· Public charity
Central Minnesota Arts Board
To promote and enhance the creation, performance, and appreciation of the arts in the minnesota counties of benton, sherburne, stearns and wright by providing grants and services to arts and community organizations, cities, schools and individuals.
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.
The 47 grants below total $769,543 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $960,172 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $190,629 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k20 grants · $147k
- $10k–50k27 grants · $623k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AVON HILLS FOLK SCHOOL | $40,478 |
| CITY OF MONTICELLO (FISCAL AGENT FOR MONTIARTS) | $38,472 |
| YOUTH CHORALE OF CENTRAL MINNESOTA | $36,000 |
| ST CLOUD SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $30,800 |
| SOAR REGIONAL ARTS | $30,400 |
| DELANO AREA COUNCIL FOR ARTS & CULTURE | $29,562 |
| PARAMOUNT CENTER FOR THE ARTS | $29,500 |
| BUFFALO COMMUNITY THEATER | $28,710 |
| GREAT RIVER EDUCATIONAL ARTS THEATRE | $26,497 |
| CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY OF ST CLOUD | $26,000 |
| ST MICHAEL HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $25,688 |
| GREAT RIVER CHORALE | $24,955 |
| LYRICALITY | $24,935 |
| ST MICHAEL ALBERTVILLE HIGH SCHOOL | $24,877 |
| BUFFALO COMMUNITY ORCHESTRA | $24,064 |
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 (FY17–25, $406k) 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.
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 +36% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
56 repeat relationships — 37 still active in FY2025, 19 since wound down; 8 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $87k 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
- PCPARAMOUNT CENTER FOR THE ARTS9× · 2017–2025 · $385k · revenue +12%
- BCBUFFALO COMMUNITY THEATER9× · 2017–2025 · $262k · revenue +24% · 59% of their budget
- SRSOAR REGIONAL ARTS INC9× · 2017–2025 · $230k · revenue +117% · 25% of their budget
Funded once
- VAVISUAL ARTS MINNESOTAone grant, 2017 · $25k
- YTYOUTH THEATRE WORKSHOPone grant, 2017 · $19k
- 5A510 ART LABone grant, 2021 · $16k
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.
Music Saint Croix creates artistically excellent performances with exciting and unusual programming for the enjoyment of St. Croix Valley audiences.
Founded in 1980 the Fargo Moorhead Choral Artists FMCA performs choral music of all styles and from all musical periods FMCA provides a musical outlet for the finest choral musicians in the region FMCA rehearses weekly on Tuesday evenings…
Jazz Central Studios is dedicated to preserving the innovative jazz arts in the Twin Cities. We present live music to the community in a non-commercial listening environment and encourage collaboration and education among musicians of wide…
The mission of the Mankato Area Arts Council, DBA Carnegie Art Center, is to be a vibrant community destination that inspires, nurtures, and expands artistic, cultural, and educational experiences.
Schubert club creates inspiring musical experiences that contribute to the cultural vibrancy of the twin cities community through concert presentations, music education and student scholarship programs, and musuem exhibits.
Perform/Educate/Create Choral Music By Women
Present classical music concerts to the public.
Promotion of and presentation of dramatic arts
The Lake Benton Opera House, one of the premiere historic buildings in southwest Minnesota. Home to an active community theatre, the Opera House has begun its second century in our community.
Quality Live Entertainment at Reasonable Cost
Our mission is to create and share a beautiful musical experience. The Dakota Valley Symphony is an all-volunteer arts organization that has served the south metro area of Minneapolis and St. Paul since 1986.
Provide central minnesota residents with cultural and musical enrichment through live symphony concerts and special programs; offering local musicians and students opportunities for symphonic performance training; and partnering with…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Springboard for the Arts and the most unlike its peers is Sinclair Lewis Foundation. 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 19 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 15% of your grantees by number, and just 6% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
53 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. 53 of the 99 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 PARAMOUNT CENTER FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO COMMUNITY THEATER ↗
- Who funds CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY OF ST CLOUD INC ↗
- Who funds ST CLOUD SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds SOAR REGIONAL ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO COMMUNITY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds YOUTH CHORALE OF CENTRAL MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds GREAT RIVER CHORALE ↗
- Who funds GREAT RIVER EDUCATIONAL ARTS THEATRE ↗
- Who funds AVON HILLS FOLK SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds WIRTH CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ART ↗
- Who funds DELANO AREA COUNCIL FOR ARTS AND CU LTURE ↗
- Who funds SINCLAIR LEWIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAINT JOHNS BOYS CHOIR ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF CENTRAL MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE OF SAINT BENEDICT ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA CENTER CHORALE ↗
- Who funds SAUK CENTRE ART LAB ↗
- Who funds LYRICALITY ↗
- Who funds Independent Music Collaborative of Central Minnesota ↗
- Who funds SAINT JOHN'S UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Land of Lakes Choirboys of MN Inc ↗
- Who funds RUM RIVER ART INC ↗
- Who funds THE YES NETWORK ↗
- Who funds WACOSA ↗
- Who funds UNITECLOUD ↗
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 · Morgan Family Foundation · Initiative Foundation · United Way of Central Minnesota · Granite Partners Foundation of Minnesota Inc · Rick and Helga Bauerly Foundation · Centracare Health Foundation · Central Mn Noon Optimist Club Inc · Xcel Energy Foundation · Ja Wedum Foundation · Connexus Energy Foundation · Minnesota Humanities Center
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 Central Minnesota Arts Board 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 Central Minnesota Arts Board?
Find your warmest path to Central Minnesota Arts Board 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.