· Public charity
Oakland County Bar Foundation
The Oakland County Bar Foundation is dedicated to ensuring access to justice and an understanding of the law in our community.
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.
The 8 grants below total $189,880 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $199,880 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $10,000 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $124k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $52k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Lakeshore Legal Aid | $52,250 |
| Oakland County Bar Association | $38,880 |
| CARE House of Oakland County | $25,000 |
| Catholic Charities of Southeast Michigan | $20,000 |
| Oakland Mediation Center Inc | $20,000 |
| SW Detroit Immigrant & Refugee Center | $20,000 |
| Center for Civic Education | $8,500 |
| Legal Aid & Defender Association Inc | $5,250 |
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, $11k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of Oakland County Bar 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. Read by recipient address, 100% of the giving stays in MI; read by stated purpose it is 92% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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.
13 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 7 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, 87% 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
- LLLakeshore Legal Aid8× · 2017–2025 · $445k · revenue +118%
- OCOakland County Bar Association8× · 2017–2025 · $272k · revenue +8%
- SDSouthwest Detroit Immigrant and Refugee Center7× · 2017–2025 · $155k · revenue +301%
Funded once
MICHIGAN COMMUNITY RESOURCESone grant, 2021 · $25k · revenue -53%- TRTHE RESTORE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2018 · $20k
- TJTHE JOSEPH PROJECT INCone grant, 2024 · $15k · 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.
Provide free legal assistance to indigent and low income persons
To advance the safety, independence, and economic stability of those most affected by poverty, racism, and other structurally oppressive systems by increasing access to justice and working for systemic solutions.
To be a public law firm that knows, as well as understands, the problems of even the poorest in our communities and addresses these problems through education, and with creative legal advocacy of the highest distinction. LSNM will be seen…
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…
To advocate for, educate, and assist our target populations. our services address the needs of many different people, but we continue to target our services to older adults and persons with disabilities.
We protect rights, challenge injustice, and fight poverty through freelegal advocacy for people and families.
A legal self help center, the legal assistance center works to educate, empower, and equip the people of our community to face and resolve legal challenges, to assure access to justice, and to thereby enhance individual, family, and…
Collective bargaining and representation
The Detroit Justice Center works alongside communities to create economic opportunities, transform the justice system, and promote equitable and just cities.
Provide affordable or free mediation services and conflict resolution trainings to support the transforming of our society into a collaborative and problem-solving one.
The Organization is a nonprofit community defender providing legal assistance through court appointment to children and other indigent persons.
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Michigan Community Resources and the most unlike its peers is White Lake Police Foundation. 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 34 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 17% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 24 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 Oakland County Bar Association ↗
- Who funds Southwest Detroit Immigrant and Refugee Center ↗
- Who funds CAREHOUSE OF OAKLAND COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID AND DEFENDER ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds BEAUMONT HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Michigan Center for Civic Education ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF DETROIT MERCY ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN COMMUNITY RESOURCES ↗
- Who funds THE CHALDEAN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds White Lake Police Foundation ↗
- Who funds OAKLAND MEDIATION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE MAURICE & JANE SUGAR LAW CENTER FOR ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds THE JOSEPH PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds TROY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds PATRIOT WEEK INC ↗
- Who funds IMMIGRATION LAW & JUSTICE MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds STUDENT ADVOCACY CENTER OF MICHIGAN INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL LEGAL AID AND DEFENDER ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY SERVICE ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds SOCIETY OF ACTIVE RETIREES ↗
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 · Michigan State Bar Foundation · United Way for Southeastern Michigan · Butzel Long Charitable Trust · Ford Philanthropy · Dte Energy Foundation · The Kresge Foundation · WK Kellogg Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Network for Good · National Philanthropic Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc
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 Oakland County 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 Oakland County Bar Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Oakland County 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.