· Private foundation
Julius V & Alice G Combs Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ART IN MOTION | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| MONEY MATTERS FOR YOUTH | $5,000 |
| OPTIMIST INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| CHILDREN'S CENTER | $1,000 |
| BRAZEAL DENNARD CHORALE | $1,000 |
| DURFEE AMERICAN GIRLS READING CLUB | $500 |
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 (FY23–23, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
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 +60% since the first grant, against +10% for the ones you funded once.
14 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2024, 10 since wound down; 3 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, 68% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $7k 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
- DCDETROIT COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL2× · 2018–2019 · $10k · revenue +28%
- OIOPTIMIST INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION4× · 2021–2024 · $10k · revenue +78%
- BTBOUND TOGETHER3× · 2018–2021 · $1k · revenue +73%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $10k
- WWWARRIOR WOMEN AGAINST POVERTYone grant, 2020 · $10k
- VVARIOUSone grant, 2017 · $10k
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 organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Dean college is a private, residential new england college grounded in a culture and tradition that all students deserve the opportunity to discover and exceed their greatest aspirations. a personal and transformative community since 1865,…
The college for creative studies nurtures the creativity that is vital to the enrichment of modern culture. the college educates visual artists and designers, knowledgeable in varied fields, who will be leaders in creative professions that…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Benedict college is committed to providing transformative learning experiences characterized by high quality academic, co-curricular and extra-curricular programming, intentionally designed to develop superior cultural and professional…
Coker university is a student-centered, comprehensive university. it is dedicated to providing every student an academic curriculum based upon a uniformly excellent liberal arts core that enhances the structured development of key personal…
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.
Detroit Mercy, a Catholic university in the Jesuit and Mercy traditions, exists to provide excellent student-centered undergraduate and graduate education in an urban context. A UDM education seeks to integrate the intellectual, spiritual,…
See schedule o.drake's mission is to provide an exceptional learning environment that prepares students for meaningful personal lives, professional accomplishments, and responsible global citizenship. the drake experience is distinguished…
Colgate university's mission is to provide a demanding, expansive educational experience to a select group of diverse, talented, intellectually sophisticated students who are capable of challenging themselves, their peers and their…
The mission of baker college is to provide an inclusive, innovative, and transformative educational experience which allows students to positively impact their lives and the world around them.
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Optimist International Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Lane College. 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 43 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) — 13% of your grantees by number, and just 5% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
19 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. 19 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 DETROIT COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds OPTIMIST INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HENRY FORD HEALTH SYSTEM ↗
- Who funds ONE LOVE GLOBAL ↗
- Who funds BOUND TOGETHER ↗
- Who funds LANE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds DETROIT SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds CO-ETTE CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds BRAZEAL DENNARD CHORALE ↗
- Who funds DETROIT INSTITUTE FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds OPERATION SMILE INC ↗
- Who funds GAMMA XI BOULE 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 · United Way for Southeastern Michigan · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Amazonsmile 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 Julius V & Alice G Combs 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.