· Private foundation
Elaine Stern 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 FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k6 grants · $175k
- $50k–250k9 grants · $575k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ALTERNATIVES FOR GIRLS | $100,000 |
| DETROIT PUBLIC MEDIA | $75,000 |
| BRILLIANT DETROIT | $75,000 |
| HUMBLE DESIGN INC | $65,000 |
| DETROIT HORSE POWER | $60,000 |
| REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN - STUDENT LIFE DEVELOPMENT | $50,000 |
| COLLEGE CAREER AND BEYOND | $50,000 |
| BEYOND BASICS | $50,000 |
| MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY - HILLEL | $50,000 |
| WINNING FUTURES | $45,000 |
| GESHER HUMAN SERVICES | $40,000 |
| RACQUET UP DETROIT | $30,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN | $25,000 |
| MOTOWN MUSEUM | $25,000 |
| BEDS 4 KIDS | $10,000 |
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 (FY18–24, $110k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 20% of Elaine Stern Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 100% of the giving stays in MI; read by stated purpose it is 88% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
17 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2025, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $50k 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
ALTERNATIVES FOR GIRLS7× · 2019–2025 · $775k · revenue +114%
MOTOWN HISTORICAL MUSUEM INC7× · 2018–2025 · $600k · revenue +209%- DPDETROIT PUBLIC MEDIA7× · 2019–2025 · $475k · revenue +46%
Funded once
- ROREGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGANone grant, 2018 · $100k
- CCCOLLEGE CAREER AND BEYOND (FKA MIDNIGHT GOLF PROGRAM)one grant, 2024 · $50k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2018 · $5k
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 desc is to cultivate local workforce talent to align with the needs of the business community through partnerships with key workforce agencies, faith- and community- based organizations, education and training institutions,…
The organization works with k-12, higher education and other community partners to design and implement programs to improve rates of college persistence and completion.
Friends of the children - detroit has a mission of impacting generational change by empowering youth who are facing the greatest obstacles through relationships and professional mentors - 12+ years, no matter what. 92% go on to enroll in…
Progressionista serves Detroit girls ages 8-12 with literacy and mentorship programming and provides annually 250 books in total for participants to keep, in-person masterclasses with women professionals, hands-on career projects, and…
Empowering young people to maximize their potential through professional performing arts training and the creation of theatrical and musical art that engages, transforms and inspires.
Inspired by its heritage since 1906, matrix human services advocates for and services the most vulnerable in the metropolitan detroit community and empowers individiuals and families to enhance the quality of their lives and achieve self…
To enable african americans and people in need to reach their full human potential
DPSFs mission is to create and enhance educational opportunities for over 50,000 Detroit Public Schools Community Districts students, families and educators. DPS Foundation was organized to ensure DPS, now DPSCD student and families to…
Business leaders for michigan is a nonprofit, nonpartisan statewide organization driven by ceos from the state's leading employers, all working toward a shared goal: making michigan a top 10 state for jobs, talent and a thriving economy.…
Detroit regional chamber foundation, inc. (the "foundation") is dedicated to growing programs or initiatives that are important to ensuring the detroit region's economy is one of the fastest growing in the u.s.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Alternatives for Girls and the most unlike its peers is Jasmynns Voice Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 24 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 ALTERNATIVES FOR GIRLS ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds MOTOWN HISTORICAL MUSUEM INC ↗
- Who funds DETROIT PUBLIC MEDIA ↗
- Who funds BRILLIANT DETROIT ↗
- Who funds Humble Design Inc ↗
- Who funds RACQUET UP DETROIT ↗
- Who funds THE MIDNIGHT GOLF PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds CONGREGATION B'NAI B'RITH HILLEL ↗
- Who funds DETROIT HORSE POWER ↗
- Who funds BEYOND BASICS ↗
- Who funds WINNING FUTURES ↗
- Who funds GESHER HUMAN SERVICES ↗
- Who funds JASMYNNS VOICE INC ↗
- Who funds KADIMA ↗
- Who funds BEDS 4 KIDS ↗
- Who funds CANTON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION 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: Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan · Flagstar Foundation Inc · United Jewish Foundation · Dte Energy Foundation · Marvin and Betty Danto Family Foundation · David Kahan Family Foundation · Deroy Testamentary Foundation · The Ralph C Wilson Jr Foundation · WK Kellogg Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Network for Good · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Elaine Stern 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 Elaine Stern Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Elaine Stern 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.