· Private foundation
F Ross Birkhill and Laura Jean Birkhill
Its FY2025 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 FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k14 grants · $44k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $24k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY | $13,310 |
| THE SALVATION ARMY | $10,500 |
| GLEANERS COMMUNITY FOOD BANK INC | $7,500 |
| THE HENRY FORD | $5,500 |
| HOUSE N2 HOME | $4,500 |
| HUMANE SOCIETY OF HURON VALLEY | $4,500 |
| STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS | $4,015 |
| A2ETHICS ORG | $3,000 |
| THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN | $2,500 |
| EDCHOICE | $2,500 |
| HOSPICE OF MICHIGAN INC | $2,500 |
| WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT | $2,000 |
| FISHER HOUSE MICHIGAN | $2,000 |
| COVENANT HOUSE MICHIGAN | $2,000 |
| PRESERVE HISTORIC SLEEPING BEAR | $750 |
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 (FY18–25, $24k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 71% 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.
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 +37% since the first grant, against +29% for the ones you funded once.
23 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 9 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- TCTHE CORNING MUSEUM OF GLASS6× · 2018–2024 · $87k · revenue +30%
- HSHUMANE SOCIETY OF HURON VALLEY7× · 2018–2025 · $23k · revenue +54%
- UOUniversity of Michigan3× · 2018–2025 · $19k · revenue +195%
Funded once
- DADexter Area Museum Incgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $7k · revenue +130%
- APARNOLD PALMER MEDICAL CENTERone grant, 2018 · $5k
- FFFRANKLIN FURANCE ARCHIVE INCone grant, 2018 · $3k
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.
The Detroit Historical Society tells Detroit's stories and why they matter through its exhibits, programs, outreach, and the preservation and dissemination of its artifacts and collections.
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.…
Henry ford health macomb hospital (hfmh) is an affiliate of henry ford health system dba henry ford health ("hf health") serving the northeastern metropolitan detroit michigan communities. as an integrated component of one of the nation's…
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 meet our patients and families where they are with urgency, purpose, and compassionate accountability surrounding them with decades of dedicated hospice expertise.
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.
Michigan farm bureau (mfb) is a member directed agricultural organization whose purpose is to represent, protect, and enhance the business, economic, social, and educational interests of our members located throughout the state of michigan.
The mission of arc of wabash county, inc. is to challenge, empower, and support individuals with disabilities to reach their highest level of independence. arc of wabash is dedicated to: 1) preserve, protect, and promote the dignity of…
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Fisher House Michigan and the most unlike its peers is Dexter Area Museum 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 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 34 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 THE CORNING MUSEUM OF GLASS ↗
- Who funds HUMANE SOCIETY OF HURON VALLEY ↗
- Who funds University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds GLEANERS COMMUNITY FOOD BANK OF SOUTHEASTERN MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds Orlando Health Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds THE PURPLE ROSE THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds EdChoice Inc ↗
- Who funds FORGOTTEN HARVEST INC ↗
- Who funds Hospice of Michigan Inc ↗
- Who funds FISHER HOUSE MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds Dexter Area Museum Inc ↗
- Who funds OAKLAND LITERACY COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LEADER DOGS FOR THE BLIND ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds SHELTER ASSOCIATION OF WASHTENAW COUNTY ↗
- Who funds HOUSE N2 HOME INC ↗
- Who funds COVENANT HOUSE MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds ARNOLD & WINNIE PALMER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds TEAM RED WHITE & BLUE INC ↗
- Who funds AVALON NONPROFIT HOUSING CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Warrior Dog Foundation ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO INC ↗
- Who funds YOUTH JUSTICE FUND ↗
- Who funds BLUE STAR SERVICE DOGS INC ↗
- Who funds Sleeping Bear Forever DBA Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear ↗
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 · Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation · United Way of Washtenaw County · Dte Energy Foundation · Baird Foundation Inc · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Network for Good · Paypal Charitable Giving 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 F Ross Birkhill and Laura Jean Birkhill 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.
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 0% 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.