It’s had a rough few decades, but once again, Detroit is a city on the rise. Known as the birthplace of Motown and for headquartering the “big three” automakers (General Motors, Chrysler and Ford), Detroit has faced a number of issues in recent decades.
As automation and globalization took over the auto industry, Detroit, which was largely reliant on car manufacturing, suffered. Coupled with home foreclosures during the 2008 financial crisis, the city saw a significant decline in its population, which in turn led to a shrinking tax base. Other issues include poverty, unemployment, government corruption, costs for retiree healthcare and pensions, and borrowing to cover deficits that began during the Great Recession. In July 2013, the city, which was $18 billion in debt, filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, becoming the largest city in the U.S. to do so.
Philanthropy played a big role in the city’s recovery from that crisis. When Detroit filed for bankruptcy, several funders, including the Ford Foundation, Kresge Foundation,W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Knight Foundation and Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, agreed to help.
Together, they pledged a combined $366 million over 20 years to the Foundation for Detroit’s Future, which was set up to act as the fiduciary for the funds. Between the philanthropic commitments, donors from the Detroit Institute of Art, and the State of Michigan, the city was able to raise $816 million. This came to be known as the “Grand Bargain.” Detroit was able to emerge from bankruptcy in December 2014, 17 months after filing for Chapter 9.
Three years later, in 2017, the consulting firm Detroit Philanthropy was founded. Detroit Philanthropy has two main purposes: to provide consulting services for nonprofit organizations, which is the bulk of its work, and to provide philanthropic advisory services, which involves working with funders on their giving strategies.
“Our work really allows us to touch the entire nonprofit sector, from working with nonprofits… where they’re asking for donations, to the other side where we’re working directly with funders who are providing donations. We’re able to see both perspectives and connect those dots,” said Rachel Decker, Detroit Philanthropy’s founder and president.
At times, donors can be frustrated by nonprofits (and vice versa) due to differing expectations, Decker said. Detroit Philanthropy seeks to offset that and foster connections to create meaningful change.
Decker launched Detroit Philanthropy after working for 20 years in the nonprofit sector in leadership roles in fundraising and marketing. She served as the executive director for the HAVEN Foundation and worked with other nonprofits, including Vista Maria, Common Ground and the Oakland County Coordinating Council Against Domestic Violence. “I think being that close to the sector for so long and really being able to look under the hood, so to speak, you start to see that there’s a lot of challenges, there’s a lot of opportunities, that things could be done better, differently… I’m on both sides of the fence, so I think I saw how much support nonprofits needed,” Decker said.
Detroit’s “Grand Bargain” a decade ago demonstrated that despite its immense challenges, the city and region’s philanthropic fabric is still holding strong. The region is, in its own way, a philanthropic hub, anchored by old-guard foundations like Kellogg and Kresge as well as living megadonors like Dan Gilbert. Detroit Philanthropy represents another side of that equation — the consultancies and nonprofit service providers that have themselves grown in number and influence across the country, particularly in places where overall funding prospects are expanding, not drying up.
Supporting nonprofits
Through its Fundraising Counsel Services, Detroit Philanthropy, which is licensed in the state of Michigan as a professional fundraiser, provides nonprofits with the assistance they need to develop and implement fundraising plans.
“We have a lot of folks with big hearts but that aren’t really trained in the fundraising profession,” Decker said. “Nonprofits can’t strengthen their missions, serve more people, that sort of thing, if they don’t have money… [Fundraising] takes that strategy, execution, a strong team around them, and… I feel like that is something that we are able to provide to nonprofits to make them stronger and better in their work.”
Detroit Philanthropy offers services like conducting development audits to strengthen nonprofits’ fundraising muscles, planning and executing capital campaigns, and one-on-one development coaching. It also engages in board management and engagement, stewardship plans and communications, grant and proposal writing, marketing and social integration, and policy review and development.
