· Public charity
Initiative Foundation
To empower people to build thriving communities and a vibrant region across central minnesota.
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.
The 214 grants below total $5,542,491 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $9,989,131 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $4,446,640 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k32 grants · $232k
- $10k–50k145 grants · $3.1M
- $50k–250k37 grants · $2.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CITY OF WADENA | $146,160 |
| CITY OF PRINCETON | $111,008 |
| UNITED COMMUNITY ACTION PARTNERSHIP INC | $75,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $75,000 |
| COMMUNITY HEALTH SERVICE INC | $75,000 |
| RELATIONSHIP SAFETY ALLIANCE | $75,000 |
| ALL NATIONS RISE | $74,000 |
| PEARL CRISIS CENTER | $73,000 |
| FRIENDS OF SHERBURNE NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE INC | $65,000 |
| OASIS CENTRAL MINNESOTA | $60,000 |
| RECOVERY COMMUNITY NETWORK | $60,000 |
| KASSON MANTORVILLE COMMUNITY EDUCATION | $50,000 |
| VIVA TOBACCO & MORE LLC | $50,000 |
| LINCOLN EVANGELICAL FREE CHURCH | $50,000 |
| LAKE CITY COMMUNITY EDUCATION WABASHA & GOODHUE COUNTIES | $50,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $1.5M) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 77% 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 10% of Initiative 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, 99% of the giving stays in MN; read by stated purpose it is 89% — 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 +49% since the first grant, against +27% for the ones you funded once.
278 repeat relationships — 54 still active in FY2024, 224 since wound down; 133 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, 26% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $4.0M 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
- UWUNITED WAY OF CENTRAL MINNESOTA8× · 2017–2024 · $518k · revenue +12%
- NWNORTHERN WATERS LAND TRUST6× · 2018–2023 · $328k · revenue +764%
- NPNew Pathways Inc6× · 2018–2024 · $197k · revenue +264%
Funded once
- NPNATIONAL PARK SERVICEone grant, 2017 · $800k
- GLGREATER LAKE SYLVIA ASSOCIATION INCone grant, 2017 · $623k · revenue -42%
- WFWILDLIFE FOREVERone grant, 2017 · $265k · revenue -2%
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.
Grow businesses, build wealth and increase reinvestement in the african communities of minnesota
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…
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…
Develop resources and opportunities which empower people and communities.
Mn community measurement empowers stakeholders with meaningful information to drive improvement.
To assist individuals and families meet their basic needs by providing resources in a healthy and caring environment. through these actions we build hope and support self-sufficiency.
To promote and protect the rights of people with disabilities and their families while supporting inclusion and participation in the community throughout their lifetime.
Creating powerful advocacy to enhance economic vitality in the minneapolis-st. paul region.
The Minnesota Council of Nonprofits informs, promotes, connects and strengthens individual nonprofits and the nonprofit sector.
Serving to improve west central minnesota through funding, programs, and technical assistance. vision of a vibrant, inclusive, and sustainable world starts here in west central minnesota.
United way of northeastern minnesota invests in nonprofits, programs, and collaborations that equip and empower, creating opportunities for people to thrive in our communities.
The association of minnesota counties is a voluntary non-partisan statewide organization that assists the state's 87 counties in providing effective county governance to the people of minnesota.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is United Way of Central Minnesota and the most unlike its peers is Happy Dancing Turtle Dba Resilient Living Council. 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 31 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.2% 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.
235 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. 235 of the 2,000 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 LAKE SYLVIA ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN WATERS LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds GREATER ST CLOUD DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds WILDLIFE FOREVER ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITYGIVING ↗
- Who funds New Pathways Inc ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF BRAINERD ↗
- Who funds LAKES & PINES COMMUNITY ACTION COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds OASIS CENTRAL MINNESOTA INC ↗
- Who funds ACTIVE CENTRAL MN ↗
- Who funds ANISHINABE LEGAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds CORNELL COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds ANDERSON CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds HOMELESS HELPING HOMELESS ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE LEECH LAKE AREA INC ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICE OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL MN RE-ENTRY PROJECT ↗
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: Communitygiving · United Way of Central Minnesota · C K Blandin Foundation · Granite Partners Foundation of Minnesota Inc · Morgan Family Foundation · Minnesota Power Foundation · Rick and Helga Bauerly Foundation · Mardag Foundation · Edina Realty Foundation · Open Your Heart to the Hungry and Homeless · Central Minnesota Arts Board · Second Harvest North Central Food Bank
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 Initiative 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.