· Public charity
Prosperus Detroit Micro Lending
ProsperUs advances economic equity in under-resourced communities by supporting entrepreneurs with opportunities and capital needed to build businesses, generational wealth, and vibrant neighborhoods.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2021–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 8 grants below total $429,190 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $469,929 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $40,739 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 · FY2024
- $10k–50k4 grants · $139k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $291k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Ferris Wheel Innovation Center | $120,019 |
| Metro Detroit Black Business Chamber of Commerce | $61,016 |
| Detroit Future Opps | $55,150 |
| Grand Rapids Urban League | $54,445 |
| Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce Inc | $49,885 |
| Global Detroit | $40,000 |
| Grabb Local Inc | $37,213 |
| Michigan Womens Foundation | $11,462 |
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 (FY22–24, $94k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 17%. 42% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
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 retain, expand, and attract business & industry and to participate in activities which enhance the economic climate within the Gratiot Community.
Detroit CDFI Coalition is organized for the purpose of furthering community economic development financing in the City of Detroit, Michigan, promoting and assisting growth and development of community development opportunities through the…
A neighborhood based housing and development Corporation with the purpose of revializing the detroit area, by providubg affordable housing to persons of low and moderate incomes and providing youth development and networking.
To build a diverse coalition of community, environmental, faith and organized labor organizations united to strengthen metro detroit through meaningful community engagement in the creation of sustainable "win-win" economic development…
The maintenance and beautification of vacant land inside of a community
The detroit land bank community development corporation's mission is to serve the people of the city of detroit, michigan through the advancement of economic welfare, the promotion of community development, and the provision of affordable…
To provide financial support for diverse social and community impact projects originated and led by Detroiters of African descent.
North End CDC services the historic North End community of Detroit MI . The program specializes in providing workforce and youth development.
To educate the public about unfair business practices fraud, and to make informed decisions when choosing entities to do business with.
To build the political and economic power of low and moderate-income detroiters of color through neighborhood-driven community organizing and civic engagement in order to change public policy and communities for the better.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Metro Detroit Black Chamber of Commerce Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Osborn Neighborhood Alliance. 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.
15 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. 15 of the 55 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 FERRIS WHEEL INNOVATION CENTER ↗
- Who funds METRO DETROIT BLACK CHAMBER OF COMMERCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL DETROIT ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS URBAN LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds Metro Detroit Barber College ↗
- Who funds WARRENCONNER DEVELOPMENT COALITION ↗
- Who funds GRACE IN ACTION COLLECTIVES ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL DETROIT CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Dream of Detroit ↗
- Who funds Cody Rouge Community Action Alliance ↗
- Who funds GRANDMONT ROSEDALE DEVELOPMENT CORP ↗
- Who funds THE MICHIGAN WOMEN'S FOUNDATION ↗
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 · Detroit Economic Growth Association · The Skillman Foundation · The Kresge Foundation · United Way for Southeastern Michigan · Comerica Charitable Foundation · WK Kellogg Foundation · Dte Energy Foundation · Enterprise Community Partners Inc · The Ford Foundation · Community Development Advocates of Detroit · The Gilbert Family 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 Prosperus Detroit Micro Lending 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 Prosperus Detroit Micro Lending?
Find your warmest path to Prosperus Detroit Micro Lending 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.