· Private foundation
Lerner Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k28 grants · $45k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $31k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| MINNEAPOLIS JEWISH FEDERATION | $20,000 |
| JEWISH FAMILY AND CHILDREN'S SERVICES | $11,000 |
| BOOKS FOR AFRICA | $5,500 |
| SHANTI BHAVEN CHILDREN'S PROJECT | $5,000 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAGEN DAVID ADOM | $5,000 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF ALYN HOSPITAL | $5,000 |
| ADATH JESHURUN CONGREGATION | $3,898 |
| THE FRIENDS OF THE ST PAUL PUBLIC LIBRARY | $2,500 |
| HIGHLIGHTS FOUNDATION | $2,250 |
| WISHES AND MORE | $2,200 |
| AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE | $2,000 |
| TEMPLE ISRAEL | $1,956 |
| PAGE EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $1,500 |
| ASSOCIATION OF JEWISH LIBRARIES | $1,500 |
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 (FY19–24, $58k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 79% 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.
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 +25% for the ones you funded once.
51 repeat relationships — 27 still active in FY2024, 24 since wound down; 3 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, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA FOUNDATION5× · 2020–2024 · $161k · revenue +137%
- JFJEWISH FAMILY AND CHILDREN'S SERVICE OF MINNEAPOLIS4× · 2019–2024 · $46k · revenue +85%
- HAHAROLD AND MICKEY SMITH JEWISH ACADEMY5× · 2019–2023 · $33k · revenue +162%
Funded once
- HCHENNEPIN COUNTY LIBRARYone grant, 2023 · $10k
- UOUNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA LPG TRAVEL FUNDone grant, 2019 · $5k
- MLMINNESOTA LIBRARY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2019 · $5k
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.
To be the leading voice of medicine to make minnesota the healthiest state and the best place to practice.
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…
Mitchell hamline school of law is an independent law school that advances its mission through a combination of legal education, public service, and community engagement. it is dedicated to preparing students to practice law, while also…
MCF is a vibrant philanthropic community connecting, strengthening and mobilizing the power of philanthropy to advance prosperity and equity.
The minnesota jcc foundation's sole purpose is to support the minnesota jcc.
To provide the highest level of stewardship for university donors through professional management and oversight of the university of minnesota foundation's assets by creating a focused investment environment with clarity of purpose,…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
The minnesota jcc is dedicated to strengthening our community by providing inclusive programs that inspire personal growth, foster connection, and promote well-being through arts, culture, education, fitness, early childhood, day camp and…
Mcad provides a transformative education within a community of support for creative students of all backgrounds to work, collaborate, and lead with confidence in a dynamic, interconnected world.
Led by minnesota state university students, we are the inclusive voice for all future, current, and former students. we actively work to represent and support minnesota state university students and advocate at a campus, state, and federal…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Minneapolis Jewish Federation and the most unlike its peers is Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. 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 46 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
60 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. 60 of the 97 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 UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MINNEAPOLIS JEWISH FEDERATION ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY AND CHILDREN'S SERVICE OF MINNEAPOLIS ↗
- Who funds HAROLD AND MICKEY SMITH JEWISH ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds BOOKS FOR AFRICA INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COMMUNITY RELATIONS COUNCIL OF MINNESOTA AND THE DAKOTAS ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE HAMLINE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds WISHES & MORE ↗
- Who funds THE FRIENDS OF THE SAINT PAUL PUBLIC LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds HIGHLIGHTS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds PAGE EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF ALYN HOSPITALINC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAGEN DAVID ADOM ↗
- Who funds SHANTI BHAVAN CHILDREN'S PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds MACALESTER COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds MILKWEED EDITIONS INC ↗
- Who funds Boston Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA CENTER FOR BOOK ARTS ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF HEBREW UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds SECOND HARVEST HEARTLAND ↗
- Who funds ANDERSON CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BALLET WORKS INC ↗
- Who funds THE ASSOCIATION OF JEWISH LIBRARIES INC ↗
- Who funds HERZL CAMP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HILLEL THE FOUNDATION FOR JEWISH CAMPUS LIFE ↗
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 · Otto Bremer Trust · Xcel Energy Foundation · Pohlad Family Foundation · The McKnight Foundation · The Richard M Schulze Family Foundation · The K Foundation · Minnesota Community Foundation · Ch Robinson Worldwide Foundation · United Way Worldwide
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 Lerner 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.
- The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art Inc — 4% of income from government
- Boston Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
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 Lerner Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Lerner 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.