· Public charity
Say Detroit
Providing pathways to success for detroiters in need.
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.
The 19 grants below total $289,500 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $774,989 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $485,489 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
- Under $10k1 grant · $8k
- $10k–50k17 grants · $232k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COLLEGE FOR CREATIVE STUDIES | $50,000 |
| CASS COMMUNITY SOCIAL SERVICES | $25,000 |
| DETROIT RESCUE MISSION | $25,000 |
| MICHIGAN VETERANS FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| HUMBLE DESIGN | $15,000 |
| SASHA CENTER | $15,000 |
| WAYNE COUNTY NEIGHBORHOOD LEGAL SERVICES | $15,000 |
| LA SED INC | $15,000 |
| AVALON VILLAGE INC | $12,500 |
| COTSBRIGHT BEGINNINGS | $12,500 |
| WESTSIDE CULTURAL & ATHLETIC CLUB | $12,000 |
| BOYS HOPE AND GIRLS HOPE OF MICHIGAN | $10,000 |
| NOTES FOR NOTES | $10,000 |
| BING YOUTH INSTITUTE | $10,000 |
| THE DRE PROJECT | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $150k) land where the poverty rate runs at 21%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 99% 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.
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 10% of Say Detroit’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, 97% of the giving stays in MI; read by stated purpose it is 87% — 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.
28 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2024, 11 since wound down; 2 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $20k 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
COLLEGE FOR CREATIVE STUDIES8× · 2017–2024 · $310k · revenue +25%- CCCASS COMMUNITY SOCIAL SERVICES INC8× · 2017–2024 · $205k · revenue +59%
- SCSASHA CENTER INC8× · 2017–2024 · $103k · revenue ×18 · 32% of their budget
Funded once
- DADETROIT AREA AGENCY ON AGINGgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $30k · revenue +55%
- LALIVING AND LEARNING ENRICHMENTone grant, 2021 · $15k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $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.
Dream of Detroit is combining community organizing with strategic housing and land development to build a healthy community and empower a marginalized neighborhood on the Westside of Detroit.
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.
Providing pathways to success for detroiters in need.
To provide critical resources, support and a safe nurturing environment for youth transitioning out of homelessness and poverty.
To strategically solve problems through collaboratives with City of Detroit Departments, nonprofit organizations and local grant makers in order to secure the maximum federal, state, and national foundation dollars for the city Detroit.
To promote equality and inclusion in society.
Community & home supports, inc. was founded to help people and communities address poverty and homelessness. we strive to fulfill our purpose by developing, leading, and participating in collaborative and innovative efforts that support…
The Detroit Justice Center works alongside communities to create economic opportunities, transform the justice system, and promote equitable and just cities.
Freedom House Detroit's mission is to "Support and empower refugees, asylum seekers, and others seeking humanitarian protection on their journey to safety, security, and freedom by providing comprehensive services in an inclusive and…
Our mission is to increase awareness of the problems of people who are homeless and the development and carrying out of strategies to create permanent solutions to homelessness in our community.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Detroit Area Agency On Aging and the most unlike its peers is The Dre 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 24 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 11% 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.
31 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. 31 of the 50 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 Rescue Mission Ministries ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE FOR CREATIVE STUDIES ↗
- Who funds CASS COMMUNITY SOCIAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds SASHA CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Michigan Veterans Foundations Inc ↗
- Who funds LATIN AMERICANS FOR SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT INC ↗
- Who funds Humble Design Inc ↗
- Who funds COTS ↗
- Who funds Notes For Notes Inc ↗
- Who funds BING YOUTH INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds BUILDING BETTER MEN ↗
- Who funds Avalon Village Inc ↗
- Who funds DETROIT2NEPAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DETROIT AREA AGENCY ON AGING ↗
- Who funds WAYNE COUNTY NEIGHBORHOOD LEGAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds SOULARDARITY ↗
- Who funds DETROIT HIVES INC ↗
- Who funds Hope Ignites Detroit ↗
- Who funds GESHER HUMAN SERVICES ↗
- Who funds BUCKETS OF RAIN ↗
- Who funds 1MATTERSORG ↗
- Who funds PEACEPLAYERS INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds THE DRE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds ST PATRICK SENIOR CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds YAD EZRA ↗
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 · Dte Energy Foundation · Comerica Charitable Foundation · The Kresge Foundation · Detroit2nepal Foundation · Detroit Area Agency on Aging · The Marshall Mathers Foundation · Marjorie and Maxwell Jospey Foundation · Fca Foundation · The Skillman 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 Say Detroit 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 Say Detroit?
Find your warmest path to Say Detroit 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.