· Public charity
Russell Family Foundation
The RUSSELL FAMILY FOUNDATION supports the community foundation for southeast michigan (cfsem) by supporting organizations whose work furthers cfsem's mission.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k4 grants · $141k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $100k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FIGURE SKATING IN HARLEM INC | $50,000 |
| SOUTHWEST SOLUTIONS | $50,000 |
| CARE HOUSE OF OAKLAND COUNTY INC | $49,818 |
| 826 MICHIGAN | $35,750 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN | $29,156 |
| PROGRAMS TO EDUCATE ALL CYCLISTS | $26,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $141k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 38% 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 13% of Russell Family 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 96% — 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +18% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
7 repeat relationships — 0 still active in FY2024, 7 since wound down; 5 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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $212k 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
ALTERNATIVES FOR GIRLS2× · 2020–2022 · $75k · revenue +64%
FORGOTTEN HARVEST INC2× · 2020–2021 · $73k · revenue +2%
DETROIT HORSE POWER2× · 2021–2023 · $53k · revenue +133%
Funded once
SER METRO DETROIT JOBS FOR PROGRESS INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $50k · revenue +100%- HIHope Ignites Detroitgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $50k · revenue +30%
Avalon Village Incone grant, 2023 · $50k · revenue -16%
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.
Helping families and neighborhoods succeed by providing a place and support to assure kids ages 0-5 are school ready and families are healthy and stable.
Friends of the children - detroit has a mission of impacting generational change by empowering youth who are facing the greatest obstacles through relationships and professional mentors - 12+ years, no matter what. 92% go on to enroll in…
To be a champion for parents of children in the community.
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Providing pathways to success for detroiters in need.
Local circles offers young detroiters an employment opportunity in youth- led research. by employing youth to do research, local circles intervenes on two simultaneous social issues facing young detroiters today: youth unemployment and…
The Youth Connection is committed to connecting all youth and their families in metro Detroit to a brighter future by providing quality programs and supportive services.
The greening of detroit's mission is the sustainable growth of a healthy urban community through trees, green spaces, healthy living, education, training and job opportunities.
To inspire a community of active engagement, personal responsibility and hope by connecting people to opportunities and resources to transform the quality of life for all Detroiters.
The organization was founded by a group of concerned citizens, working in cooperation with the detroit city council, to shape food policy and to work for a more localized, more just, and environmentally friendly food system. the…
To enable african americans and people in need to reach their full human potential
DPSFs mission is to create and enhance educational opportunities for over 50,000 Detroit Public Schools Community Districts students, families and educators. DPS Foundation was organized to ensure DPS, now DPSCD student and families to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Alternatives for Girls and the most unlike its peers is Free Bikes 4 Kidz - Detroit. 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 29 years old; the field is 13. 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 — 0.0% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 29 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 COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds ALTERNATIVES FOR GIRLS ↗
- Who funds FORGOTTEN HARVEST INC ↗
- Who funds RACQUET UP DETROIT ↗
- Who funds DETROIT HORSE POWER ↗
- Who funds FREE BIKES 4 KIDZ - DETROIT ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWEST SOLUTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds SER METRO DETROIT JOBS FOR PROGRESS INC ↗
- Who funds FIGURE SKATING IN HARLEM INC ↗
- Who funds OAKLAND FAMILY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Hope Ignites Detroit ↗
- Who funds Avalon Village Inc ↗
- Who funds CAREHOUSE OF OAKLAND COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds VISTA MARIA ↗
- Who funds HURON-CLINTON METROPARKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds KIDS ON THE GO ↗
- Who funds 826 MICHIGAN INC ↗
- Who funds DETROIT ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CHILDRENS CENTER OF WAYNE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds GIRLS GROUP ↗
- Who funds Therapeutic Riding Inc ↗
- Who funds DETROIT FOOD & ENTREPRENEURSHIP ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds Programs to Educate All Cyclists ↗
- Who funds DETROIT INSTITUTE FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds GREATER LANSING FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds HAVEN 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 · Dte Energy Foundation · Detroit Industrial School · Children's Hospital of Michigan Foundation · The Skillman Foundation · The Ralph C Wilson Jr Foundation · Ford Philanthropy · Ethel and James Flinn Foundation · Harry a and Margaret D Towsley Foundation · The Barton Malow Foundation · Michigan Health Endowment 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 Russell Family 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 Russell Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Russell Family 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.