By Director of Marketing + Communications, Kari Radjewski
The Michigan Central Station Children’s Endowment Initiative, established in partnership with Bill and Lisa Ford, began with a simple but powerful belief: youth-serving organizations in Detroit deserve to be here, forever.
Endowment offers that possibility. Not as a one-time solution, but a durable foundation that allows organizations to weather uncertainty, adapt to change, and continue serving young people for generations.
Now, halfway through the two-year Initiative, we are seeing how endowment-building takes shape in practice, and how the right mix of financial investment and hands-on support can change how organizations approach long-term durability.
HOW THE INITIATIVE WORKS
Through the Initiative, 11 Detroit-area youth-serving organizations were awarded an initial $500,000 agency endowment at the Children’s Foundation of Michigan and are actively fundraising toward another $500,000. With a dollar-for-dollar match, this results in a $1.5 million collective endowment investment by 2026. These funds are held and stewarded at the Foundation, providing a long-term financial resource for each participating organization.
Alongside the endowment match, organizations receive unrestricted grant funding, technical assistance dollars, and ongoing capacity-building support. The goal is not only to reach the match, but to ensure organizations have the systems, skills, and confidence to continue growing their endowments well beyond it.
SUPPORT BEYOND THE DOLLARS
While the endowment match is the Initiative’s target, organizations receive flexible supports they can tailor to strengthen fundraising capacity, leadership confidence, and long-term sustainability.
Cohort Learning: Building Shared Understanding
Each quarter, organizations come together as a cohort to learn, reflect, and build shared understanding. These sessions create space for leaders to test ideas, hear how peers are approaching similar challenges, and reframe what endowment means in practical terms.
Suma Karaman Rosen, Executive Director from InsideOut Literary Arts, for example, described a recent cohort conversation that helped crystallize the idea of endowment as a long-term asset:
“We now think about our financials in terms of what’s our checking account, what’s our savings account, and what’s our 401(k). Our endowment is our 401(k) which now really helps us to think about our program as an institution. We’ve been here for 30 years, what would we have looked like if we had an endowment 30 years ago?”
That framing has resonated across the cohort, helping leaders move beyond transactional fundraising conversations and toward clearer, more confident discussions about permanence, stability, and institutional responsibility.
Cohort learning sessions also surface deeper questions about what it means to build institutions that endure: how organizations evolve over decades, how business models shift, and how long-term financial tools can help protect core programs even as external conditions change. These collective conversations strengthen not only individual organizations, but the broader ecosystem of youth-serving nonprofits working to be here for the long haul.
Technical Assistance: Building capacity where it’s needed most
In both years 2025 and 2026, each organization has access to technical assistance funding to support the tools and infrastructure required for long-term endowment growth.
Leaders Advancing Healthy Communities (LAHC) has served the community for more than 40 years and chose to leverage its technical assistance support to strengthen its fundraising capacity.
Wassim Mahfouz, CEO, LAHC, shared, “This Initiative inspired us to invest in a Chief Philanthropy Officer—the first dedicated fundraising leader in our organization’s history. This new role will help us build sustainable philanthropic partnerships, expand our donor base, and grow a long-term endowment strategy to support our mission for years to come.”
For newer organizations like Birth Detroit, founded in 2018, technical assistance has helped accelerate relationship-building and visibility. Birth Detroit used a portion of its funds to become a member at BasBlue, a nonprofit dedicated to creating community for women and non-binary individuals.
“It’s helped me better understand what’s happening across the community, expand my network, learn about opportunities, and connect with people who genuinely care about our work,” said Pam Bailey, Development Director at Birth Detroit.
For a young organization, that visibility is more than networking, it’s the foundation for long-term credibility and trust, both essential to building an endowment that will sustain their work for decades.
Regardless of how they use the funds, the technical assistance is meant to help organizations shift from short-term fundraising cycles to long-term financial strategy, laying the groundwork for permanence.
Monthly Check-Ins: accountability, coaching, and momentum
Each organization has the opportunity to meet monthly with Foundation staff for tailored, hands-on support focused on endowment progress, donor strategy, messaging, board engagement, and next steps, creating an accountability partner in what is an often reactive fundraising environment.
“The monthly check-ins circle back around quickly, and I’m thankful for it because they keep me accountable when it is so easy to become distracted,” said Desiree Jennings, CEO of The Children’s Center. “It’s through these meetings that I set new goals, consult on major gift solicitations, or talk through our long-term endowment plans.”
In a sector where urgent needs often overshadow long-term planning, these standing conversations create protected space for leaders to focus on the future, not just the present.
For Martin Manna, President of the Chaldean Community Foundation, the conversations have helped sharpen how the organization talks about its endowment and build confidence in donor outreach.
“The check-ins helped us refine our endowment language and become more intentional in how we present it to donors,” said Manna. “We’re seeing our community truly embrace the idea of endowment. Now, we’re thinking beyond 2026: what the next phase could look like, whether that’s another campaign, what the goal should be, and how we strategically map it out.”
Over time, this steady cadence builds more than accountability—it builds momentum. Leaders move from tentative endowment conversations to ambitious, forward-looking strategies. They begin to see their organizations not only as service providers meeting today’s needs, but as institutions with a responsibility, and the tools to endure.
A STARTING POINT, NOT A FINISH LINE
The $1.5 million endowment goal is an important milestone that we are excited to celebrate with the 11 organizations, but it is not the end of the road.
Growth does not happen overnight. It requires intention, time, trust, and sustained investment. This Initiative is designed to create that runway, helping organizations move from annual survival toward permanent strength.
At the Children’s Foundation of Michigan, we are proud to support this work—not only by stewarding funds, but by walking alongside organizations as partners. Because endowment is not just about money. It is about permanence, possibility, and ensuring that the organizations Detroit’s children rely on are here to stay.
