Despite their reputation for national and global giving, billionaire megadonors do, in fact, funnel considerable support to organizations closer to home. Their place-based giving often centers on the usual suspects of big cultural institutions or “ed and meds,” but every now and then, we come across donors who like to go off-script. Consider Quicken Loans (now Rocket Companies) cofounder and real estate mogul Dan Gilbert and his wife Jennifer.
In 2010, Dan Gilbert, whom Forbes called the man with the “drive to rebuild the Motor City,” moved Quicken Loans’ headquarters to the then-struggling downtown Detroit. Since then, Gilbert has played a major role in the redevelopment of the city, sinking huge investments into downtown real estate and helping to develop the QLine streetcar. Politico even referred to him as Detroit’s “shadow mayor.”
That role includes a lot of philanthropy, which started in earnest with the Gilbert Family Foundation and a large commitment to find a cure for neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), a genetic disease that affected their son, Nick. But the foundation’s largest priority is supporting the people of Detroit. In 2021, the foundation and Rocket Mortgage’s Rocket Community Fund announced a 10-year, $500 million commitment to build opportunity and equity for Detroit residents, which included a $15 million investment to eliminate the property tax debt owed by 20,000 low-income homeowners.
“I think our strategy in Detroit is a little different from many funders, which is that we’re focused on serving residents who are at risk of displacement, either through tax foreclosure or eviction,” said Gilbert Family Foundation Executive Director Laura Grannemann. A unique aspect of that strategy is a focus on arts and culture, which the foundation believes can support its equity work by building more connected communities and contributing to economic growth.
I recently chatted with Grannemann over Zoom to discuss one such arts and culture program — Seed and Bloom: Detroit, a $1.5 million initiative aimed at helping the city’s BIPOC artists grow their practices into thriving businesses. In late February, the foundation announced the program’s inaugural cohort of 10 artists, who will join a three-year program receiving $150,000 in total unrestricted funding, plus strategic support from United States Artists (USA) and technical assistance from Artspace, an online marketplace for contemporary art.
Given Gilbert’s extensive ties to Detroit, it can be difficult to cleanly separate his business investments from his philanthropic efforts. That being said, Grannemann’s take on the foundation’s distinct approach is an accurate one. Aside from a few exceptions, we rarely see billionaires center their place-based grantmaking on a deeply entrenched, systemic issue like displacement, much less use it as a springboard to pay residents’ property tax debt or roll out a discretionary grant program focused on local BIPOC artists.
“All of our decisions are made with people at risk of displacement in mind,” Grannemann said. “And we believe that art is critical to building strong social bonds that keep people in the city of Detroit.”
Gilbert family philanthropy: A primer
When Dan Gilbert moved what was formerly known as Quicken Loans’ headquarters to downtown Detroit in 2010, the company had 1,500 employees working in a hollowed-out urban core littered with half-filled buildings. A year later, he began buying and developing historic and underused properties through his real estate company Bedrock. By 2018, Gilbert had invested $5.6 billion across nearly 100 properties in downtown Detroit and nearby neighborhoods.
Now, Rocket Companies and its affiliates employ over 17,000 full-time team members in Detroit’s thriving urban core, downtown is buzzing, and the 62-year-old Gilbert’s net worth stands at $27 billion.
Jennifer, meanwhile, is the founder and creative director of Detroit-based commercial design firm POPHOUSE, president of NF Forward and serves on the board of the Detroit Institute of Art. The couple signed the Giving Pledge in 2012 and launched their family foundation three years later with a $150 million commitment. In 2018, it announced a three-year, $12 million effort to fund promising gene therapy techniques for treating and curing NF1.
Its other priority, Building Opportunity and Equity for Detroit residents, crystallized after it committed $350 million of the $500 million pledge in 2021. It has four focus areas — improving housing stability, increasing access to public space, building economic mobility, and expanding arts and culture. Previous grantees in the latter area include the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Institute of Arts and the Motown Museum.
