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· Private foundation
THE THOMAS FOUNDATION
This foundation does not accept unsolicited requests — it funds preselected organizations.
$180k
Granted FY2025
12
Grants
2
Communities
$82k
Largest
01What you fund
01
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 66% of THE THOMAS FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars go to organizations outside the IRS cause taxonomy (common for large international and research funders), so a chart would be mostly “unclassified” and misrepresent the portfolio.
02FY2025 · 12 grants
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k7 grants · $37k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $62k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $82k
$8,000
Median grant
2
States reached
$5.0M
Total assets
Largest grants
- BREAKTHROUGH T1D$81,500
- WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY$29,500
- BOLDLI$12,000
- HIGHER HOPES$10,000
- FORGOTTEN HARVEST$10,000
- HORIZONS UPWARD BOUND$8,000
- UNITED NEGRO COLLEGE FUND$8,000
- YAD EZRA$8,000
- GLEANERS COMMUNITY FOOD BANK$6,000
- ST VINCENT & SARAH FISHER CENTER$3,000
- SPECIAL OLYMPICS MICHIGAN$3,000
- MICHIGAN AVIATION EDUCATIN FOUNDATI$1,000
02The need
03
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.
show:
Your human-services grants (FY22–25, $40k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12% — the area typically sits at 12%. 30% of those dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Your grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in 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, United Way ALICE — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
03Your edge
repeat funding
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.
87%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$607k · 13 repeat orgs$94k to everyone else
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +60% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
13 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2025, 3 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Re-uppedFunded once
Organizations
13
2
Total granted
$607k
$94k
Median revenue growth · since first grant
+60%
+12%
Still filing today
54%
50%
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2025, 48% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $94k went to new ones.
RenewedFirst-time
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
HealthFood & NutritionHuman ServicesRecreation & SportsOther
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
- DIDETROIT INSTITUTE FOR CHILDREN3× · 2022–2024 · $39k · revenue +8%
FORGOTTEN HARVEST4× · 2022–2025 · $38k · revenue +32%- YEYAD EZRA4× · 2022–2025 · $34k · revenue +42%
Funded once
- BTBREAKTHROUGH T1Done grant, 2025 · $82k · revenue +12%
- BBOLDLIone grant, 2025 · $12k
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
04Your field
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.
1
Detroit Food & Entrepreneurship
Detroit food academy partners with local high schools, educators, and food entrepreneurs to facilitate a year-round program. as students develop food-based solutions in their communities, they grow as holistic leaders who are healthy,…
Education
2
Detroit Donates Inc
Housing & Shelter
3
Greater Chicago Food Depository
Our mission is to end hunger.
Food & Nutrition
4
Childhood Food Solutions
The mission of childhood food solutions is to develop solutions for childhood food insecurity that can be applied in a community, tested for effectiveness and duplicated in other communities.
Food & Nutrition
5
About Face Detroit
—
6
Detroit Opera
The mission of detroit opera is to be one of the outstanding opera companies in the unted states and, in particular, to serve as a major cultural resource to the city of detroit and the state of michigan.
Arts & Culture
7
Society of St Vincent De Paul St Joseph
To provide food to County families and individuals who currently live at or below the Federal Poverty guidelines
—
8
Jive Turkey Detroit
Feeding the families in Metro Detroit
Food & Nutrition
9
Jee Foods
Food & Nutrition
10
Mend Hunger
To mend the gaps in our nations broken emergency food system by providing nationwide hunger relief to households with celiac disease or food allergies
—
11
Eastern Market Corporation
The mission of eastern market corporation ("eastern market") is to leverage its dynamic history, manage operations, develop programs, build facilities, and provide critical infrastructure to strengthen the eastern market district, improve…
Food & Nutrition
12
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation
To support healthcare and innovative programs designed to improve the health of michigan residents.
Health
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Forgotten Harvest Inc and the most unlike its peers is Gleaners Community Food Bank. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
04the grantee network
8 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.
0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
2
Early backer (in before they grew)
8/8
Grantees still filing
8/8
Grew since you first funded
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Other$459,500Health$120,500Food & Nutrition$68,000Human Services$40,000Recreation & Sports$12,000
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.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organisation THE THOMAS 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.
2024
’20’21’22’23’24
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
0get no government money at all
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%
typical government reliance, FY20–24
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. 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.
05Through Plinth
Through Plinth
Your grantmaking, live and operational
This dossier was generated cold from public filings. In Plinth it’s a working system — every applicant assessed and every grant monitored. Here’s a taste, run on one of your grantees: HIGHER HOPES.
Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk
Financial management
low risk
~26 months of operating runway; revenue grew over 9 filed years.
Track record & reputation
low risk
9 years of Form 990 filings, still active; revenue up 3.9× since.
Legal standing
low risk
US 501(c)(3); EIN 371746399 on file with current IRS Form 990 filings.
Governance
Live in Plinth
Board composition & governance documents — verified live in Plinth from the applicant.
Compliance & sanctions
Live in Plinth
OFAC / UN sanctions screening — run live in Plinth at assessment.
Program capacity
Live in Plinth
Staffing, M&E and activity alignment — assessed live in Plinth from submitted proposals.
Live · Plinth’s real DD engine
Run the actual assessment on HIGHER HOPES, cold from public data.
Generated live from public IRS filings + open web sources by Plinth’s agentic engine. Shown as an illustration of the product, not a formal assessment.
Post-award monitoring · continuous checks
- On trackFinancial stability— Roughly 26 months of cash on hand.
- On trackSustained operations— Filing through 2025; revenue grew over the period.
- On trackReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 3% of their budget — diversified.
- Awaiting reportEvidence of delivery— Plinth collects the grantee's own monitoring reports post-award.
What you see here is static and public. In Plinth it’s operational — the full six-pillar framework on every applicant (with their own documents + live registry and sanctions checks), monitoring dashboards on every award, custom board reports, and eligibility routing for intake.
Agentic due diligenceMonitoring dashboardsCustom board reportsEligibility routing
Preview generated from this grantee’s public IRS filings and independent reporting. Pillars marked “live in Plinth” require the applicant’s submitted documents. Shown as illustration, not a formal assessment.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPro
How do I get to The Thomas Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Thomas Foundation through people who sit on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the introduction across shared trustees and officers.
Every link is a documented governance overlap in public IRS 990 filings — not a personal network — and each hop carries its own confidence tier. Low-confidence or distant paths are held back rather than guessed.
More from the funding graph
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars pass through an intermediary
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
Strange bedfellows
the named clusters of US funding
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home
State money flows
the interactive map of money crossing state lines