· Public charity
Head of the Lakes United Way
HEAD OF THE LAKES UNITED WAY's (hluw) mission is to unite caring people and mobilize resources to empower individuals and strenghten communities.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k5 grants · $40k
- $10k–50k28 grants · $564k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HUMAN DEVELOPMENT CENTER | $47,928 |
| FAMILY FREEDOM CENTER | $38,553 |
| FAMILY RISE TOGETHER | $35,996 |
| LIFE HOUSE | $35,110 |
| MENTOR NORTH | $34,186 |
| LEGAL AID SERVICE OF NORTHEAST MINNESOTA | $28,767 |
| DULUTH COMMUNITY SCHOOLS COLLABORATIVE | $26,997 |
| THE SALVATION ARMY | $20,013 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE NORTHLAND | $19,863 |
| SOAR CAREER SOLUTIONS | $19,768 |
| WELCH CENTER INC DBA VALLEY YOUTH CENTER | $18,932 |
| CENTER AGAINST SEXUAL & DOMESTIC ABUSE (CASDA) | $17,472 |
| FIRST WITNESS CHILD ADVOCACY CENTER | $16,719 |
| CHUM | $16,178 |
| SECOND HARVEST NORTHERN LAKES FOOD BANK | $16,050 |
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 (FY17–25, $1.7M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, 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.
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 +46% since the first grant, against +1% for the ones you funded once.
49 repeat relationships — 31 still active in FY2025, 18 since wound down; 1 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $13k 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
- LHLIFE HOUSE INC9× · 2017–2025 · $599k · revenue +42%
- MNMENTOR NORTH8× · 2018–2025 · $435k · revenue +26% · 29% of their budget
- BCBOYS' CLUB OF DULUTH9× · 2017–2025 · $432k · revenue +10%
Funded once
- DADULUTH-SUPERIOR AREA EDUCATIONAL TELEVISION CORPORATIONone grant, 2023 · $18k · revenue +1%
- CCCHALLENGE CENTER INCone grant, 2017 · $11k · revenue +8%
- TSTHE SALVATION ARMYone grant, 2018 · $6k
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.
Providing direct and indirect services in the areas of mental health, developmental disabilites, and substance use to residents of aitkin, cass, crow wing, morrison, todd, and wadena counties.
At Catholic Charities, we focus our efforts around three core pillars: Food Access, Mental Health and Housing. Guided by our mission - to serve and enhance human dignity for all people - we provide essential services and foster a sense of…
Enhancing the lives of people with disabilities by providing innovative services that promote inclusion and self-determination.
Family Pathways works alongside people to enhance lives through a continuum of essential services and, together with community, champions positive social change.
Touchstone mental health provides innovative, person-centered services that foster hope, health and well-being. we envision a world where all people whose lives are affected by mental illness will flourish with effective treatment, quality…
Radias health is a non-profit mental health & substance use disorders services organization customizing community based services through the integration of knowledge, compassion, and collaboration. we are committed to being an inclusive,…
Lake county developmental achievement center, inc. (dac) is a licensed non-profit provider of employment and day support services for adults over 18 years of age and who are diagnosed with intellectual and developmental disabilities. our…
The mission of cornerhouse is to partner with families, communities, and systems - entrusted with the safety of children, youth and vulnerable adults - to reduce trauma and end abuse.
Improving access to and the effectiveness of services through facilitation and coordination of community services and provision of information and referral services.
Strengthen central mn communities through leadership in workforce excellence.
To provide financing that will help people of lower income find, purchase, and fix their homes, for both single family homes as well as rental housing situations.
Lifeworks' mission is to partner with people with disabilities to drive change by increasing opportunity and access in the community.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Life House Inc and the most unlike its peers is Just Kids Dental Inc. 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 42 years old; the field is 27. 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 — 2% 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.
46 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. 46 of the 54 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 LIFE HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds MENTOR NORTH ↗
- Who funds BOYS' CLUB OF DULUTH ↗
- Who funds HUMAN DEVELOPMENT CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID SERVICE OF NORTHEASTERN MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds DAMIANO OF DULUTH INC ↗
- Who funds LAKE SUPERIOR COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER ↗
- Who funds CHURCHES UNITED IN MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF DULUTH ↗
- Who funds SOAR CAREER SOLUTIONS ↗
- Who funds DULUTH AREA FAMILY YMCA ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICE OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds DULUTH COMMUNITY SCHOOL COLLABORATIVE ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY ACTION DULUTH INC ↗
- Who funds THE HILLS YOUTH AND FAMILY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds SAFE HAVEN SHELTER FOR BATTERED WOMEN ↗
- Who funds MEN AS PEACEMAKERS ↗
- Who funds CENTER AGAINST SEXUAL AND DOMESTIC ABUSE ↗
- Who funds CENTER CITY HOUSING CORP ↗
- Who funds Second Harvest Northland ↗
- Who funds Family Freedom Center ↗
- Who funds Rise Together Inc ↗
- Who funds JUST KIDS DENTAL INC ↗
- Who funds THE BRICK MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds ARC NORTHLAND ↗
- Who funds SUPERIOR VOCATIONS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY PARTNERS-TWO HARBORS LIVING AT HOME BLOCK NURSE PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds POSITIVE ENERGY FOR YOUTH ↗
- Who funds FIRST WITNESS CHILD ADVOCACY CENTER ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN INDIAN COMMUNITY HOUSING ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK CHILDREN AND FAMILIES COLLABORATIVE ↗
- Who funds NORTH SHORE AREA PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds COURAGE KENNY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TRUE NORTH GOODWILL NORTHERN MINNESOTA AND NORTHWESTERN WISCONSIN ↗
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: Duluth-Superior Area Community Foundation · Northland Foundation · Smdc Medical Center · Ordean Foundation · Lloyd K Johnson Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · Minnesota Power Foundation · Second Harvest Northland · Mardag Foundation · Medica Foundation · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Pachel 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 Head of the Lakes United Way 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.