· Private foundation
Avocet Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $19k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $209k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $63k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ST CROIX VALLEY FOUNDATION | $63,000 |
| MICROGRANTS | $32,000 |
| GLOBAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN | $30,000 |
| YOUTH FRONTIERS INC | $28,000 |
| FAIRVOTE MINNESOTA FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| BREAKTHROUGH TWIN CITIES | $17,000 |
| BELWIN CONSERVANCY | $17,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $15,000 |
| ST CROIX VALLEY HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $10,000 |
| CONSTELLATION FUND | $10,000 |
| GREAT PLAINS INSTITUTE | $10,000 |
| MAREN FUND | $10,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD | $10,000 |
| APPLE TREE DENTAL | $9,000 |
| COMPASSION AND CHOICES | $5,000 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Your human-services grants (FY17–24, $397k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 23% of Avocet Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 71% of the giving stays in MN; read by stated purpose it is 68% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +83% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2024, 4 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- MMICROGRANTS8× · 2017–2024 · $187k · revenue +5%
- FMFairVote Minnesota Foundation6× · 2017–2024 · $105k · revenue +28%
- MFMAREN FUND INC8× · 2017–2024 · $75k · revenue +114%
Funded once
- FWFRED WELLS TENNIS & EDUCATIONone grant, 2020 · $25k
- IIINTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MINNESOTAone grant, 2021 · $24k · revenue +3%
- PFPROJECT FOR PRIDE IN LIVING INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $10k · revenue +56%
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
MCF is a vibrant philanthropic community connecting, strengthening and mobilizing the power of philanthropy to advance prosperity and equity.
Creating powerful advocacy to enhance economic vitality in the minneapolis-st. paul region.
The Minnesota Council of Nonprofits informs, promotes, connects and strengthens individual nonprofits and the nonprofit sector.
Grow businesses, build wealth and increase reinvestement in the african communities of minnesota
The minnesota chamber of commerce proactively leads the business community statewide to: advance pro-business, responsible minnesota public policy that creates jobs and grows the econony; provde member services to address evolving business…
The minnesota business partnership's mission is to maintain a high quality of life for all minnesotans by ensuring that the state's economy remains strong, globally competitive and its prospects for growth bright by working with elected…
Mn350 unites minnesotans with the global movement to end the pollution damaging our climate, speed the transition to clean energy, and create a just and healthy future for all.
MinnPost produces independent journalism to serve as a trusted guide for Minnesotans exploring the critical issues, challenges and opportunities facing our state.
United way of northeastern minnesota invests in nonprofits, programs, and collaborations that equip and empower, creating opportunities for people to thrive in our communities.
The minnesota land trust protects and restores minnesota's most vital natural lands in order to provide wildlife habitat, clean water, outdoor experiences and scenic beauty for generations to come.
Enhancing and strengthening our community and our regional core.
Empowering people of all abilities to reach their full potential. we provide individualized services that maximize independence, boosts community engagement and improves physical and emotional well-being.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota and the most unlike its peers is Maren Fund Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 30 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
20 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 20 of the 27 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds ST CROIX VALLEY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YOUTH FRONTIERS INC ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN ↗
- Who funds MICROGRANTS ↗
- Who funds FairVote Minnesota Foundation ↗
- Who funds GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds MAREN FUND INC ↗
- Who funds APPLE TREE DENTAL ↗
- Who funds Breakthrough Twin Cities ↗
- Who funds GREAT PLAINS INSTITUTE FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT INC ↗
- Who funds BELWIN CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds ST CROIX VALLEY HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds WILDERNESS INQUIRY INC ↗
- Who funds The Constellation Fund ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds NEW VENTURE FUND ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICE OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds PROJECT FOR PRIDE IN LIVING INC ↗
- Who funds Lake Street Council ↗
- Who funds COMPASSION & CHOICES ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: The Minneapolis Foundation · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Smikis Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · Mightycause Charitable Foundation · Xcel Energy Foundation · The Richard M Schulze Family Foundation · The Jay and Rose Phillips Family Foundation of Minnesota · Hugh J Andersen Foundation · Hardenbergh Foundation · Mortenson Family Foundation · Fred C and Katherine B Andersen Foundation
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization Avocet Foundation funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Avocet Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Avocet Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.