GRAND RAPIDS — Five years ago, John Wilson formed a private family foundation and set out to help lift people out of poverty in Mason County, on Lake Michigan north of Muskegon. Wilson's group, The Pennies from Heaven Foundation, helped organize an employer resource network serving 12 companies and about 20 percent of the local workforce. Such networks are cropping up around Michigan as tools for employers to pool resources and tackle barriers that keep their workers from holding down a job, from transportation to housing to child care. Wilson estimates the foundation invested about $300,000 to open Oaktree Academy, a nonprofit child care center housed inside a former school in Ludington, and another $100,000 annually to operate it.