· Public charity
Minnesota Justice Foundation
The MINNESOTA JUSTICE FOUNDATION creates opportunities for law students to engage in public interest and pro bono legal service and increases the capacity of legal organizations that serve the public interest.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 11 grants below total $85,200 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $97,584 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $12,384 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 · FY2025
- Under $10k9 grants · $59k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $27k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SOUTHERN MINNESOTA REGIONAL LEGAL | $13,300 |
| MID-MINNESOTA LEGAL AID | $13,300 |
| LEGAL SERVICES OF NORTHWEST | $6,900 |
| ANISHINABE LEGAL SERVICES | $6,900 |
| LEGAL ASSISTANCE OF DAKOTA COUNTY | $6,400 |
| MINNESOTA LAND TRUST | $6,400 |
| CHILDREN'S LAW CENTER OF MINNESOTA | $6,400 |
| CENTRAL MINNESOTA LEGAL SERVICES | $6,400 |
| LEGAL RIGHTS CENTER INC | $6,400 |
| IMMIGRATION LAW CENTER OF MINNESOTA | $6,400 |
| INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF | $6,400 |
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 (FY23–25, $19k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, 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 +59% since the first grant, against +45% for the ones you funded once.
19 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6k 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
- SMSOUTHERN MN REGIONAL LEGAL SERVICES INC8× · 2017–2025 · $149k · revenue +104%
- MLMID-MINNESOTA LEGAL ASSISTANCE8× · 2017–2025 · $133k · revenue +71%
- ILIMMIGRANT LAW CENTER OF MINNESOTA INC7× · 2019–2025 · $49k · revenue +190%
Funded once
- CUCLEAN UP THE RIVER ENVIRONMENTone grant, 2024 · $6k · revenue 0%
- TTUBMANgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $6k · revenue +38%
- COCOUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS MINNESOTAgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $6k · revenue +63%
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.
Legal aid of manasota provides legal services at no or low cost to those in need by partnering with local lawyers.
Volunteer lawyers network protects and promotes the basic human needs of people in poverty through the power of legal volunteers.
To be a public law firm that knows, as well as understands, the problems of even the poorest in our communities and addresses these problems through education, and with creative legal advocacy of the highest distinction. LSNM will be seen…
To promote equal access to justice and improve the lives of low-income clients through quality legal assistance
Standing with our neighbors, Lakeshore Legal Aid fights poverty and injustice through advocacy and by providing meaningful and dignified access to the legal system.
To provide pro bono civil legal services to income eligible individuals in northeastern minnesota.
Our team compassionately and respectfully addresses the legal needs of vulnerable populations to provide timely access to justice empowering our community with education and knowledge.
Linn County Advocate, Inc., provides quality legal representation for indigent clients in criminal and juvenile cases at the state court level in Linn, Johnson, Benton, and Jones Counties in the state of Iowa.
Legal representation on behalf of participants in any civil or criminal action brought against him or her arising from any act or omission of the participant within the scope of his or her employment. legal representation in any minnesota…
A legal self help center, the legal assistance center works to educate, empower, and equip the people of our community to face and resolve legal challenges, to assure access to justice, and to thereby enhance individual, family, and…
To advance the success of women attorneys and strive for a just society.
To ensure that all people and communities have the power and resources to make sexual and reproductive health decisions with self-determination.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Mid-Minnesota Legal Assistance and the most unlike its peers is Tubman. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 49 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
21 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. 21 of the 26 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 SOUTHERN MN REGIONAL LEGAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds MID-MINNESOTA LEGAL ASSISTANCE ↗
- Who funds IMMIGRANT LAW CENTER OF MINNESOTA INC ↗
- Who funds ANISHINABE LEGAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL MINNESOTA LEGAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds LEGAL ASSISTANCE OF DAKOTA COUNTY LTD ↗
- Who funds LEGAL SERVICES OF NORTHWEST MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S LAW CENTER OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCACY ↗
- Who funds LEGAL RIGHTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORHOOD JUSTICE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID SERVICE OF NORTHEASTERN MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds RAINBOW HEALTH INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds BATTERED WOMEN'S LEGAL ADVOCACY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds CLEAN UP THE RIVER ENVIRONMENT ↗
- Who funds TUBMAN ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds LEGAL ASSISTANCE OF OLMSTED COUNTY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF MINNESOTA FOUNDATION ↗
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: Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · The Minneapolis Foundation · Minnesota State Bar Foundation · Fredrikson & Byron Foundation · Mightycause Charitable Foundation · The McKnight Foundation · Robins Kaplan Foundation · Fr Bigelow Foundation · Pohlad Family Foundation · Equal Justice Works · 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 Minnesota Justice 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.