· Private foundation
The Fred & Barbara Erb Family Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k14 grants · $36k
- $10k–50k51 grants · $900k
- $50k–250k38 grants · $4.6M
- $250k+19 grants · $12M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE HENRY FORD | $2,600,000 |
| NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION | $1,300,000 |
| DETROIT PUBLIC MEDIA | $1,125,000 |
| SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN FOUNDATION FOR PUBLIC SPACES | $1,000,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN | $893,230 |
| ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC | $655,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR DETROIT'S FUTURE | $500,000 |
| HURON RIVER WATERSHED COUNCIL | $455,000 |
| ECOLOGY CENTER INC | $385,000 |
| COUNCIL OF MICHIGAN FOUNDATIONS | $379,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE ROUGE | $335,000 |
| INFORUM | $311,000 |
| CLINTON RIVER WATERSHED COUNCIL | $300,000 |
| MICHIGAN ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL | $265,000 |
| WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY | $262,500 |
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 (FY20–25, $174k) land where the poverty rate runs at 21%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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 +29% since the first grant, against +9% for the ones you funded once.
156 repeat relationships — 94 still active in FY2025, 62 since wound down; 20 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, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2.4M 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
- ADALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC6× · 2020–2025 · $3.9M · revenue +13%
- DPDETROIT PUBLIC MEDIA6× · 2020–2025 · $3.0M · revenue +45%
DETROIT RIVERFRONT CONSERVANCY INC4× · 2022–2025 · $2.8M · revenue +55%
Funded once
- ROREGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGANone grant, 2023 · $600k
- DSDETROIT STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK DBA DETROIT FUTURE CITYone grant, 2020 · $500k
- NFNATIONAL FISH AND WILDLIFE FEDERATIONone grant, 2020 · $450k
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.
Promotion of activities to spur economic growth and revitalization in the city of detroit
Inspire awareness, appreciation and passion for michigan's history and stories, culture and environment through the arts.
Our mission is conserving West Michigans ecologically critical land. We protect land by creating public nature preserves, providing support to communities and local governments in creating natural areas, and helping private landowners…
Business leaders for michigan is a nonprofit, nonpartisan statewide organization driven by ceos from the state's leading employers, all working toward a shared goal: making michigan a top 10 state for jobs, talent and a thriving economy.…
The detroit parks coalition ("the coalition") is an alliance of community members and parks leaders working to support healthy, equitable, and vibrant parks in detroit. the coalition develops and facilitates city-wide parks programming,…
To promote conditions favorable to job creation and business success in michigan.
Endeavor Detroit is leading the high-impact entrepreneurship movement in Michigan and the wider Great Lakes region, catalyzing long-term economic growth by selecting, mentoring, and supporting the best high-impact entrepreneurs in the…
Be and create stewards for the water environment of michigan. provide high quality education for michigan's water professionals. educate and inform policy makers and the general public. promote scientifically sound environmental practices…
Business leaders for michigan is a nonprofit, nonpartisan statewide organization driven by ceos from the state's leading employers, all working toward a shared goal: making michigan a top 10 state for jobs, talent and a thriving economy.…
The chamber is the voice for business and works to power the economy for southeast michigan through public policy, advocacy and leading regional economic development and talent initiatives.
Detroit Experience Factory is a leading resource for both visitors and locals to discover, experience and learn about the people, places and projects around the city of Detroit.
The detroit creativity project ("dcp") seeks to empower and inspire detroit's young people through improvisation, an art form that helps people build confidence and develop a creative and collaborative approach to their lives.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Southeast Michigan Foundation for Public Spaces and the most unlike its peers is Detroit Puppet Company. 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 28 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 16% 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.
180 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. 180 of the 276 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR DETROIT'S FUTURE ↗
- Who funds DETROIT PUBLIC MEDIA ↗
- Who funds DETROIT RIVERFRONT CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds DETROIT SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds CRANBROOK EDUCATIONAL COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds HURON RIVER WATERSHED COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION ↗
- Who funds ECOLOGY CENTER ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN ENVIROMENTAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds MOTOWN HISTORICAL MUSUEM INC ↗
- Who funds INFORUM ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ROUGE ↗
- Who funds DETROIT OPERA ↗
- Who funds Burr Oak 4-H Club - Michigan State ↗
- Who funds CLINTON RIVER WATERSHED COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL FISH AND WILDLIFE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN FOUNDATION FOR PUBLIC SPACES ↗
- Who funds DETROIT CHAMBER WINDS INC ↗
- Who funds THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL OF MICHIGAN FOUNDATIONS ↗
- Who funds Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat Network and Fund Inc ↗
- Who funds THE GREENING OF DETROIT ↗
- Who funds CRANBROOK PROJECT ↗
- Who funds DETROIT ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE DETROIT RIVER ↗
- Who funds SOUTHEASTERN MI HEALTH ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN ASSOCIATION OF CONSERVATION DISTRICTS ↗
- Who funds MIDTOWN DETROIT INC ↗
- Who funds BELLE ISLE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR THE GREAT LAKES ↗
- Who funds CULTURESOURCE ↗
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: The Kresge Foundation · Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan · Hudson-Webber Foundation · Dte Energy Foundation · The Skillman Foundation · Charles Stewart Mott Foundation · Culturesource · The Ralph C Wilson Jr Foundation · Max M & Marjorie S Fisher Foundation Inc · United Way for Southeastern Michigan · The Gilbert Family Foundation · Ford Philanthropy
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 The Fred & Barbara Erb 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.
- Green & Healthy Homes Initiative Inc — 100% of income from government
- Center for Watershed Protection Inc — 64% of income from government
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 The Fred & Barbara Erb Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Fred & Barbara Erb 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.