How much does Minnesota Historical Society give?

Minnesota Historical Society reported 180 grants totaling $7,620,941 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 152 and 213 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does Minnesota Historical Society fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Arts & Culture (67%), Education (8%), Environment (5%).

Who are Minnesota Historical Society's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: University of Minnesota ($2.3M), Science Museum of Minnesota ($915k), Sacred Heart Area Historical Society ($895k).

Does Minnesota Historical Society fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 16% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Which funders back the same organizations as Minnesota Historical Society?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Minnesota Humanities Center, Minnesota Community Foundation, Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation.

Where is Minnesota Historical Society based?

Minnesota Historical Society is based in MN.

Minnesota Historical Society

Minnesota Historical Society at a glance Mostly funded, not a grantmaker: see who funds it →

· Public charity

Minnesota Historical Society

The Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) is a non-profit educational and cultural institution established in 1849.

$7.6M

Granted FY2025still arriving

180

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$273k

Largest

01What it funds

01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Arts & Culture$39MEducation$4.5MEnvironment$2.9MReligion$2.6MHousing & Shelter$1.8MCommunity Improvement$1.8MCrime & Legal$1.0MRecreation & Sports$857kOther$0

02FY2025 · 180 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k39 grants · $338k
$10k–50k89 grants · $2.0M
$50k–250k51 grants · $5.0M
$250k+1 grant · $273k

$22,500

Median grant

States reached

$349M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
FRIENDS OF LINDEN HILL INC	$272,500
CITY OF HACKENSACK	$244,761
CITY OF BROWNS VALLEY	$207,744
BROWN COUNTY	$198,093
RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY	$194,605
PRESERVE APPLETON'S HERITAGE	$186,276
GERMANIC AMERICAN INSTITUTE	$164,500
CITY OF SANDSTONE	$159,209
LOWER PHALEN CREEK PROJECT	$140,018
REGENTS UNIVERSITY OF MN	$133,022
DAKOTA COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY	$129,721
DODGE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY	$128,387
MN STATE UNIVERSITY MANKATO	$122,320
LAKE OF THE WOODS COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY	$119,640
TOWER SOUDAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY	$119,475

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its human-services grants (FY17–25, $511k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 98% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

Where the work is directed

The same grants placed two ways: where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose sends the money.

About 9% of Minnesota Historical Society’s grant dollars are earmarked for a different county than the recipient’s own address. By recipient address, 100% of the giving stays in MN; by stated purpose, 87%.

Minnesota Historical Societylessmore of its giving

Placed by recipient address · 5.6% directed abroad (not shown)

How this is measured

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 funder’s own 990 grant descriptions.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

94%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$54M · 357 repeat orgs$3.6M to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +27% since the first grant, against +4% for those funded once.

357 repeat relationships: 133 still active in FY2025, 224 since wound down; 47 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

357

228

Total granted

$54M

$2.7M

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+27%

+4%

Still filing today

48%

40%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $984k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

Arts & CultureEducationHuman ServicesCommunity ImprovementEnvironmentRecreation & SportsOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

SM
SCIENCE MUSEUM OF MINNESOTA
9× · 2017–2025 · $915k · revenue +7%
OC
OLMSTED COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
8× · 2018–2025 · $623k · revenue +66%
WC
WINONA COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
9× · 2017–2025 · $573k · revenue +155%

Funded once

WC
Waseca County
one grant, 2019 · $105k
ST
Sylvan Township
one grant, 2022 · $65k
CO
CITY OF ROCKFORD
one grant, 2017 · $49k

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Wasco Co Historical Museum

Arts & Culture

Markesan Historical Society

—

Lake County Historical Society

Historical museum

—

Bureau County Historical Society

—

Minnesota Historical Society

The Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) is a non-profit educational and cultural institution established in 1849. MNHS collects, preserves, and tells the story of Minnesota's past through museum exhibits, libraries and collections,…

Arts & Culture

Chisago County Historical Society

To discover, preserve, and share the history and hertiage of chisago county, minnesota.

—

Muskegon Heritage Association

Maintain historical museum

—

Dawson County Historical Society

Operation of Historical Museum for the collection, preparation and display of artifacts from Dawson County Nebraska and disseminate and educate the public about Dawson County and it's historical treasures.

Arts & Culture

North Manchester Historical Society

Operate a museum and put on programs about history.

—

Union County Historical Society

Preservation of union county iowa hisorical information and artifacts.

—

Manistee County Historical Society Inc

To educate the public on the history of Manistee County

—

Koochiching County Historical Society

Ccollect, preserve, interprete and disseminate the history of koochiching county and the state of minnesota

—

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Olmsted County Historical Society; the most unlike its peers is Bill and Bonnie Daniels Firefighter. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

05the grantee network

302 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2026, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 302 of the 634 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

287/302

Grantees still filing

188/302

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$32,109,110Arts & Culture$14,542,924Education$1,611,288Public Benefit$461,868Environment$267,998Employment$238,360Health$192,500

Showing the 200 largest grantees by grant value.

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Minnesota Humanities CenterMN72.8× affinity42 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Minnesota Humanities Center · Minnesota Community Foundation · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · C K Blandin Foundation · Fr Bigelow Foundation · The McKnight Foundation · Hardenbergh Foundation · Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation · Mardag Foundation · The Minneapolis Foundation · Propel Nonprofits · Youthprise

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Minnesota Historical Society funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Minnesota Historical Society. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

0get no government money at all

55report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–90%

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

Play a game based on Minnesota Historical Society’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home