Much of the work Detroit Philanthropy does is with smaller nonprofits that may not have access to large funders and decision-makers, Decker explained. The firm is able to help these nonprofits to make connections and open doors.
One way it does this is through its Community Connections: Detroit Philanthropy’s Educational and Networking series, which brings together representatives from area foundations, community partners and corporations with people from the nonprofit sector. The series began in 2020. In the early days of the pandemic, Decker said, Detroit Philanthropy saw that many nonprofits were struggling and unsure of how to move forward. As Detroit Philanthropy’s gala was canceled, it had a large chunk of money left over in its budget. Decker decided to leverage her network of funders and bring everyone together via webinars.
“What we realized is that there was this need in that kind of education and those connections with nonprofits. I think about it as our way of creating some equity in the space. We see in nonprofits that there still haves and have-nots, so being able to put some of these smaller nonprofits in rooms with funders that they normally wouldn’t have access to has been incredibly beneficial,” Decker said.
The series has now moved fully to in-person events. Attendance continues to grow, according to Decker, with the last few events having sold out completely. Detroit Philanthropy keeps tickets affordable, charging only $20 as it doesn’t want people to be unable to attend due to the price.
“We get a lot of nonprofits who are one person working in their basement with a huge heart and big mission and trying to help the community,” Decker said. “So we want to be able to support that work as much as we can.”
Advising funders
On the philanthropy advisory side, Detroit Philanthropy works with family and private foundations, individual donors, businesses, and wealth advisors and estate planners around their giving strategy. The aim is to help donors think about how and to whom they’re giving their money so that it’s done in a meaningful way.
“I think there’s oftentimes this perception that it’s easy to give away money, but what we know in reality is that making meaningful, mission-driven change is difficult,” Decker said. “It’s not just about writing checks. It’s about having a strategy, being able to implement that strategy, having a good team around you, [and] being able to track what you’re doing.”
Detroit Philanthropy seeks to help donors understand their role as funders, refine their vision, and develop their philanthropic strategy. What this entails depends on whether the donor is an individual, foundation or a business, and everything is tailored to every specific case.
For example, Detroit Philanthropy helps both established foundations and those seeking to start a family foundation to develop a mission statement and guiding principles, as well as developing grantmaking programs, proposal requirements and submission guidelines and providing assistance with website development, social media and other public relations to create awareness of the foundation’s work.
Detroit Philanthropy can help individual donors to develop a plan for their giving, whether it’s a one-time gift or ongoing funding. It also helps donors by assessing nonprofits, and drafts and executes pledge schedules and gift agreements.
Decker pointed out that philanthropy has had — and continues to have — a big impact on the Motor City. In addition to its role in helping the city recover from bankruptcy a decade ago, Detroit has also seen “large, significant funders come together to collaborate and work together on addressing some of these challenges, where they’re all pitching in some form of funding and then being very strategic about the changes they’re making,” Decker said.
She noted as examples the Detroit Neighborhood Forum, a monthly meeting convened by Kresge, which gathers leaders from foundations, local banks, nonprofits and key city departments to discuss community priorities. Other examples of how philanthropy has helped Detroit in more recent years include organizations like Co.act, which focuses on capacity-building and consulting, as well as providing funding for smaller organizations and nonprofits led by people of color, and SHARE Detroit, which connects donors, local nonprofits, and everyday citizens looking to make a difference.
One of Detroit’s mottos is “Resurget Cineribus,” which means “It will rise from the ashes.” That certainly seems to be the case.
“I think moving forward, it’s a lot about just continuing some of this work that’s been spurred in the last half-dozen years or so. Like most big cities, we have a lot of challenges, and we know that one single entity isn’t going to solve all of these problems,” Decker said. “I think it’s more about continuing down the road of these public-private partnerships where we’re able to see the local governments come forward and work collaboratively with philanthropy to solve some of these issues [and] continuing to invest in thriving communities.”
