In a nod to the visionary leaders of Michigan’s historic industrial and manufacturing past, many private foundations established decades ago continue to make a critical and lasting impact on the civic life of communities across the state, around the nation, and abroad.
The state’s three largest private foundations, among the largest and most famous in the country, have names synonymous with Michigan’s early commercial might — Kellogg, Kresge, and Mott.
Because of their expertise and combined endowments nearing $17 billion, these foundations help backstop local government programs in areas like health care, children’s welfare, education, the arts, the environment, civic development, and more.
Through long-term investments in various community measures, or in urgent situations where their resources are needed immediately, foundations have played major roles in civic life in Detroit and around the state.
From providing health care cash for pregnant Detroit women and for babies up to 6 months old to saving Marygrove College — a 92-year-old landmark college — from extinction, while revitalizing the school’s northwest Detroit neighborhood, foundations have answered the calls for help.
The two newest and most visible foundation-inspired developments in metro Detroit are the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Centennial Park, which opened last October on 22 acres along the Detroit riverfront, and the stunning four-year, $50 million transformation of the dated 75-year-old St. John’s Catholic seminary property in Plymouth Township into Saint John’s Resort, now one of the top-rated golf and events centers in southeast Michigan.
With a new 18-hole championship golf course, a hotel, fine dining, and a special events center, the former seminary is a revenue generator for its owner and developer, the Pulte Family Charitable Foundation. As part of its mission, 100 percent of the resort’s earnings are dedicated to charitable work.
Ralph C. Wilson Jr., a resident of Grosse Pointe Shores, owned one of the largest independent insurance agencies in Michigan and was the founding owner of the Buffalo Bills National Football League team.
Following his death at age 95 in 2014, the business and football team were sold and $1.2 billion of the proceeds was used to establish the foundation bearing his name.
The Wilson Foundation has a 20-year limit on its existence — a mandate that requires it to spend all its assets by Jan. 8, 2035. The money is dedicated to improving the quality of life in the communities Wilson lived in and loved — southeast Michigan and western New York.
Specifically, the foundation’s programs are directed at supporting early childhood and youth activities, parks and trails, aiding working families and caregivers, entrepreneurship initiatives, economic development, and supporting other nonprofits in their initiatives.
The Wilson Foundation donated $40 million to build the riverfront park and $10 million for an endowment to maintain the facility years into the future. Additional capital support will be provided to connect the park to the east and west riverfront areas and to the Southwest Greenway, which connects Corktown to the river.
Former Mayor Mike Duggan said at the park’s opening ceremony that the Wilson investment will amount to $74 million in benefits to the community.
Another foundation from the world of sports that contributed to developing the Centennial Park is the William Davidson Foundation in Bloomfield Hills, which was established by Bill Davidson, the beloved owner of the Detroit Pistons and its former home arena, The Palace of Auburn Hills.
The Davidson Foundation donated $10 million to build one of Centennial Park’s major attractions, the William Davidson Sport House. The 28,000-square-foot, open-air pavilion has two year-round basketball courts adorned with the Pistons logo.
The structure also will be used for community events, yoga, and other fitness programs. Davidson created his foundation in 2005, four years before he died at age 86.
In his day job, Davidson owned Guardian Industries in Auburn Hills, one of the largest automotive and architectural glass companies in the world. The company did business in 150 countries on five continents, with a workforce of 19,000 employees.
His sports empire included the Pistons, the former Detroit Shock WBA team, the Tampa Bay Lightning NHL team, and the Detroit Fury arena football team. His Pistons and Shock teams each won three championships under his stewardship, and he was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. The Lightning have won the Stanley Cup three times.
Backed by an endowment of more than $1 billion, the Davidson Foundation has donated more than $500 million to local Jewish federations and causes in Israel. Local beneficiaries of his generosity include the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, Michigan Opera Theatre, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and various educational endeavors.
When the Pulte Family Charitable Foundation began its renovation of Saint John’s Resort, Plymouth Township Supervisor Kurt Heise hoped the project would be a big boost for the region and the township.
Since its opening, guests from all over the U.S., international visitors from Europe and Japan, and a LIV golf championship that was televised around the globe have fulfilled Heise’s hopes.
The Pulte Family Charitable Foundation was established in 1990 by the family of William J. Pulte, a Detroit native who created the nation’s largest home builder and went on to take the company public as PulteGroup.
The foundation supports Catholic values and focuses on serving the most marginalized members of the community by feeding the hungry, providing affordable housing, and improving the lives of disadvantaged youth, the aged, and the emotional and physically disabled.
The conversion of Saint John’s Resort and its grounds began with building a new golf course designed by Raymond Hearn, one of the state’s foremost golf course architects.
Hearn carved out a 7,007-yard, 18-hole championship showpiece from the grounds of the old 27-hole layout. He also created a seven-hole walking Par 3 course with greens mimicking famous greens on famed courses in the British Isles. A full-service practice facility completes the golf course, aptly named The Cardinal.
