· Private foundation
Lenzmeier Family 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
- $10k–50k8 grants · $198k
- $50k–250k12 grants · $1.2M
- $250k+2 grants · $558k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF THE TWIN CITIES | $308,000 |
| MINNESOTA ORCHESTRA | $250,000 |
| PACER CENTER INC | $175,000 |
| MINNEAPOLIS PARKS FOUNDATION | $132,500 |
| NORTHSIDE ACHIEVEMENT ZONE | $125,000 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF ST PAUL & MPLS | $105,000 |
| ASCENSION CATHOLIC SCHOOL | $100,000 |
| GUTHRIE THEATER FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| MACPHAIL CENTER FOR MUSIC | $100,000 |
| THE WOMAN'S CLUB OF MINNEAPOLIS | $100,000 |
| THE ADVOCATES FOR HUMAN RIGHTS | $70,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,000 |
| PLYMOUTH CHRISTIAN YOUTH | $50,000 |
| MICROGRANTS | $50,000 |
| MINNESOTA STATE UNIVERSITY MANKATO FOUNDATION | $36,000 |
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, $847k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 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 +41% since the first grant, against +5% for the ones you funded once.
23 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2024, 5 since wound down; 4 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $225k 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 CLUBS OF THE TWIN CITIES6× · 2017–2024 · $1.7M · revenue +42%
- TAThe Advocates For Human Rights6× · 2017–2024 · $385k · revenue +192%
- MCMACPHAIL CENTER FOR MUSIC3× · 2022–2024 · $300k · revenue +23%
Funded once
- SHSIMPSON HOUSING SERVICES INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $250k · revenue +87%
- MPMINNESOTA PUBLIC RADIO AMERICAN PUBLIC MEDIAone grant, 2017 · $200k · revenue +5%
- TCTwin Cities Riseone grant, 2020 · $155k · revenue +3%
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.
MCF is a vibrant philanthropic community connecting, strengthening and mobilizing the power of philanthropy to advance prosperity and equity.
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…
Women's Foundation of Minnesota is a statewide community foundation investing in ending systemic inequities and driving innovation for gender and racial justice. WFM applies an Intersectional Equity Framework inclusive of gender, race,…
To be the leading voice of medicine to make minnesota the healthiest state and the best place to practice.
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…
MinnPost produces independent journalism to serve as a trusted guide for Minnesotans exploring the critical issues, challenges and opportunities facing our state.
Mity's mission is to inspire and challenge intellectually curious students to pursue their passions within a diverse, inclusive community and empower them by building skills and relationships for lifelong success.
The Minnesota Council of Nonprofits informs, promotes, connects and strengthens individual nonprofits and the nonprofit sector.
To create an extraordinary downtown minneapolis, applying the core values of leadership, collaboration, advocacy and innovation.
To advance the success of women attorneys and strive for a just society.
Arts Midwest works collaboratively with private and public arts supporters to support, inform, and celebrate arts organizations and creative communities across the Midwest. Our mission is to build unprecedented opportunity across the…
Minnesota fringe connects adventurous artists with adventurous audiences by creating open, supportive forums for free and diverse artistic expression.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Minnesota Orchestral Association and the most unlike its peers is The Advocates for Human Rights. 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 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% 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 14% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 40 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 BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF THE TWIN CITIES ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA ORCHESTRAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds NORTHSIDE ACHIEVEMENT ZONE ↗
- Who funds Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis ↗
- Who funds PACER CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds The Advocates For Human Rights ↗
- Who funds GUTHRIE THEATER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MILKWEED EDITIONS INC ↗
- Who funds MACPHAIL CENTER FOR MUSIC ↗
- Who funds Washburn Center for Children ↗
- Who funds Minneapolis Parks Foundation ↗
- Who funds SIMPSON HOUSING SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA PUBLIC RADIO AMERICAN PUBLIC MEDIA ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA STATE UNIVERSITY MANKATO FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Twin Cities Rise ↗
- Who funds OPEN ARMS OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds ALIGHT ↗
- Who funds NORTH HOUSE FOLK SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE PLAYWRIGHTS' CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds ALIVENESS PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds THE WOMAN'S CLUB OF MINNEAPOLIS ↗
- Who funds The Fistula Foundation ↗
- Who funds The Constellation Fund ↗
- Who funds NORTHEASTERN MINNESOTANS FOR WILDERNESS ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds MICROGRANTS ↗
- Who funds GREEN CITIES ACCORD ↗
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 Minneapolis Foundation · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Mightycause Charitable Foundation · The McKnight Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · The Richard M Schulze Family Foundation · Lenfestey Family Foundation Inc · Opus Foundation · Target Foundation · Greater Twin Cities United Way · Charities Aid Foundation America · Margaret a Cargill 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 Lenzmeier Family 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Lenzmeier Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Lenzmeier Family Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.