· Private foundation
Elizabeth Allan & Warren Shelden Fund
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 · $17k
- $10k–50k34 grants · $833k
- $50k–250k18 grants · $1.6M
- $250k+3 grants · $1.7M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ASCENSION ST JOHN FOUNDATION | $1,100,000 |
| RACQUET UP DETROIT | $300,000 |
| HENRY FORD HEALTH SYSTEM | $275,000 |
| UNITED WAY FOR SOUTHEASTERN MI | $230,000 |
| NATURE CONSERVANCY (THE) | $200,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR SE MI | $125,000 |
| UNIVERSITY LIGGETT SCHOOL | $125,000 |
| FORGOTTEN HARVEST | $100,000 |
| MATH CORPS | $75,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF MARTIN COUNTY | $75,000 |
| DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS | $75,000 |
| EVANS SCHOLARS FOUNDATION | $70,000 |
| CHILDREN'S CENTER | $65,000 |
| COALITION ON TEMPORARY SHELTER | $60,000 |
| GLEANERS COMMUNITY FOOD BANK | $55,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $307k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 67% 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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 +30% since the first grant, against +20% for the ones you funded once.
82 repeat relationships — 56 still active in FY2024, 26 since wound down; 1 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $25k 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
- HFHENRY FORD HEALTH ST JOHN FOUNDATION7× · 2018–2024 · $1.8M · revenue +24%
- RURACQUET UP DETROIT8× · 2017–2024 · $1.7M · revenue +19% · 26% of their budget
UNIVERSITY LIGGETT SCHOOL8× · 2017–2024 · $1.4M · revenue +28%
Funded once
- SJST JOHN HEALTH FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $150k
- UWUNITED WAYone grant, 2017 · $125k
- UCUNITED COMMUNITY HOUSING COALITIONgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $100k · revenue +414%
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.
Gdahc mission: together with our partners, we empower and improve the health and economic vitality of individuals, organizations and communities by catalyzing the power of collaboration. gdahc vision: healthy people. healthy community.…
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.…
The chamber is the voice for business and works to power the economy for southeast michigan through public policy, advocacy and leading regional economic development and talent initiatives.
To promote conditions favorable to job creation and business success in michigan.
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…
Delta dental fund's mission is to improve the oral health of the public and to advance dental science and the dental profession through research and education.
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.…
The organization was founded by a group of concerned citizens, working in cooperation with the detroit city council, to shape food policy and to work for a more localized, more just, and environmentally friendly food system. the…
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…
We, trinity health-michigan and trinity health, serve together in the spirit of the gospel as a compassionate and transforming healing presence within our communities. trinity health-michigan is a member of trinity health.
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.
Promotion of activities to spur economic growth and revitalization in the city of detroit
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Children's Hospital of Michigan Foundation and the most unlike its peers is American Diabetes Association. 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 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
67 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. 67 of the 101 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 HENRY FORD HEALTH ST JOHN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds RACQUET UP DETROIT ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY LIGGETT SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds HENRY FORD HEALTH SYSTEM ↗
- Who funds DETROIT RIVERFRONT CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds FORGOTTEN HARVEST INC ↗
- Who funds THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF MARTIN COUNTY ↗
- Who funds Accounting Aid Society ↗
- Who funds Math Corps ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF MICHIGAN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ALTERNATIVES FOR GIRLS ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds GLEANERS COMMUNITY FOOD BANK OF SOUTHEASTERN MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds TURNING POINT INC ↗
- Who funds GROSSE POINTE FARMS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Historic Elmwood Foundation ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE FOR CREATIVE STUDIES ↗
- Who funds COTS ↗
- Who funds MERCY EDUCATION PROJECT ↗
- Who funds DETROIT INSTITUTE FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORHOOD CLUB ↗
- Who funds DETROIT ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CROSSROADS OF MICHIGAN ↗
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 · Dte Energy Foundation · United Way for Southeastern Michigan · The Ralph C Wilson Jr Foundation · Ford Philanthropy · McGregor Fund · The Kresge Foundation · The Skillman Foundation · WK Kellogg Foundation · Ethel and James Flinn Foundation · The Fred & Barbara Erb Family Foundation · Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
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 Elizabeth Allan & Warren Shelden Fund 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.
- Boys & Girls Club of Martin County — 2% of income from government
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 Elizabeth Allan & Warren Shelden Fund?
Find your warmest path to Elizabeth Allan & Warren Shelden Fund 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.