· Private foundation
William Davidson 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k8 grants · $197k
- $50k–250k29 grants · $3.1M
- $250k+57 grants · $56M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Jewish Federation of Detroit | $6,090,000 |
| Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan | $5,000,000 |
| American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science Inc | $3,000,000 |
| AFSNC Inc | $2,500,000 |
| Jewish Federation of Detroit | $2,350,000 |
| Jerusalem Botanical Gardens | $2,000,000 |
| Holocaust Memorial Center | $2,000,000 |
| Detroit Opera | $2,000,000 |
| Birthright Israel Foundation | $1,500,000 |
| OneTable | $1,500,000 |
| Sefaria Inc | $1,500,000 |
| Foundation For Detroit's Future | $1,250,000 |
| Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan | $1,250,000 |
| The Jewish People Policy Institute | $1,200,000 |
| Wexner Foundation | $1,000,000 |
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 (FY20–23, $1.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 21% 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.
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 23% of William Davidson 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.
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.
90 repeat relationships — 54 still active in FY2024, 36 since wound down; 14 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6.7M 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
- AIAFSNC INC5× · 2020–2024 · $12M · revenue +70% · 50% of their budget
DETROIT SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC5× · 2020–2024 · $12M · revenue +36%- ACAMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR THE WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE INC4× · 2020–2024 · $9.0M · revenue +2%
Funded once
- TCThe Company for the Reconstruction and Development of the Jewish Quarterone grant, 2023 · $4.2M
- HMHolocaust Memorial Center DBA Holocaust Memorial CTR Zekelman Family Campusone grant, 2023 · $3.0M
- TCThe Company for the Reconstruction and Development of the Jewish Quarter inone grant, 2022 · $1.5M
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 jewish agency binds jews across ideologies and civilizations together in a worldwide jewish family with israel at its center. it provides the global framework for aliyah, ensures global jewish safety, strengthens jewish identity and…
The jewish fund is organized and operates exclusively for charitable, educational, and religious purposes. the fund's primary activities are: supporting a jewish health care mission in the greater detroit area and michigan; promotion of…
Our vision is to reignite the zionist spirit and meet the needs of jewish civilization in the twenty-first century by connecting people around the world through the vibrancy and creativity of contemporary israeli culture.
Accelerating michigan's economic growth, one israeli innovation at a time.
Djj advances racial and economic justice by developing metro detroit jews as community organizers who fight for transformative policy change in deep partnership with neighbors
Minneapolis jewish federation is a nonprofit organization that promotes a culture of philanthropy, leverages resources to meet local and global jewish needs, and facilitates community planning to ensure a thriving and secure future.
The israel institute, inc. (the institute) enhances knowledge about modern israel by ensuring that more students have access to courses about israel during their time on campus.
To proclaim the gospel, grow the messianic jewish community and engage the church concerning israel and the jewish people. this is done through education, evangelism and being a movement leader, all with excellence in order to transform…
The jewish electorate institute (jei) is an independent, non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization that surveys, interprets, reports, and educates the public about the perspectives, voting behaviors, and motivations of the american jewish…
Based on jewish values, the jewish federation of greater los angeles convenes and leads the community and leverages its resources to assure the continuity of the jewish people, support a secure state of israel, care for jews in need here…
To support jewish life on graduate school campuses and to connect jewish graduate students, alumni, and executives to their heritage and the greater jewish community.
The federation provides and inspires philanthropic leadership and community-building to nurture a strong, engaged, connected, vibrant, and enduring jewish community locally, in israel, and around the world.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewish Federation of Detroit and the most unlike its peers is Wexner Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 29 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
112 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. 112 of the 141 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 JEWISH FEDERATION OF DETROIT ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds AFSNC INC ↗
- Who funds DETROIT SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR THE WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE INC ↗
- Who funds DETROIT OPERA ↗
- Who funds THE FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED JEWISH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR DETROIT'S FUTURE ↗
- Who funds THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS ↗
- Who funds THE SCHECHTER INSTITUTES INC ↗
- Who funds SEFARIA INC ↗
- Who funds BIRTHRIGHT ISRAEL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds WEXNER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ISRAEL EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY ↗
- Who funds THE IDI FOUNDATION INC FKA AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEMOC ↗
- Who funds MOMENTUM UNLIMITED INC ↗
- Who funds DETROIT RIVERFRONT CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds THE SHALOM HARTMAN INSTITUTE OF NORTH AMERICA ↗
- Who funds ONETABLE INC ↗
- Who funds HILLEL DAY SCHOOL OF METRO DETROIT ↗
- Who funds MIDTOWN DETROIT INC ↗
- Who funds HILLEL THE FOUNDATION FOR JEWISH CAMPUS LIFE ↗
- Who funds HAZON INC ↗
- Who funds THE GESHER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Inc ↗
- Who funds VENTURE FOR AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds THE HAROLD GRINSPOON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds EASTERN MARKET CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY PARK IN THE CITY OF DETROIT ↗
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: Dte Energy Foundation · Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan · Hudson-Webber Foundation · The Ralph C Wilson Jr Foundation · The Kresge Foundation · Ford Philanthropy · The Shimon Ben Joseph Foundation Dba Jim Joseph Foundation · The Fred & Barbara Erb Family Foundation · The Eugene Applebaum Family Foundation · The Gilbert Family Foundation · United Jewish Foundation · Max M & Marjorie S Fisher Foundation Inc
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 William Davidson 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.
- Adamah Inc — 10% 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 William Davidson Foundation?
Find your warmest path to William Davidson 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.