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Ilitch Charities - The Detroit Tigers Foundation Snapshot

Zach Dubin

— 2 min read
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Moving to the Motor City and a first in this series - a foundation that is not solely for the baseball club's. The Ilitch Charities does business as both the Detroit Tigers Foundation and the Detroit Red Wings Foundation as the Ilitch Family is the majority owner of both.

Honestly, this does make it difficult to accurately measure their impact relative to other MLB foundations. I can try to go through and remove the grants or programs that are part of the Red Wings Foundation, but that just creates more chances for human error. So, I will use the numbers as they are in the 990, and just caveat that they are getting credit for work that inflates their IMPACT+ score. While they end up okay in that measure, without this structure, they would most likely end up much lower.

Overall, this is a pretty standard operation pass-through grant-making operation though they show a much higher expense for salaries and compensation than similar foundations. Now, I am remiss to draw any conclusions from this as I think some organizations have staff under the team umbrella so their 990s might not accurately reflect the true state of affairs, but still something I noticed.

They have been recognized for their work, receiving the Selig Award for Philanthropic Impact in 2013 for their anti-bullying program:

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"The Detroit Tigers and the Detroit Tigers Foundation partnered with "Michigan KIDS" and the "Newspaper In Education" programs to develop "Strike Out Bullying," a component of the "Detroit Tigers Anti-Bullying" program that provides students and educators with tools to address and manage the issue of bullying in schools. The program is a baseball-themed educational supplement that is distributed throughout Michigan schools, reaching 90% of the state's counties. Since its launch in 2011, the "Detroit Tigers Anti-Bullying" program has reached nearly 250,000 students in schools throughout the state. Tigers players, including All-Star first baseman Prince Fielder, serve as role models in speaking out against bullying."https://www.mlb.com/news/detroit-tigers-named-2013-recipient-of-the-commissioners-award/c-63890568

I did like seeing how they responded to the pandemic, nearly tripling the money they deployed and the solid growth pattern over the past few years. They have the asset base to do this, and, at least for 2024, their revenue more than covers expenses, so there is room for further growth. Something to look for as 2025 filings become available in the coming months.

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