· Private foundation
Donaldson 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k34 grants · $94k
- $10k–50k34 grants · $608k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $638k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Greater Twin Cities United Way | $205,000 |
| Special Olympics | $150,000 |
| Scholarship America | $133,000 |
| Boys Girls Clubs TC | $100,000 |
| Science Museum of MN | $50,000 |
| PACER Center Inc | $30,000 |
| Normandale Community College Foundation | $30,000 |
| United Way of Clinton County | $29,290 |
| Greene Local Education Advancement Foundation | $28,000 |
| Jr Achieve East Iowa | $25,000 |
| The Works | $25,000 |
| Dunwoody College of Technology | $25,000 |
| United Way of Portage County | $24,162 |
| Wallin Education Partners | $23,000 |
| Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Greater Twin Cities | $23,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $136k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 79% 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.
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 +32% since the first grant, against -1% for the ones you funded once.
49 repeat relationships — 27 still active in FY2025, 22 since wound down; 45 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, 59% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $555k 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
- SMSCIENCE MUSEUM OF MINNESOTA6× · 2020–2025 · $300k · revenue +51%
- CPCOLLEGE POSSIBLE INC6× · 2020–2025 · $175k · revenue +37%
- WEWALLIN EDUCATION PARTNERS6× · 2020–2025 · $138k · revenue +32%
Funded once
- DRDirect Reliefone grant, 2021 · $100k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $100k
- DDONORSCHOOSEORGone grant, 2024 · $100k · revenue -22%
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.
United way of northeastern minnesota invests in nonprofits, programs, and collaborations that equip and empower, creating opportunities for people to thrive in our communities.
Mity's mission is to inspire and challenge intellectually curious students to pursue their passions within a diverse, inclusive community and empower them by building skills and relationships for lifelong success.
We believe that great schools are the cornerstone of a just and thriving community. ensuring that every child is able to attend a school that works is our moral and social imperative - our children deserve no less.
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…
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.
Mcee equips minnesotans with the economic and personal financial knowledge and skills to make informed decisions and thrive in our complex world. we fulfill our mission by teaching teachers through top quality professional development and…
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…
Move minnesota leads the movement for an equitable and sustainable transportation system that puts people first. we are passionate about connecting communities, ending the climate crisis, expanding access to jobs and resources, and…
Women's Foundation of Minnesota is a statewide community foundation investing in ending systemic inequities and driving innovation for gender and racial justice. WFM applies an Intersectional Equity Framework inclusive of gender, race,…
Led by minnesota state university students, we are the inclusive voice for all future, current, and former students. we actively work to represent and support minnesota state university students and advocate at a campus, state, and federal…
To be the leading voice of medicine to make minnesota the healthiest state and the best place to practice.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Twin Cities United Way and the most unlike its peers is Greene County Imagination Library. 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 32 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) — 1% 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.
65 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. 65 of the 148 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 GREATER TWIN CITIES UNITED WAY ↗
- Who funds SCIENCE MUSEUM OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE POSSIBLE INC ↗
- Who funds WALLIN EDUCATION PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds PACER CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds DUNWOODY COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY ↗
- Who funds THE WORKS ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF PORTAGE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF CLINTON COUNTY IOWA ↗
- Who funds DONORSCHOOSEORG ↗
- Who funds BESTPREP ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT NORTH ↗
- Who funds URBAN VENTURES LEADERSHIP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PRODEO ACADEMY CHARTER SCHOOL #4213 ↗
- Who funds Normandale Community College Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds The Banyan Foundation ↗
- Who funds HIGH TECH KIDS ↗
- Who funds 360 Communities ↗
- Who funds PILLSBURY UNITED COMMUNITIES ↗
- Who funds VOLUNTEERS OF AMERICA VOLUNTEERS OF AMERICA - MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds SCIENCE BUDDIES ↗
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 · The Walser Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · The Richard M Schulze Family Foundation · The Sheltering Arms Foundation · The Sauer Family Foundation · Hb Fuller Company Foundation · Xcel Energy Foundation · Greater Twin Cities United Way · Ch Robinson Worldwide Foundation · Mightycause Charitable 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 Donaldson 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 Donaldson Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Donaldson 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.