· Private foundation
Benton Telecommunications Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k17 grants · $23k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $155k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| EMPLOYMENT ENTERPRISES INC | $25,000 |
| AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY - RELAY FOR LIFE | $25,000 |
| EASTERN MORRISON COUNTY 4 WHEELER CLUB INC | $25,000 |
| CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION - GREAT STRIDES | $20,000 |
| MINNESOTA ADULT & TEEN CHALLENGE INC | $20,000 |
| MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY ASSOCIATION | $15,000 |
| CITY OF RICE | $15,000 |
| BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF CENTRAL MINNESOTA | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
| THE BRIDGE AG CHURCH | $2,000 |
| CAN DO CANINES | $2,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
| RICE WOMEN OF TODAY | $2,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
| RICE AREA FOOD SHELF | $2,000 |
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, $111k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 36% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
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 +27% since the first grant, against +23% for the ones you funded once.
61 repeat relationships — 19 still active in FY2025, 42 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $40k 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
- EEEMPLOYMENT ENTERPRISES INC8× · 2017–2025 · $163k · revenue +82%
- TRTEREBINTH REFUGE5× · 2018–2023 · $109k · revenue +30%
- AMANNA MARIE'S ALLIANCE4× · 2017–2023 · $75k · revenue +38%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $25k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $25k
- UUCPone grant, 2017 · $25k
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.
To promote and protect the rights of people with disabilities and their families while supporting inclusion and participation in the community throughout their lifetime.
Strengthen central mn communities through leadership in workforce excellence.
Lifeworks' mission is to partner with people with disabilities to drive change by increasing opportunity and access in the community.
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…
Touchstone mental health provides innovative, person-centered services that foster hope, health and well-being. we envision a world where all people whose lives are affected by mental illness will flourish with effective treatment, quality…
To provide high quality care for children and seniors while promoting respect and understanding through intentional intergenerational interaction.
The organization's mission is to support people with disabilities to realize their full potential.
A b l e , inc (a brighter living experience, inc) is organized to provide residential care for developmentally disabled minnesota residents at its residential and intermediate care facilities located in houston county, minnesota. the…
Milc is a non-residential, independent living center for persons with disabilities. milc provides a variety of services for the purposes of assisting people with disabilities to live more independently in the community. milc staff provides…
We empower individuals and families to confidently navigate aging so that it is a purposeful journey filled with dignity and support.
The Minnesota Leadership Council on Aging is uniting leaders to advance equitable opportunities for all Minnesotans as we age.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Minnesota Assistance Council for Veterans and the most unlike its peers is Gaits of Hope Eap & L Nonprofit. 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 31 years old; the field is 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
36 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. 36 of the 142 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 EMPLOYMENT ENTERPRISES INC ↗
- Who funds TEREBINTH REFUGE ↗
- Who funds ANNA MARIE'S ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds WACOSA ↗
- Who funds TANNER'S TEAM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT NORTH ↗
- Who funds OVERCOMERS INTERNATIONAL FELLOWSHIP ↗
- Who funds Minnesota Teen Challenge Inc ↗
- Who funds Eastern Morrison County 4 Wheeler Club Inc ↗
- Who funds INDY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY CHRISTIAN SCHOOL OF PEASE MN ↗
- Who funds HELPING HANDS OUTREACH ↗
- Who funds RUM RIVER LIFE CHOICES CENTER ↗
- Who funds HONORING CHOICES ↗
- Who funds INDEPENDENT LIFESTYLES INC A CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT LIVING ↗
- Who funds THE ARC MINNESOTA INC ↗
- Who funds Elevate Pregnancy and Family Resource Center ↗
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: Communitygiving · Otto Bremer Trust · Morgan Family Foundation · Rick and Helga Bauerly Foundation · United Way of Central Minnesota · Granite Partners Foundation of Minnesota Inc · Initiative Foundation · Xcel Energy Foundation · Central Mn Noon Optimist Club Inc · Minnesota Power Foundation · The K Foundation · Central Minnesota Council on Aging Inc
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 Benton Telecommunications 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 Benton Telecommunications Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Benton Telecommunications 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.