Last August, the resort made its worldwide debut to glowing acclaim when it hosted the Aramco LIV Golf Team Championship. The positive response from fans, players, and viewers spurred a return visit; this year’s event is scheduled for Aug. 27-30.
Kevin Doyle, COO of the Pulte Foundation, says play on The Cardinal will be limited this season to about 25,000 rounds, to preserve the condition of the layout for the LIV tournament.
“We’re in Saint Johns for the long run. We certainly want to get rounds on the golf course,” Doyle says. “It’s an income-generator and helps fund the mission that’s so important to us, but we also don’t want to push through so many rounds that we’re spending a lot of money in the long run to just keep the place up.”
Players, tournament officials, and fans will enjoy the renovated 118-room hotel as well as three dining and entertainment venues — the upscale FIVE Steakhouse, The Wine Grotto, and Doyles Irish Pub.
The most expansive remake is a 24,000-square-foot event space, The Monarch, with seating for up to 1,000 guests. The three-story events building also includes a 15,000-square-foot ballroom with glass skylights and a 200-foot-long glass wall that opens to a courtyard with casual seating and fire pits (weather-permitting).
“Our vision for Saint John’s when we began this journey in 2021 was that this can truly be a destination (and) an oasis in the metro Detroit area. And it can be a one-stop-shop for events, travelers, business associates — a place where they can come and be here for days and feel like everything is here in one place,” Doyle says.
He describes The Monarch as the most luxurious event space in the area, if not the state.
“Our development plan is now paused after, I guess, almost four years, as this place continues to grow and take on a life of its own,” he says.
Doyle emphasizes that the resort’s earnings are a positive for the Pulte Foundation’s charitable giving, providing cash every year for the causes and organizations it supports.
Alex Calderone, managing director and president of Calderone Advisory Group, a boutique turnaround firm in Birmingham, says the Saint John’s Resort model is one that other foundations may want to study.
“I characterize them as impact investing, kind of a capitalistic motive tied to a charitable cause,” Calderone says. “Those who can figure out how to have a sustainable business model that generates revenue and income, supporting their causes well into the future and bolstering their finances to make them less reliant on donors, is absolutely a trend of the future. It’s a worthwhile feat for any charity to pursue that type of direction.”
Two other hotel properties join Saint John’s Resort in the Pulte Foundation’s Humanitarian Hotels portfolio.
Even as the remake of Saint John’s was underway, the foundation was funding a similar $40 million restoration of another historic property, the Inn at Stonecliffe on Mackinac Island. With four restaurants, a spa, and three, three-bedroom cottages overlooking the Straits of Mackinac, this 1904 estate is now the epitome of luxury on the island.
The third hotel, a Hilton Garden Inn in Laramie, Wyo., adjacent to the University of Wyoming, is scheduled for a complete renovation and upgrade later this year. It will be rebranded as Graduate by Hilton Laramie when it reopens next year.
Doyle says the foundation’s performance at Saint John’s helped smooth the runway for the organization’s launch of the Catholic Initiative program in March 2025. The organization is dedicated to restoring and endowing Catholic churches and schools, and constructing specialized housing for persons with disabilities.
The initiative, part of the foundation’s Legacy of Hope outreach, gained unprecedented approval from the Vatican, allowing the Pulte Foundation to purchase, restore, and endow Catholic churches and schools so that parishes can thrive well into the future.
Under the initiative’s charter, the foundation purchased Corktown’s historic Basilica of Ste. Anne, the second-oldest continuously operating parish in the country. The ownership was then transferred in a 200-year lease to a newly created 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The Pulte Foundation assumed the $50 million tab for renovating and maintaining the property into perpetuity.
Doyle says even though Ste. Anne parish has a vibrant community of 700 members, the burden of repairing and maintaining the basilica and campus was an impossible task for the clergy and support personnel.
“We have an ironclad lease that ensures that no matter what happens in future iterations of our leadership, they can’t change it (and) we can’t sell it without the church’s approval, and even with that, the lease has to hold,” he says.
While taking the responsibilities of fundraising off the church, the initiative allows the Pulte Foundation to bring in help for the parish with personnel on its team who have experience operating Catholic schools, Doyle says.
In the past six years, the Pulte Family Charitable Foundation has donated more than $180 million in grants to charitable causes. It also has committed $111 million for the next three years for Legacy of Hope/Catholic Initiative projects, including the Basilica of Ste. Anne.
Unlike the relatively new Wilson and Pulte foundations, Michigan’s most senior foundations — Kellogg, Kresge, and Mott — have been operating for nearly the past century.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation Trust, with assets of $8.9 billion and annual revenue of $540 million, is the financial muscle of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Created in 1930 by one of America’s original breakfast cereal giants, the foundation focuses on supporting children, families, the arts, and its communities. In 2021, Kellogg donated $483 million, the most it has distributed in a single year.
The Kresge Foundation germinated from a five-and-dime store that opened as S.S. Kresge Co. along Woodward Avenue in Detroit in 1897. The foundation, chartered in 1924, has awarded more than $5.1 billion in grants that expand opportunities for low-income residents in cities across Michigan and nationwide.
