· Private foundation
Sid & Esther Brown Family Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 72% of SID & ESTHER BROWN FAMILY FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MID CITY NUTRITION | $4,000 |
| PAY IT FORWARD COMM FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| BLUE WATER SAFE HORIZONS | $2,000 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $1,900 |
| PADDLE ATRIM | $1,024 |
| COUNCIL ON AGING | $1,000 |
| MARINE CITY OLD NEWS BOYS | $1,000 |
| KIDS IN DISTRESS | $1,000 |
| SPECIAL OLYMPICS | $500 |
| FRIENDS OF THE ST CLAIR RIVER | $500 |
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 (FY18–24, $14k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 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.
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 +40% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
15 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2024, 5 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- PAPADDLE ANTRIM6× · 2019–2024 · $6k · revenue +57%
SPECIAL OLYMPICS MICHIGAN INC8× · 2017–2024 · $5k · revenue +110%- FOFRIENDS OF THE ST CLAIR RIVER3× · 2022–2024 · $2k · revenue +40%
Funded once
- WWWOUNDED WARRIORSone grant, 2017 · $500
- DRDetroit Rescue Mission Ministriesone grant, 2018 · $250 · revenue -22%
- HSHUMANE SOCIETY OF ST CLAIR COUNTY - SNAPgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $245 · revenue +54%
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.
The coalition to protect michigan resources's mission is to be a strong voice for the equitable co-management of michigan's fisheries, with both the great lakes and inland lakes and streams, to insure that conservation principles remain in…
It is our mission at huron pines to conserve and enhance northern michigan's natural resources to ensure healthy water, protected places and vibrant communities. for alomst 50 years, our work across the forests, lakes and streams of…
To conserve, sustain, and connect natural areas, land, and waters that make the places we live special
We advocate and facilitate the development of a network of multipurpose recreational trails in Northern Lower Michigan.
The mission of harm reduction is to reduce substance abuse and related activities in a respectful manner in collaboration with the user
To maintain and operate a hospital, ambulance and veterinary services for the care of animals. the maintenance and operation of kennels and suitable chambers for the humane destruction of wounded animals.
To preserve the knowledge, skills and technology involved with the maintenance and operation of steam locomotives and to educate the public about the enormous impact that these machines had in the economic development of owosso and the…
Acquisition and conservation of natural areas.
Preservation and protection of michigan inland lakes and streams
Clean Jobs for Michigan is building a future we can all be proud of. Through advocating for clean water clean energy and good-paying clean jobs were working to build a Michigan that will sustain our natural resources and hardworking…
Providing solutions for financial success.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Friends of the St Clair River and the most unlike its peers is Hillsdale College. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
11 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. 11 of the 22 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 SAFE HORIZONS ↗
- Who funds PAY IT FORWARD COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PADDLE ANTRIM ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS MICHIGAN INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ST CLAIR RIVER ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds NAMI MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries ↗
- Who funds HUMANE SOCIETY OF ST CLAIR COUNTY - SNAP ↗
- Who funds Superior Communications ↗
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 set of overlaps that mostly run through you, not between each other.
Open a dossier: Amazonsmile 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 Sid & Esther Brown 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 Sid & Esther Brown Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sid & Esther Brown 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.