· Private foundation
William & Lisa Ford Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 42% of WILLIAM & LISA FORD FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE CHILDREN'S CENTER | $40,000 |
| BISSELL PET FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN | $25,000 |
| HURON RIVER WATERSHED COUNCIL | $20,000 |
| THE HENRY FORD | $10,000 |
| HENRY FORD HEALTH | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–21, $280k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
17 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2024, 12 since wound down; 1 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; $25k 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 SYSTEM7× · 2017–2024 · $1.5M · revenue +69%
The Trustees of Princeton University7× · 2017–2023 · $1.1M · revenue +5%
GLOBALGIVING FOUNDATION INC4× · 2017–2021 · $800k · revenue +34%
Funded once
THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTSone grant, 2022 · $100k · revenue +8%- SRSPIRIT ROCK MEDITATION CENTERone grant, 2021 · $30k
- SMSOUTHEAST MICHIGAN LAND CONSERVANCYone grant, 2021 · $27k · revenue -37%
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.
To inform and enrich the intellectual lives of 20,000 alumni of harvard university in the washington, dc area and to assist harvard university with respect to applicants and undergraduates from the dc area.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
Depauw university develops leaders the world needs through an uncommon commitment to the liberal arts. depauw's diverse and inclusive learning and living experience, distinctive in its rigorous intellectual engagement and its global and…
The nmu foundation will establish and foster relationships to generate resources that benefit the strategic goals of northern michigan university.
To hold title and perform related functions in connection with a research park and innovation center in support of michigan state university research foundation.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
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.
See schedule o.we are inspired by the ideals of our founder who, in 1896, emphasized respect for all people and ideas, who honored knowledge with practice, progress and the common good. our historical commitment to experiential learning…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
To build relationships with alumni and friends in order to secure private funds and other resources for the benefit of the university of southern mississippi (usm). the foundation receives, invests and distributes private gifts in support…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan and the most unlike its peers is Bissell Pet 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 39 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 40 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 HENRY FORD HEALTH SYSTEM ↗
- Who funds The Trustees of Princeton University ↗
- Who funds GLOBALGIVING FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds T WALL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY FOR SOUTHEASTERN MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds ACS OF PUERTO RICO INC ↗
- Who funds THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS ↗
- Who funds HURON RIVER WATERSHED COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds THE GARDEN CLUB OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds BISSELL Pet Foundation ↗
- Who funds DETROIT PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE MICHIGAN FOLK SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds MISS PORTER'S SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHVILLE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN ENVIROMENTAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds REINING HORSE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds IVY 1879 FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE HOTCHKISS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE HUNDRED CLUB OF DETROIT ↗
- Who funds East African Children's Fund ↗
- Who funds CAP AND GOWN CLUB OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY INC ↗
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 · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Network for Good · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 William & Lisa Ford 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- The Trustees of Princeton University — 11% 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 & Lisa Ford Foundation?
Find your warmest path to William & Lisa Ford 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.