West Michigan Foundation Watch: David and Carol Van Andel Foundation

Foundations are a way for members of the Capitalist Class, which made their wealth by exploiting workers, to hide some of their wealth from taxation, only to then turn around and use foundation funds to undermine social movements and generate positive PR for themselves. 

“In any case, the hidden hand of of foundations can control the course of social change and deflect anger to targets other than elite power.” 

 – Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy

David and Carol Van Andel Foundation

GRIID has always begun our Foundation Watch work by looking at the foundations associated with the most powerful family in West Michigan, the DeVos family. GRIID has already looked at the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation, the Doug and Maria DeVos Foundation, the Dan and Pamela DeVos Foundation, and finally the CDV5 Foundation. Today, I am going to look at the other family associated with the creation Amway, the Van Andel family.

I am using the data from the foundation’s 990 document for 2022, which is the most recent year that is available. The David and Carol Van Andel Foundation has $104,586,135.00 of assets in the foundation’s account, which is just another way that members of the Capitalist Class to be able to hide their money from taxation. 

Before I dive into how the David and Carol Van Andel Foundation distributed their funds, I wanted to point out that David Van Andel is chairman and CEO of Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids, along with numerous other business investments. In addition it is important to point out that the David and Carol Van Andel Foundation paid Adabelle Capital $51,019.00, a hedge fund entity with an office at 250 Monroe Avenue in Grand Rapids, along with paying Donald Smith $52,243.00, with his address being listed on the 990 document as living in Pennington, New Jersey. Both Smith and Adabelle Capital were paid for investment management.

The David and Carol Van Andel Foundation made contributions to dozens of entities in 2022, but there are some clear categories of groups they contributed to, such as the Religious Right, Think Tanks, Education-centered groups, and social service entities, to name a few. Below is a listing of each from these categories, with a dollar amount.

Religious Right

• Cascade Fellowship CRC – $70,000
• Mel Trotter Ministries – $1,000,000

Think Tanks 

• Acton Institute – $103,500

Education-centered groups

• Ada Christian School Education Foundation – $1,015,000
• Cornerstone University – $100,000
• Grand Rapids Christian Schools – $400,000
• Hope College – $25,000
• Potters House – $85,000
• Western Theological Seminary – $2,001,000

Van Andel-owned, created or connected groups

• Van Andel Research Institute – $52,600

Groups receiving Hush $ 

• Bethany Christian Services – $1,200,000
• Home Repair Services – $61,500
• John Ball Zoological Society – $750,000 (a representative of the David and Carol Van Andel Foundation sits on the Board of Directors) https://jbzoo.org/staff/ 
• Kids Food Basket – $180,000
• Opera Grand Rapids – $285,000 (a representative of the David and Carol Van Andel Foundation sits on the Board of Trustees) https://www.operagr.org/board-of-trustees/ 
• Salvation Army – $85,000
• Special Olympics Michigan Inc. – $350,000

It is instructive to see that in 2022, the David and Carol Van Andel Foundation contributed $1 million to Mel Trotter Ministries, an organization that supported the original GR Chamber of Commerce proposal that criminalized the unhoused in 2022. It is also worth noting that the David and Carol Foundation provided $1.2 million to Bethany Christian Services, which has reverted back to it’s more ridged and ideological stance on issues like only hiring Christian staff and taking an anti-LGBTQ position. Like the DeVos family, the Van Andel family doesn’t give money just for the fun of it, they use their foundation funds to strategically support the Christian and political right entities, especially in West Michigan.