· Private foundation
The Gilbert 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
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.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k17 grants · $51k
- $10k–50k23 grants · $592k
- $50k–250k39 grants · $4.7M
- $250k+61 grants · $108M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN | $19,200,000 |
| HENRY FORD HEALTH SYSTEM | $16,515,000 |
| ENTERPRISE COMMUNITY PARTNERS | $8,164,408 |
| INVEST DETROIT | $6,880,880 |
| WAYNE METROPOLITAN COMMUNITY ACTION AGENCY | $3,893,568 |
| CHN HOUSING PARTNERS | $2,907,500 |
| MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY | $2,625,000 |
| JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY | $2,621,931 |
| CRANBROOK EDUCATIONAL COMMUNITY | $2,599,838 |
| DOWNTOWN DETROIT PARTNERSHIP | $2,502,480 |
| DELAWARE STATE UNIVERSITY | $2,500,000 |
| UNITED COMMUNITY HOUSING COALITION | $2,408,334 |
| M1 RAIL | $1,600,000 |
| MICHIGAN LEGAL SERVICES | $1,563,500 |
| LAKESHORE LEGAL AID | $1,528,589 |
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, $1.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 97% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 14% of The Gilbert 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, 63% of the giving stays in MI; read by stated purpose it is 70% — more 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 +8% since the first grant, against +7% for the ones you funded once.
92 repeat relationships — 67 still active in FY2024, 25 since wound down; 72 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, 75% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $23M 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
- HFHENRY FORD HEALTH SYSTEM2× · 2023–2024 · $31M · revenue +18%
ENTERPRISE COMMUNITY PARTNERS INC3× · 2022–2024 · $19M · revenue +38%
INVEST DETROIT FOUNDATION3× · 2022–2024 · $15M · revenue +34%
Funded once
- CRCHILDREN'S RESEARCH INSTITUTEone grant, 2023 · $700k · revenue +22%
- GHGREEN & HEALTH HOMESone grant, 2023 · $672k
- CHCHILDREN'S HOSPITALone grant, 2023 · $550k
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.
Informing and educating the public and decision makers about environmental issues.
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.…
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.…
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…
Promotion of activities to spur economic growth and revitalization in the city of detroit
Gdahc mission: together with our partners, we empower and improve the health and economic vitality of individuals, organizations and communities by catalyzing the power of collaboration. gdahc vision: healthy people. healthy community.…
Bridging the gap between early-stage innovation and commercial application. partnering to de-risk, develop and scale-up discoveries into commercially-viable technology packages.
Delta dental fund's mission is to improve the oral health of the public and to advance dental science and the dental profession through research and education.
To promote conditions favorable to job creation and business success in michigan.
The organization is known as the leader in the movement and is seen as the "go to" experts on environmental justice and sustainable redevelopment because of its knowledge and its network.
For all state residents, diverse civic stakeholders and philanthropy, the center for michigan (the center) and its nonprofit newsrooms - bridge michigan and bridgedetroit - make michigan better through high-quality, nonpartisan journalism…
1) to plan and conduct nonpartisan public education programs regarding free enterprise, productivity and basic economic issues affecting the state of michigan.2) to establish and operate a leadership institute designed to provide promising…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan and the most unlike its peers is Shamrock 555 Foundation. 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 26 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.7% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
139 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. 139 of the 224 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 HENRY FORD HEALTH SYSTEM ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds ENTERPRISE COMMUNITY PARTNERS INC ↗
- Who funds INVEST DETROIT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NFX ↗
- Who funds CRANBROOK EDUCATIONAL COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN DETROIT PARTNERSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED COMMUNITY HOUSING COALITION ↗
- Who funds CHN HOUSING PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds DELAWARE STATE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN LEGAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Lakeshore Legal Aid ↗
- Who funds Wayne-Metropolitan Community Action Agency Inc ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY PARK IN THE CITY OF DETROIT ↗
- Who funds Schepens Eye Research Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds BATTELLE MEMORIAL INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds United States Artists Inc ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VENTURE FOR AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds Detroit Development Fund ↗
- Who funds MOTOWN HISTORICAL MUSUEM INC ↗
- Who funds Children's Hospital Corporation ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE FOR CREATIVE STUDIES ↗
- Who funds E WARREN DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds STRATEGIC COMMUNITY PARTNERS INC ↗
- Who funds M-1 RAIL ↗
- Who funds THE GREENING OF DETROIT ↗
- Who funds Human-I-T ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL MEDICAL CENTER ↗
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 · The Kresge Foundation · Hudson-Webber Foundation · The Ralph C Wilson Jr Foundation · Dte Energy Foundation · The Fred & Barbara Erb Family Foundation · The Skillman Foundation · WK Kellogg Foundation · United Way for Southeastern Michigan · William Davidson Foundation · Ford Philanthropy · 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 The Gilbert 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
- Enterprise Community Partners Inc — 22% of income from government
- Delaware State University — 18% of income from government
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Children's Hospital Corporation — 10% of income from government
- Children's Inn at Nih Inc — 10% of income from government
- Best Buddies International Inc — 4% 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 Gilbert Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Gilbert 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.