For the fiscal year ending December 2022, the foundation had $1.7 million in assets, disbursed $1.6 million in grants and received no incoming contributions. Grantees included the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Detroit Children’s Fund and Henry Ford Health System. The amount of money the foundation disbursed in 2022 was a significant reduction from the previous year, when it moved $27.6 million out the door.
The couple have continued their support for medical research. Last April, the foundation announced it provided more than $10 million earmarked for NF1 research to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The following month, Nick passed away at the age of 26. In September, it announced support for two new Detroit-based initiatives — the Nick Gilbert Neurofibromatosis Research Institute, which will be the first brick-and-mortar facility solely focused on NF research, and a 72-bed physical medicine and rehabilitation facility. Both projects will cost about $439 million over 10 years, with the foundation contributing roughly $375 million.
Support for artists and “the future of housing”
Seed and Bloom started to come together about a year ago, when Grannemann and her team began working with United States Artists and a handful of local artists to develop the contours of the program. The foundation received about 45 applications, after which an independent panel of Detroit-based arts experts selected the 10 winners.
The award reflects the idea that artists aren’t islands. They’re entrepreneurs who plant roots in a neighborhood, attract other like-minded creatives and spur economic development. Through the program, USA staff reviews each artist’s business plan and makes tailored support recommendations around a litany of factors, including financial planning, gallery management, sales and staffing.
“We only selected 10 artists because we wanted to be able to provide personalized support,” Grannemann said. “Why do it on your own when you can have access to great professionals who can support you along the way?”
The Gilberts aren’t alone in their belief that the arts can catalyze urban economic development. But any discussion that frames artists as agents of growth has to ensure that “success” — typically envisioned as robust economic development in the neighborhood in question — doesn’t lead to the kind of gentrification that displaces long-term residents. This is a critical consideration for any funder committed to a concept that’s loosely defined as “creative placemaking,” and arguably even more so for a foundation whose namesake spearheaded Detroit’s revival.
A piece on Gilbert in Architecture Boston titled “Detroit: Welcome to Gilbertville” addressed the issue, noting that “critics grumble about one man controlling so much, and his focus on downtown has spurred a gentrification debate similar to (if not yet on the scale of) that taking place in other cities.”
I’ve pored over coverage of Gilbert’s work in Detroit and some do believe that Gilbert wields too much influence and bankrolls initiatives that align with this business interests, mirroring broader and pervasive concerns about billionaires’ disproportionately large civic footprints. A different line of criticism is that Gilbert could be doing more to galvanize economic development in the city’s more economically disadvantaged areas.
Gilbert, who owns properties beyond downtown, is acutely aware of these concerns, and along with Jennifer, has prioritized cultivating partnerships as economic development spreads to outer neighborhoods. Indeed, it’s worth noting that the Gilbert Family Foundation and Rocket Community Fund’s $500 million commitment to building opportunity and equity in Detroit came after Jennifer spent the previous year speaking to residents across the city.
“We look forward to working with existing and future partners to drive systemic change in Detroit,” she said at the time. In addition to rolling out Detroit Tax Relief Fund to cover homeowner’s property tax debt, the foundation also supports residents through its Detroit Eviction Defense Fund and Detroit Home Repair Fund.
Before we signed off, Grannemann provided a more recent example of how the foundation aims to keep residents in Detroit. In February, the foundation announced a “multimillion-dollar investment” to support North Corktown Neighborhood Association’s efforts to build Tomorrow’s Housing Innovation Showcase, a project that will create up to nine factory-built homes on vacant parcels in a section of North Corktown, a neighborhood that has attracted a swath of new residents in recent years and where Bedrock owns properties.
The association is currently working with residents to inform the design of the homes, which should be unveiled by the end of the year. The plan, Grannemann explained, is to incentivize factory-built housing companies to bring manufacturing to Detroit and boost the housing stock for renters and first-time buyers. “We think the showcase will catalyze a discussion around what the future of housing looks like and how Michigan and Detroit can be at the center of driving that industry forward,” she said.
