· Private foundation
David Winton Bell 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 $10k7 grants · $27k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $230k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $115k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BELWIN CONSERVANCY | $65,000 |
| AGATE HOUSING AND SERVICES | $50,000 |
| TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND | $35,000 |
| GREAT MN SCHOOLS | $25,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD | $20,000 |
| DELTA WATERFOWL FOUNDATION | $19,646 |
| Individual grant recipient | $15,000 |
| MINNESOTA CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCACY | $15,000 |
| SUMMIT ACADEMY OIC | $15,000 |
| PROJECT SUCCESS | $15,000 |
| MINNESOTA LAND TRUST | $15,000 |
| PEOPLE INCORPORATED | $15,000 |
| COLLEGE POSSIBLE | $10,000 |
| GLOBAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN | $10,000 |
| BOZEMAN HIGH SCHOOL | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–22, $45k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 5% of David Winton Bell 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, 85% of the giving stays in MN; read by stated purpose it is 78% — 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 +66% since the first grant, against -99% for the ones you funded once.
40 repeat relationships — 20 still active in FY2024, 20 since wound down; 2 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, 99% 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
- BCBELWIN CONSERVANCY8× · 2017–2024 · $280k · revenue +100%
- MLMINNESOTA LAND TRUST8× · 2017–2024 · $208k · revenue +403%
- DWDelta Waterfowl Foundation8× · 2017–2024 · $194k · revenue +161%
Funded once
- MCMINNESOTA COMEBACK - EDUCATION TRANSFORMATIONone grant, 2020 · $25k
- GVGALLATIN VALLEY FOOD BANKone grant, 2022 · $5k
- STSTUDENTS TODAY LEADERS FOREVERone grant, 2017 · $5k
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.
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.
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…
Youthprise is a nonprofit intermediary that invests in the future of Minnesota by investing in youth. Youthprise's mission is to increase equity with and for Minnesota's indigenous, low-income, and racially diverse youth.
Breakthrough Twin Cities supports students on their journey to college by fostering a community of mutual learning with the next generation of educators so they both can collaborate, grow, and thrive.
To be the leading voice of medicine to make minnesota the healthiest state and the best place to practice.
Mn community measurement empowers stakeholders with meaningful information to drive improvement.
The Minnesota Council of Nonprofits informs, promotes, connects and strengthens individual nonprofits and the nonprofit sector.
Driven by an unwavering moral imperative that every child, regardless of its race, income or zip code, deserves the same high-quality education, mn comeback has become a growing movement of philanthropists, community leaders and education…
The peak school seeks to ignite a passion for learning, to develop students of diverse talents and backgrounds who think critically and act with integrity, and to graduate compassionate, confident, capable students who will embrace their…
We bring young people together for group learning adventures in wilderness and urban settings in minnesota. we invite teens and young adults to identify, practice and grow leadership skills through shared experiences. we also offer the…
Global minnesotas mission is to advance international understanding and engagement. we are committed to serving minnesota from a foundation built on the values of respect, collaboration, nonpartisanship, global competency, inclusion and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Summit Academy Oic and the most unlike its peers is Fresh Energy. 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 34 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
31 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. 31 of the 47 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 BELWIN CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds Delta Waterfowl Foundation ↗
- Who funds PROJECT SUCCESS ↗
- Who funds GREAT MN SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE POSSIBLE INC ↗
- Who funds Twin Cities Rise ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN ↗
- Who funds SUMMIT ACADEMY OIC ↗
- Who funds NORTHSIDE ACHIEVEMENT ZONE ↗
- Who funds AGATE HOUSING & SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds Florida Keys Wild Bird Rehabilitation Center Inc ↗
- Who funds Bolder Options ↗
- Who funds PROJECT FOR PRIDE IN LIVING INC ↗
- Who funds FRESH ENERGY ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCACY ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds Foxcroft School ↗
- Who funds THE BLAKE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR VICTIMS OF TORTURE ↗
- Who funds THE GUNSTON SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds MISSISSIPPI PARK CONNECTION ↗
- Who funds MinnPost ↗
- Who funds POSITIVE COACHING ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds THRIVE INC ↗
- Who funds THE HEADWATERS ACADEMY INC ↗
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 · Smikis Foundation · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · The McKnight Foundation · Longview Foundation · Mortenson Family Foundation · Mightycause Charitable Foundation · Open Door Foundation · Fr Bigelow Foundation · The K Foundation · Xcel Energy Foundation · Pohlad 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 David Winton Bell 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 David Winton Bell Foundation?
Find your warmest path to David Winton Bell 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.