· Public charity
Foundation for Essential Needs
To reshape the minnesota hunger relief system so that all food shelf shoppers (clients) are provided with predictable, healthy food options in a dignified and welcoming environment.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $13k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $71k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| 360 COMMUNITIES | $37,404 |
| BASIC NEEDS INC OF S WASHINGTON COUNTY | $12,431 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES DIOCESE OF ST CLOUD | $10,966 |
| CROSS CENTER OF BENTON CO | $10,000 |
| WALKER AREA FOOD SHELF | $7,800 |
| NORTHPOINT HEALTH AND WELLNESS | $5,462 |
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 (FY21–25, $121k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 90% 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 26% of Foundation for Essential Needs’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, 100% of the giving stays in MN; read by stated purpose it is 74% — 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.
3 repeat relationships — 0 still active in FY2025, 3 since wound down; 6 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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $84k 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
- CLCLIFTON LARSON ALLEN LLP2× · 2022–2023 · $112k
- SSEMCAC4× · 2021–2024 · $91k · revenue +15%
- RWRED WING AREA FOOD SHELF2× · 2022–2023 · $75k · revenue +29%
Funded once
- UWUNITED WAY OF FREEBORN COUNTY INCone grant, 2023 · $78k · revenue -37%
- IFINCARNATION FOOD CENTERone grant, 2021 · $29k
- CPCAMDEN PROMISE FOOD SHELFone grant, 2021 · $21k
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.
Provide emergency food relief for the families in the Lonsdale MN region .
The North Scott Food Pantry provides food for people in need. Clients receive enough food for about one week and are allowed to get food every 28 days. There were 721 visits to our food pantry in 2025.
Community Food Shelf offering free food to low income area residents
Provide food for hungry individuals in martin county, mn
Receive and dispense food to needy clients
By utilizing and bringing together community resources the willmar area food shelf will provide food assistance to individuals and families. our goal is to insure no one goes hungry.
Serve fresh and frozen meals to seniors, disabled and homebound individuals in central MN. Over 60,000 meals served annually to over 400 individuals.
Provide nutritious food to our neighbors in a respectful manner while engaging our community in the fight against hunger.
Providing nutritious food to low income families and individuals in south clatsop county
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Basic Needs Inc of South Washington County and the most unlike its peers is A Place for Hope. 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 29 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) — 11% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 5% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
30 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. 30 of the 31 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 SEMCAC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF FREEBORN COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds RED WING AREA FOOD SHELF ↗
- Who funds 360 Communities ↗
- Who funds Basic Needs Inc of South Washington County ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE OF ST CLOUD ↗
- Who funds CROSS CENTER OF BENTON COUNTY ↗
- Who funds WALKER AREA FOOD SHELF INC ↗
- Who funds WELLS AREA FOOD SHELF ↗
- Who funds JOYCE UPTOWN FOODSHELF ↗
- Who funds HOMETOWN RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds LIFEGATE SERVICES ↗
- Who funds NorthPoint Health and Wellness Center Inc ↗
- Who funds AREA FOOD SHELF OF NEW RICHLAND ↗
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: Hunger Solutions Minnesota · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Channel One Inc · The Minneapolis Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · Land O'Lakes Foundation · Edina Realty Foundation · Mardag Foundation · Xcel Energy Foundation · Open Your Heart to the Hungry and Homeless · Food Group Minnesota Inc The · Minnesota Community 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 Foundation for Essential Needs 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.
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