· Private foundation
Elmer & Kaya Berg Foundation No 2
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
Read this first · the figures below need context
95% of Elmer & Kaya Berg Foundation No 2’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Fargo-Moorhead Area Foundation Corporation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 5 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2024, the last year Elmer & Kaya Berg Foundation No 2 named its own grantees at scale: 15 organizations, $201k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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 · FY2024
- Under $10k27 grants · $116k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $85k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NEXUS-PATH FAMILY HEALING | $35,000 |
| CONCORDIA COLLEGE | $30,000 |
| VILLAGE FAMILY SERVICES | $10,000 |
| SHANLEY HIGH SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| NOKOMIS CHILD CARE CENTER | $9,500 |
| CHURCHES UNITED FOR THE HOMELESS | $8,000 |
| OAK GROVE LUTHERAN SCHOOL | $7,500 |
| NEW LIFE CENTER | $7,500 |
| GREAT PLAINS FOOD BANK | $7,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $7,500 |
| SANFORD MEDICAL FOUNDATION | $7,000 |
| SMITH-LEMLI-OPITZ FOUNDATION | $6,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF DETROIT LAKES | $5,000 |
| YWCA CASS & CLAY COUNTIES | $5,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF PERHAM | $5,000 |
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, $108k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 31% of Elmer & Kaya Berg Foundation No 2’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, 88% of the giving stays in ND; read by stated purpose it is 86% — 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.
55 repeat relationships — 29 still active in FY2024, 26 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call). Read against FY2024, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $8k 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
- BABOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF DETROIT LAKES5× · 2020–2024 · $50k · revenue +60%
- GPGreat Plains Food Bank6× · 2020–2025 · $23k · revenue +14%
- POPEACE OFFICER JAIL CHAPLAINS ASSOCIATION5× · 2020–2024 · $17k · revenue +12%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $6k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $6k
- SHSMP HEALTH - ST CATHERINE NORTHone grant, 2023 · $4k
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.
Guided by our values, Catholic Charities North Dakota serves people in need and advocates for the common good of all.
Retrieve a golden of the midwest (ragom) rescues, fosters, and rehomes golden retrievers and golden mixes that can no longer remain in their current environments. the organization ensures each dog receives necessary veterinary care and…
To eliminate hunger in south dakota.
Easter Seals Goodwill ND, Inc. is a leading organization in supporting children, adults, and families to have equal opportunities to live, learn, work, and play in their communities.
Southeastern north dakota community action agency (sendcaa) was formed in 1965 to provide a range of services and activities in a six county area designed to alleviate poverty and give low-income people the opportunity to improve their…
To promote equal access to justice and improve the lives of low-income clients through quality legal assistance
The open door is a leading hunger-relief organization serving dakota county, minnesota, where food insecurity is a growing challenge. the open door is dedicated to ending local hunger by providing access to healthy, fresh, and nutritious…
NDACo provides leadership and services to foster effective and efficient government for the good of all counties.
To provide a safe, family friendly environment that promotes hope, health, and healing to traumatized children and their families.
To promote, foster, operate and maintain a fair, agricultural and livestock exposition, annually, at the red river valley fairgrounds, west fargo, cass county, north dakota
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Plains Art Museum and the most unlike its peers is Beggining Child Care Center. 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 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 — 0.0% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 65 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 FARGO-MOORHEAD AREA FOUNDATION CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds CONCORDIA COLLEGE CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds NEXUS-PATH FAMILY HEALING ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF DETROIT LAKES ↗
- Who funds Great Plains Food Bank ↗
- Who funds PEACE OFFICER JAIL CHAPLAINS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Rape and Abuse Crisis Center of Fargo-Moorhead ↗
- Who funds DLCCC INC ↗
- Who funds Lake Agassiz Habitat for Humanity ↗
- Who funds SMITH-LEMLI-OPITZ FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Red River Childrens Advocacy Center ↗
- Who funds PLAINS ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds FRASER LTD ↗
- Who funds NORTH COUNTRY FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds RED RIVER VALLEY VETERANS CONCERT BAND INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE RED RIVER VALLEY ↗
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 Barry Foundation · Fargo-Moorhead Area Foundation Corporation · Midcontinent Foundation · Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota Caring Foundation · Dakota Medical Foundation · Sanford Group Return · Offutt Family Foundation · Alex Stern Family Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · United Way of Cass-Clay · First Lutheran Church Foundation · Dakota Medical Charities
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 Elmer & Kaya Berg Foundation No 2 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.