalie Okun Foundation · The Ronda E Stryker and William D Johnston Foundation · The Burdick-Thorne Foundation · Suzanne Upjohn Delano Parish Foundation · WK Kellogg Foundation · John E Fetzer Institute 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 Ws & Lois Vandalson 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.
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Find your warmest path to Ws & Lois Vandalson 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.