· Private foundation
Empowerment 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $6k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $52k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Indiana University | $51,970 |
| Divine Will Foundation | $5,000 |
| Kentucky Humane Society | $1,000 |
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 (FY18–20, $136k) land where the poverty rate runs at 20%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 93% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 6% of Empowerment 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.
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 — 1 still active in FY2025, 16 since wound down; 2 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, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6k 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
- RTROOM TO READ3× · 2018–2020 · $146k · revenue +23%
- FFOCUSHOPE3× · 2018–2020 · $125k · revenue +40%
- PUPRATHAM USA2× · 2017–2018 · $100k · revenue +20%
Funded once
- DDASRAgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $210k · revenue +73%
- GCGLEANERS COMMUNITY FOOD BANK OF SOUTHEASTERN MICHIGANone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue -22%
- SDSAY DETROITone grant, 2020 · $85k · revenue -7%
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.
To improve and save lives through compassionate care, community engagement and advocacy for animals.
To maintain and operate a hospital, ambulance and veterinary services for the care of animals. the maintenance and operation of kennels and suitable chambers for the humane destruction of wounded animals.
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.…
We honor life through donation.
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…
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 friends are dedicated to the rescue, protection, and adoption of companion animals in need while inspiring the human-animal bond. we meet our mission by:-saving 100% of healthy and treatable animals.-providing high-quality animal care…
Humane society of southwestern michigan exists to provide shelter and care for sick, homeless and unwanted animals. in addition, the organization provides adoption services for the animals in its care.
Informing and educating the public and decision makers about environmental issues.
Nourishing hope provides food, mental health support, and social services to help all our neighbors thrive.
Animal outlook is a national animal protection organization working to end the abuse of farmed animals using a variety of strategies, including investigations, legal advocacy, corporate and food system reform, and vegan outreach.
Our mission is to increase awareness of the problems of people who are homeless and the development and carrying out of strategies to create permanent solutions to homelessness in our community.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Ozone House Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Bottomless Toy Chest Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 36 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 13% 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.
35 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. 35 of the 61 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 DASRA ↗
- Who funds ROOM TO READ ↗
- Who funds FOCUSHOPE ↗
- Who funds GLEANERS COMMUNITY FOOD BANK OF SOUTHEASTERN MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds PRATHAM USA ↗
- Who funds SAY DETROIT ↗
- Who funds FORGOTTEN HARVEST INC ↗
- Who funds University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds AGASTYA USA ↗
- Who funds MERCY EDUCATION PROJECT ↗
- Who funds DEPAUL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CASS COMMUNITY SOCIAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds Food Bank of Eastern Michigan ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF GREEN COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds HAVEN INC ↗
- Who funds LIGHTHOUSE OF OAKLAND COUNTY ↗
- Who funds THE YUNION ↗
- Who funds THE BOTTOMLESS TOY CHEST INC ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE FOR CREATIVE STUDIES ↗
- Who funds Humble Design Inc ↗
- Who funds DIVINE WILL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GLOBALGIVING FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SPAY NEUTER NETWORK ↗
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: Dte Energy Foundation · Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan · United Way for Southeastern Michigan · The Carls Foundation · Comerica Charitable Foundation · Ford Philanthropy · The Mihalich Charitable Foundation · Ethel and James Flinn Foundation · The Barton Malow Foundation · United Jewish Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America
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 Empowerment 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.