· Private foundation
The Ralph C Wilson Jr Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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
- Under $10k97 grants · $141k
- $10k–50k61 grants · $1.2M
- $50k–250k140 grants · $16M
- $250k+115 grants · $124M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo | $10,000,000 |
| Southeast Michigan Foundation for Public Spaces | $7,500,000 |
| Detroit Riverfront Conservancy | $6,532,800 |
| Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo | $5,000,000 |
| Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan | $5,000,000 |
| BUDC | $4,000,000 |
| Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo | $3,750,000 |
| Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan | $3,750,000 |
| Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper Inc | $2,625,000 |
| BUDC | $2,500,000 |
| The Boston Foundation Inc (dba The Philanthropic Initiative) | $2,402,463 |
| Invest Detroit Foundation | $2,000,000 |
| Greater Rochester Chamber Foundation (ROC2025 Fund) | $2,000,000 |
| BUDC | $2,000,000 |
| Ralph Wilson Park Conservancy | $2,000,000 |
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, $28.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 93% 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 15% of The Ralph C Wilson Jr 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, 42% of the giving stays in MI; read by stated purpose it is 38% — 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 +25% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
406 repeat relationships — 193 still active in FY2024, 213 since wound down; 74 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, 81% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $20M 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
DETROIT RIVERFRONT CONSERVANCY INC5× · 2020–2024 · $34M · revenue +51% · 67% of their budget- LCLAKESHORE CONNECTIONS INC5× · 2020–2024 · $11M · revenue +151% · 88% of their budget
BUFFALO NIAGARA WATERKEEPER INC5× · 2020–2024 · $9.4M · revenue +44% · 76% of their budget
Funded once
DETROIT PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $2.0M · revenue +73%- DDDEVELOP DETROIT INCone grant, 2022 · $1.0M · revenue +1%
- YMYOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF OLEAN NY AND BRADFORD PAone grant, 2022 · $1.0M · revenue -13%
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.
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.…
The Detroit Historical Society tells Detroit's stories and why they matter through its exhibits, programs, outreach, and the preservation and dissemination of its artifacts and collections.
The nmu foundation will establish and foster relationships to generate resources that benefit the strategic goals of northern michigan university.
Promotion of activities to spur economic growth and revitalization in the city of detroit
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.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
To promote conditions favorable to job creation and business success in michigan.
The corporation is organized and shall be operated exclusively for charitable, educational and scientific purposes by conducting or supporting activites exclusively for the benefit of, to perform the functions of, or to carry out the…
Bridging the gap between early-stage innovation and commercial application. partnering to de-risk, develop and scale-up discoveries into commercially-viable technology packages.
To hold title and perform related functions in connection with a research park and innovation center in support of michigan state university research foundation.
We empower directors and transform boards to be future ready.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Grantmakers for Education and the most unlike its peers is Marine Safety Institute. 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 30 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.5% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
588 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. 588 of the 809 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 GREATER BUFFALO INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds DETROIT RIVERFRONT CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds NATURAL HERITAGE TRUST ↗
- Who funds INVEST DETROIT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY PARK IN THE CITY OF DETROIT ↗
- Who funds LAKESHORE CONNECTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO NIAGARA WATERKEEPER INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN FOUNDATION FOR PUBLIC SPACES ↗
- Who funds DETROIT ECONOMIC GROWTH ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ROSALYNN CARTER INSTITUTE FOR CAREGIVERS ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL OF MICHIGAN FOUNDATIONS ↗
- Who funds SAY YES BUFFALO SCHOLARSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO FINE ARTS ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds MARGARET WOODBURY STRONG MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds MOTOWN HISTORICAL MUSUEM INC ↗
- Who funds PEDALS MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF SOUTHEASTERN MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR REGIONAL STRATEGIES INC ↗
- Who funds MONROE COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HURON WATERLOO PATHWAYS INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds ROCHESTER AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit ↗
- Who funds DETROIT REGIONAL CHAMBER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF ST CLAIR COUNTY ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN MUNICIPAL LEAGUE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF BUFFALO INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL FISH AND WILDLIFE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds RALPH WILSON PARK CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds DETROIT REGIONAL PARTNERSHIP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Rand Corporation ↗
- Who funds 43NORTH BPC INC ↗
- Who funds HENRY FORD COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
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 Greater Buffalo Inc · Dte Energy Foundation · Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan · The Skillman Foundation · The John R Oishei Foundation · Ford Philanthropy · United Way for Southeastern Michigan · The Kresge Foundation · First Niagara Foundation · Hudson-Webber Foundation · McGregor Fund · The Western New York 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 Ralph C Wilson Jr 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.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Inc — 6% of income from government
- Institute for Healthcare Improvement — 0% 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 Ralph C Wilson Jr Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Ralph C Wilson Jr 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.