· Private foundation
James and Nancy Holmgren Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
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.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k13 grants · $49k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $70k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $200k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHUM CENTER | $200,000 |
| UNION GOSPEL MISSION DULUTH | $10,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB | $10,000 |
| BEST CHRISTMAS EVER | $10,000 |
| WATER MISSION | $10,000 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $10,000 |
| FIRST WITNESS CHILD ADVOCACY CENTER | $10,000 |
| SECOND HARVEST NORTHERN LAKES FOOD | $10,000 |
| HOLY CROSS LUTHERAN | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| NORTHERN LIGHTS FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| DULUTH WOMAN'S CLUB | $5,000 |
| LIFE HOUSE DULUTH | $5,000 |
| FAMILY FREEDOM CENTER | $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 (FY17–24, $543k) 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 +42% since the first grant, against +24% for the ones you funded once.
34 repeat relationships — 19 still active in FY2024, 15 since wound down; 2 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- LSLUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICE OF MINNESOTA4× · 2020–2023 · $500k · revenue +42%
- DCDUNWOODY COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY2× · 2017–2018 · $108k · revenue +56%
- LHLIFE HOUSE INC2× · 2017–2018 · $105k · revenue +42%
Funded once
- VMVETERANS MEMORIAL PARKone grant, 2023 · $95k · revenue -98%
- ALAMYOTROPHIC LATERAL SCLEROSIS ASSNgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $40k · revenue +72%
- TKTHE KITCHI GAMMI CLUB FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $10k · revenue +39%
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.
The duluth library foundation champions the duluth public library and works to increase its capacity to serve the region.
Promote health through skiing
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.
Duluth community school collaborative promotes wellbeing and success for duluth public schools students and families by co-creating, celebrating, and mobilizing for equitable educational experiences.
Enhancing the lives of people with disabilities by providing innovative services that promote inclusion and self-determination.
Promote safety and economic development in downtown duluth, mn.
Enhancing and strengthening our community and our regional core.
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…
Engaging the community to end hunger
Pinewood - duluth, inc. is a day support services agency providing pre-vocational and vocational services for persons having intellectual and developmental disabilities who are eighteen (18) years of age and older. persons attending…
The northland foundation supports northeastern minnesota people and communities working toward a future where everyone feels they belong and can thrive.
To love, serve, and support the women, children and families in our community before, during and after pregnancy, reaching the most vulnerable and in need. by providing self-sufficiency training and education to pregnant women and new…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Neighborhood Youth Services Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Depot Foundation. 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 8% 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.
32 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. 32 of the 61 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 LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICE OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds DUNWOODY COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY ↗
- Who funds LIFE HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds VETERANS MEMORIAL PARK ↗
- Who funds AMYOTROPHIC LATERAL SCLEROSIS ASSN ↗
- Who funds FIRST WITNESS CHILD ADVOCACY CENTER ↗
- Who funds WATER MISSIONS INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA MASONIC CHILDREN'S CLINIC FOR COMMUNICATION DISORDERS ↗
- Who funds BEST CHRISTMAS EVER INC ↗
- Who funds THE MARSHALL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Second Harvest Northland ↗
- Who funds Northern Lights Foundation ↗
- Who funds KIDS CLOSET OF DULUTH ↗
- Who funds Family Freedom Center ↗
- Who funds THE KITCHI GAMMI CLUB FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DULUTH WOMAN'S CLUB ↗
- Who funds UNION GOSPEL MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds Together For Life Northland ↗
- Who funds Two Harbors Area Food Shelf ↗
- Who funds LIGHTHOUSE CENTER FOR VITAL LIVING ↗
- Who funds DULUTH HARBOR RESCUE MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds SAFE HAVEN SHELTER FOR BATTERED WOMEN ↗
- Who funds DAMIANO OF DULUTH INC ↗
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 · Lloyd K Johnson Foundation · Northland Foundation · Ordean Foundation · Minnesota Power Foundation · Smdc Medical Center · Head of the Lakes United Way · Edina Realty Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · Mardag Foundation · Pachel 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 James and Nancy Holmgren 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.