· Public charity
Michigan State Bar Foundation
The MICHIGAN STATE BAR FOUNDATION provides leadership and grants to improve access for all to the justice system, including support for civil legal aid for low-income individuals, law-related education and conflict resolution.
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 · $14k
- $10k–50k15 grants · $437k
- $50k–250k16 grants · $1.9M
- $250k+22 grants · $20M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LAKESHORE LEGAL AID | $4,338,671 |
| LAKESHORE LEGAL AIDCOUNSEL AND ADVOCACY LAW LINE | $1,801,640 |
| LAKESHORE LEGAL AIDMETRO | $1,777,996 |
| LEGAL AID OF WESTERN MICHIGAN | $1,705,015 |
| MICHIGAN ADVOCACY PROGRAM | $970,500 |
| LEGAL SERVICES OF EASTERN MICHIGAN | $916,301 |
| LEGAL AID OF WESTERN MICHIGAN | $796,438 |
| MICHIGAN LEGAL SERVICES | $794,945 |
| LAKESHORE LEGAL AID | $771,710 |
| MICHIGAN ADVOCACY PROGRAMMICHIGAN POVERTY LAW PROGRAM | $692,623 |
| MICHIGAN ADVOCACY PROGRAMMICHIGAN LEGAL HELP | $650,000 |
| LEGAL AID OF WESTERN MICHIGAN | $611,208 |
| MICHIGAN LEGAL SERVICES | $481,077 |
| MICHIGAN ADVOCACY PROGRAM (LSSCM) | $455,115 |
| LEGAL SERVICES OF EASTERN MICHIGAN | $429,572 |
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 (FY17–25, $286k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 13% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +56% since the first grant, against +37% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 3 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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $71k 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
- LLLakeshore Legal Aid9× · 2017–2025 · $32M · revenue +118% · 30% of their budget
- MAMichigan Advocacy Program9× · 2017–2025 · $26M · revenue +194% · 77% of their budget
- LALegal Aid of Western Michigan9× · 2017–2025 · $12M · revenue +48% · 44% of their budget
Funded once
- MLMIGRANT LEGAL AID INCone grant, 2017 · $200k · revenue +11% · 38% of their budget
- MDMICHIGAN DEP OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICESone grant, 2017 · $39k
- UCUS COMMITTEE FOR REFUGEES AND IMMIGRANTS INCone grant, 2024 · $35k · revenue 0%
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.
Toledo Legal Aid Society provides legal representation for indigent clients that are charged with criminal, traffic, or juvenile offenses for which the penalty or any possible adjudication includes the potential loss of liberty.
The Organization is a nonprofit community defender providing legal assistance through court appointment to children and other indigent persons.
The mission of the Oakland County Bar Association is to serve the professional needs of our members, improve the justice system, and ensure the delivery of quality legal services to the public.
To provide civil legal services to the residents of Monroe County, Michigan who are 60 years of age or older.
Legal aid of manasota provides legal services at no or low cost to those in need by partnering with local lawyers.
At legal aid chicago, we work together to provide high quality civil legal aid to people living in poverty and other vulnerable groups.through advocacy, education, collaboration, and litigation we empower individuals, protect fundamental…
Michigan Liberation is dedicated to the leadership development of community members and creation of effective campaigns to advance racial, gender and economic justice in Michigan
Work with DC courts, private bar & legal services providers to increase legal representations for low & moderate income DC residents, enhance efficiency of legal services, and reduce barriers to the judicial system.
To advance economic opportunity and social justice through legal advocacy.
To improve the lives of those in need through quality legal assistance.
To improve Michigans judiciary through the evaluation, education promotion of judges committed to deciding cases based on the plain meaning of text stare decisis develop an education program for legislators general public to raise…
The primary purpose of legal aid services of oregon shall be to achieve justice for the low-income communities of oregon by providing a full range of the highest quality civil legal services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Legal Aid of Western Michigan and the most unlike its peers is Pro Se Bankruptcy Assistance Project. 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 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
36 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. 36 of the 44 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 Lakeshore Legal Aid ↗
- Who funds Michigan Advocacy Program ↗
- Who funds Legal Aid of Western Michigan ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN LEGAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Legal Services of Eastern Michigan ↗
- Who funds Legal Services of Northern Michigan ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN COMMUNITY RESOURCES ↗
- Who funds Genesee County Legal Aid Society DBA Center for Civil Justice ↗
- Who funds Michigan Indian Legal Services ↗
- Who funds THE MAURICE & JANE SUGAR LAW CENTER FOR ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID AND DEFENDER ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds ELDER LAW OF MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN STATE BAR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MIGRANT LEGAL AID INC ↗
- Who funds Detroit Justice Center ↗
- Who funds LEGAL ASSISTANCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF DETROIT MERCY ↗
- Who funds Detroit Bar Association Foundation ↗
- Who funds US COMMITTEE FOR REFUGEES AND IMMIGRANTS INC ↗
- Who funds Citizens for Prison Reform ↗
- Who funds Accounting Aid Society ↗
- Who funds HAVEN INC ↗
- Who funds Pro Se Bankruptcy Assistance Project ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN COALITION TO END DOMESTIC AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LAW ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWEST ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds HENRY FORD LEARNING INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds AVALON HEALING CENTER ↗
- Who funds IMMIGRATION LAW & JUSTICE MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM HOUSE DETROIT ↗
- Who funds Southwest Detroit Immigrant and Refugee Center ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR HOUSING OAKLAND COUNTY CONTINUUM OF CARE ↗
- Who funds CASA FOR KIDS 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 · Ford Philanthropy · McGregor Fund · WK Kellogg Foundation · Oakland County Bar Foundation · Michigan Health Endowment Fund · The Kresge Foundation · Safe & Just Michigan · The Skillman Foundation · The Ralph C Wilson Jr Foundation · Butzel Long Charitable Trust
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 Michigan State Bar 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 Michigan State Bar Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Michigan State Bar 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.