· Private foundation
Constance Mayeron Cowles & Charles Fuller Cowles Foundation
Its FY2025 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k19 grants · $17k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MILL REEF FUND | $10,000 |
| MILL REEF FUND | $2,500 |
| MINNESOTA PUBLIC RADIO | $2,500 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF MNNDSD | $2,500 |
| WALKER ART CENTER | $2,500 |
| FRANCONIA SCULPTURE PARK | $1,000 |
| AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC | $1,000 |
| WALKER ART CENTER | $750 |
| CHISAGO LAKES AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $500 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MN FOUNDATION - WEISMAN ART MUSEUM | $500 |
| STEAMBOAT ADAPTIVE RECREATIONAL SPORTS (STARS) | $500 |
| MINNESOTA ORCHESTRAL ASSOCIATION | $500 |
| STRINGS MUSIC FESTIVAL | $500 |
| MINNEAPOLIS INSTITUTE OF ART | $250 |
| MINNPOST | $250 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 53% of your 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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.
36 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2025, 23 since wound down; 5 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; $3k 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
- MRMILL REEF FUND9× · 2017–2025 · $90k · revenue +9%
- WAWALKER ART CENTER9× · 2017–2025 · $10k · revenue +87%
- CCCOMPASSION & CHOICES7× · 2017–2024 · $5k · revenue +169%
Funded once
- SCST CROIX FESTIVAL THEATREone grant, 2024 · $5k
LEWIS & CLARK COLLEGEone grant, 2022 · $3k · revenue +2%- ABANIMAL BALANCEgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $2k · revenue +334%
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.
Arts Midwest works collaboratively with private and public arts supporters to support, inform, and celebrate arts organizations and creative communities across the Midwest. Our mission is to build unprecedented opportunity across the…
Minnesota fringe connects adventurous artists with adventurous audiences by creating open, supportive forums for free and diverse artistic expression.
In the belief that the visual arts are indispensable to a healthy community, it is the mission of the minnetonka center for the arts to provide teaching excellence, quality exhibitions, and cultural enrichment for people of all ages,…
The plains art museum brings people and art together. as a public institution we celebrate the finest of human achievement and inspire and engage diverse audiences in the creation, exhibition, collection, and preservation of art.
Support and enhance the development of the arts in northwestern minnesota. facilitate and encourage the creation and appreciation of the arts.
MCF is a vibrant philanthropic community connecting, strengthening and mobilizing the power of philanthropy to advance prosperity and equity.
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…
To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.
Creating powerful advocacy to enhance economic vitality in the minneapolis-st. paul region.
To excite, engage and educate through the arts.
The phipps center for the arts, propelled by our community-based arts council, serves as a welcoming and open home for the st. croix river valley region and beyond, empowering and cultivating lifelong artistic expression, participation and…
The mission of the national academy of design is to promote the fine arts in america through exhibition and education.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts Dba Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the most unlike its peers is Lewis & Clark College. 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 38 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% 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 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.
41 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. 41 of the 59 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 MILL REEF FUND ↗
- Who funds FRANCONIA SCULPTURE PARK LEGEROS ↗
- Who funds WALKER ART CENTER ↗
- Who funds COMPASSION & CHOICES ↗
- Who funds WILD RIVERS CONSERVANCY OF THE ST CROIX & NAMEKAGON ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA PUBLIC RADIO AMERICAN PUBLIC MEDIA ↗
- Who funds NORTHSIDE ACHIEVEMENT ZONE ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART ↗
- Who funds MINNEAPOLIS SOCIETY OF FINE ARTS DBA MINNEAPOLIS INSTITUTE OF ARTS ↗
- Who funds LEWIS & CLARK COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Elkhorn Marine Conservancy Inc ↗
- Who funds SECOND HARVEST HEARTLAND ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN CLAY CENTER ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CRAFT COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds ANIMAL BALANCE ↗
- Who funds PAGE EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MinnPost ↗
- Who funds FORECAST PUBLIC ARTWORKS ↗
- Who funds WHITE BEAR CENTER FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds SPRINGBOARD FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ARTREACH ST CROIX ↗
- Who funds NORTHEASTERN MINNESOTANS FOR WILDERNESS ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO AVENUE FIRE ARTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds JUXTAPOSITION ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC ART SAINT PAUL ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA ORCHESTRAL ASSOCIATION ↗
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 McKnight Foundation · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · The Minneapolis Foundation · Minnesota Community Foundation · Margaret a Cargill Foundation · Jerome Foundation Inc · The McNeely Foundation · Xcel Energy Foundation · Mightycause Charitable Foundation · Hrk Foundation · William Boss Foundation · Mortenson Family 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 Constance Mayeron Cowles & Charles Fuller Cowles 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.
- Lewis & Clark College — 2% of income from government
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 Constance Mayeron Cowles & Charles Fuller Cowles Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Constance Mayeron Cowles & Charles Fuller Cowles 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.