· Public charity
Community Charities of Minnesota
To provide benefits to youth, disabled persons, and other charitable organizations with funds from our fundraising activities.
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 $10k16 grants · $108k
- $10k–50k21 grants · $364k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SMART BOWLING SCHOLARSHIP FUNDING | $40,000 |
| BOWLING PROPRIETORS ASSN OF MN | $30,419 |
| GREATER MANKATO ROTARY FOUNDATION | $30,250 |
| HEROES HELPING HEROES | $21,549 |
| STEP | $21,000 |
| FUTURE FOR MINNESOTA BOWLING | $21,000 |
| GAVIN PIANO SERVICES INC | $20,098 |
| SAINT PAUL & MINNESOTA FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| BIGFORK HIGH SCHOOL | $17,250 |
| MINNESOTA AMERICAN LEGION FDN | $16,000 |
| PARK NICOLLET FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| AMERICAN LEGION FOUNDATION FUND | $14,500 |
| MN AMERICAN LEGION FUND 78 | $13,000 |
| BUFFALO RODEO ASSN | $12,000 |
| GREATER MANKATO AREA UNITED WAY | $11,150 |
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 (FY18–25, $39k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 45% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 17% of Community Charities of Minnesota’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, 85% of the giving stays in MN; read by stated purpose it is 73% — 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.
16 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 5 since wound down; 22 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, 47% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $235k 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
- SBSMART BOWLING SCHOLARSHIP FUNDING CORPORATION9× · 2017–2025 · $250k · revenue +49%
- PNPARK NICOLLET FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2025 · $120k · revenue +26%
- SLST LOUIS PARK EMERGENCY PROGRAM INC6× · 2019–2024 · $113k · revenue +34%
Funded once
- PTPARK TAVERNone grant, 2024 · $39k
- WWWILDERNESS WHEELERSone grant, 2024 · $18k · revenue -30%
- HFHIGHLAND FRIENDSHIP CLUBgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $13k · revenue +99%
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.
Promote shooting sports, gun safety, and sportsmanship and support area youth programs.
To support american legion members and their programs in minnesota. the american legion was chartered and incorporated by congress in 1919 as a patriotic veterans organization devoted to mutual helpfulness. it is the nation's largest…
Support first responders and their families killed or critically injured in the line of duty.
Organizations mission or most significant activities provide memorials for police officers slain in the lin of duty, provide assistance for their families, provide training for police honor guard units, assist department with funeral…
To be the leading voice of medicine to make minnesota the healthiest state and the best place to practice.
The minnesota paralyzed veterans of america (mnpva) a minnesota nonprofit organization, is an officially recognized paralyzed veterans of america chapter. mnpva assists veterans with spinal cord injuries or spinal cord diseases, such as ms…
The minnesota veterans 4 veterans trust fund helps minnesota veterans integrate into society, and lead healthier and independent lives by funding programs for veteran organizations in the state of minnesota.
The minnesota hunter & jumper association's purpose is to support the hunter/jumper sport in the state of minnesota. our goals are to foster a community of hunter/jumper enthusiasts, strengthen local competition at all levels, represent…
Amateur sports - bowling
The foundation's mission is to be the mma's philanthropic partner in making minnesota the healthiest state and best place to practice.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Minnesota American Legion Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Project Delta. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 28 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) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 5% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
42 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. 42 of the 63 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 MINNESOTA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA AMERICAN LEGION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SMART BOWLING SCHOLARSHIP FUNDING CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds PARK NICOLLET FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ST LOUIS PARK EMERGENCY PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds BOWLING PROPRIETORS ASSO OF MINN ↗
- Who funds SLP NEST ↗
- Who funds DELANO AREA SCHOLARSHIP ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MARCELL SNOWDRIFTERS SNOWMOBILE CLUB ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds LEGIONVILLE SCHOOL SAFETY PATROL TRAINING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds HEROES HELPING HEROES HEROES HELPING HEROES ↗
- Who funds STEP INC ↗
- Who funds SAINT PAUL & MINNESOTA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PARKTACULAR INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds WILDERNESS WHEELERS ↗
- Who funds ST LOUIS PARK FRIENDS OF THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds HIGHLAND FRIENDSHIP CLUB ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO RODEO ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER MANKATO AREA UNITED WAY INC ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA PATRIOT GUARD ↗
- Who funds HALLIE Q BROWN COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds American Legion Endowment Fund Corporation ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK MILLS EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHOICE UNLIMITED ↗
- Who funds SALUTING BRANCHES ↗
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: Russell T Lund Charitable Trust · The Minneapolis Foundation · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Xcel Energy Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · Minnesota Community Foundation · The Graco Foundation · Mightycause Charitable Foundation · The Richard M Schulze Family Foundation · Thrivent Financial for Lutherans · Thrivent Charitable Impact & Investing · United Way Worldwide
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 Community Charities of Minnesota 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 Community Charities of Minnesota?
Find your warmest path to Community Charities of Minnesota 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.