C.S. Mott, an engineer and founding investor in the fledgling General Motors Co. in Flint in 1908, established the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation in Flint in 1926. Mott served on GM’s board from 1913 to 1973 — the last survivor of the original auto industry giants who motorized America and the world.
With assets of $3.7 billion, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation has focused on Flint since its inception, donating more than $4.4 billion over the decades to support educational, environmental, and community causes.
The foundation has played a central role in donating hundreds of millions of dollars to Flint’s recovery from the disastrous 2014 water crisis. City residents and their children were exposed to lead poisoning after the city switched its municipal water supply to what became poorly treated water from the Flint River.
The impetus behind the creation of the Kellogg Foundation can be traced to severe near-sightedness suffered by founder Will K. Kellogg. As a boy, Kellogg was thought to be dimwitted and unintelligent, and didn’t get past the sixth grade in school.
Not until he was in his early 20s and was examined by an optometrist did Kellogg learn that his perceived lack of intelligence was the result of previously undiagnosed near-sightedness.
Upon receiving corrective lenses, he educated himself through voluminous reading, earned a business degree, and went on to become successful as a company manager.
In the 1890s, in collaboration with his older brother, John, he accidentally discovered how to make wheat flakes that could be a tasty breakfast when baked and served with milk.
That discovery led them to develop corn flakes, the wonder breakfast-in-a-box formula that built the Kellogg fortune.
Will Kellogg went on to create the Kellogg international cereal empire based in Battle Creek. His miserable experience as a child prompted him to contribute $66 million to establish the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to benefit children.
“As a boy, I never learned to play,” Will Kellogg said in explaining his foundation’s initial focus on children.
In the decades since its creation, the foundation has been a force for good in its hometown of Battle Creek, as well as in Detroit.
Among its most generous investments is $51 million that went to Battle Creek Public Schools in 2017 to improve K-12 education. A similar amount was pledged in the Hope Starts Here initiative, in partnership with the Kresge Foundation, to remake Detroit’s early childhood education system.
The Kellogg Foundation has invested millions more in child care programs, Head Start funding, the Motown Museum in Detroit, minority-owned small businesses, health care, and healthy food programs across the state.
Michigan’s other charitable heavyweight, the Kresge Foundation, has its roots in Sebastian S. Kresge’s retail empire.
The first store announced its new discount market approach with a sign above the front door that read: “Nothing over 10 cents.”
A second store in Port Huron and a third in Pontiac opened by 1900. Within 25 years, the Kresge discount chain of stores had grown to more than 300 locations.
On June 11, 1924, Sebastian Kresge established the Kresge Foundation in Detroit with an initial donation worth nearly $1.4 million; it included real estate leases and a $200,000 loan.
The foundation’s goal, Kresge said, was to promote “philanthropic and charitable means of human progress.”
The first distribution by the foundation was a modest $100 to the Salvation Army of Detroit in 1925, followed by $100,000 to the Detroit YMCA.
In 1926, Kresge announced a donation of 500,000 shares of common company stock worth approximately $22.5 million that pumped up the endowment over the next half century. Kresge would eventually donate more than $60 million of his personal fortune to the foundation.
The S.S. Kresge company took on a new persona in 1962 when then President Harry B. Cunningham opened the first 80,000-square-foot KMart discount store in Garden City.
That year the company operated 820 stores with total sales of $450 million under both brands. KMart eclipsed the Kresge stores, the last of which was sold in 1987. The Kresge Foundation, always a separate entity from the two retailers, sold its KMart stock at that time for a net gain of $193 million.
KMart went on to become a global company with more than 2,100 stores and sales of $31 billion by 1996. Intense competition from Walmart and inept management drove the company into bankruptcy in 2002.
Since its inception in 1924, the Kresge Foundation has made more than $5.1 billion in grants, focusing $1 billion in Detroit alone.
Last fall, the foundation re-emphasized its commitment to Detroit in a major announcement that it was moving its headquarters to the campus of the former Marygrove College on McNichols Road in northwest Detroit from its longtime home along W. Big Beaver Road in Troy.
In Detroit, Marygrove — with its nearly 100-year-old Tudor Gothicdesigned landmark — ended its undergraduate program in 2017, struggling with more than $25 million in debt.
The Kresge Foundation helped restructure that debt and underwrote the creation of the Marygrove Conservancy. Kresge also committed $50 million to keep the campus afloat as a P-20 institution, offering prenatal to post-graduate programs.
In conjunction with its announced move to the Marygrove campus, Rip Rapson, president and CEO of the Kresge Foundation, unveiled a $180 million investment over five years for housing stabilization, public space enhancements, and financial support to residents and businesses in neighborhoods surrounding Marygrove.
The 70,000-square-foot new Kresge Foundation headquarters, to be built on the campus, will have space for its 130 employees and will provide meeting areas and other facilities for community use.
“The purpose of these foundations is to fundamentally improve the communities that they serve,” Calderone says. “Do I think that we are blessed in Michigan to have so many great foundations that provide so many services to the community? The answer is absolutely yes.”
