· Private foundation
Mortenson Family 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 $10k103 grants · $442k
- $10k–50k122 grants · $3.1M
- $50k–250k36 grants · $2.4M
- $250k+1 grant · $250k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HAWAIIAN ISLANDS LAND TRUST (DBA HAWAII LAND TRUST) | $250,000 |
| REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO | $200,000 |
| NORTHSIDE ACHIEVEMENT ZONE | $100,000 |
| THE MUSEUM OF RUSSIAN ART | $100,000 |
| WORLD SAVVY | $100,000 |
| ALLINA HEALTH FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| SCHWARZ AFRICA FUND | $100,000 |
| EASTERN CONGO INITIATIVE (AKA ASILI) | $90,000 |
| WAY TO GROW | $75,000 |
| PEOPLE SERVING PEOPLE | $75,000 |
| MONTESSORI AMERICAN INDIAN CHILDCARE CENTER INCORPORATED | $75,000 |
| THOUSAND CURRENTS | $75,000 |
| MINNESOTA EDUCATION EQUITY PARTNERSHIP | $65,000 |
| WAKAN TIPI AWANYANKAPI (FKA LOWER PHALEN CREEK PROJECT) | $60,000 |
| ONE VILLAGE PARTNERS | $60,000 |
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 (FY19–24, $4.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 97% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 7% of Mortenson Family Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 84% of the giving stays in MN; read by stated purpose it is 79% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +21% since the first grant, against +9% for the ones you funded once.
231 repeat relationships — 153 still active in FY2024, 78 since wound down; 40 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, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $822k 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 FOUNDATION6× · 2019–2024 · $7.6M · revenue +111%
- WSWorld Savvy6× · 2019–2024 · $1.1M · revenue +135% · 29% of their budget
- NANORTHSIDE ACHIEVEMENT ZONE6× · 2019–2024 · $816k · revenue +88%
Funded once
- TUTASKS UNLIMITEDone grant, 2021 · $100k
- NHNEIGHBORHOOD HEALTHSOURCEone grant, 2023 · $80k · revenue +6%
HONOR THE EARTHone grant, 2022 · $73k · revenue -17%
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 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…
Minnesota Voice is a collaboration of organizations working toward permanent change in social, racial, and economic justice by increasing civic engagement and voter participation across the state.
The Minnesota Council of Nonprofits informs, promotes, connects and strengthens individual nonprofits and the nonprofit sector.
Move minnesota leads the movement for an equitable and sustainable transportation system that puts people first. we are passionate about connecting communities, ending the climate crisis, expanding access to jobs and resources, and…
United way of northeastern minnesota invests in nonprofits, programs, and collaborations that equip and empower, creating opportunities for people to thrive in our communities.
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…
Mn community measurement empowers stakeholders with meaningful information to drive improvement.
To develop and advocate for public policy that makes Minnesota's economy more prosperous and fair for all Minnesotans.
Creating powerful advocacy to enhance economic vitality in the minneapolis-st. paul region.
Mcee equips minnesotans with the economic and personal financial knowledge and skills to make informed decisions and thrive in our complex world. we fulfill our mission by teaching teachers through top quality professional development and…
MinnPost produces independent journalism to serve as a trusted guide for Minnesotans exploring the critical issues, challenges and opportunities facing our state.
To be the leading voice of medicine to make minnesota the healthiest state and the best place to practice.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Hmong American Partnership and the most unlike its peers is Northside Boxing Club Inc. 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 25 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) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
281 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. 281 of the 373 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 World Savvy ↗
- Who funds NEXUS COMMUNITY PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds NORTHSIDE ACHIEVEMENT ZONE ↗
- Who funds Coalition of Asian American Leaders ↗
- Who funds MACALESTER COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds DUNWOODY COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY ↗
- Who funds AFRICAN AMERICAN LEADERSHIP FORUM ↗
- Who funds THOUSAND CURRENTS ↗
- Who funds WAY TO GROW ↗
- Who funds ONEVILLAGE PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Banyan Foundation ↗
- Who funds AMHERST H WILDER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds The Family Partnership ↗
- Who funds FABRETTO CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MISSISSIPPI PARK CONNECTION ↗
- Who funds THE TIWAHE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Dream of Wild Health ↗
- Who funds PROJECT FOR PRIDE IN LIVING INC ↗
- Who funds Phyllis Wheatley Community Center Inc ↗
- Who funds ROOT CAPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds Guatemalan Tomorrow Fund Inc ↗
- Who funds CENTRO TYRONE GUZMAN ↗
- Who funds COMMON HOPE ↗
- Who funds THE MINNEAPOLIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF THE NORTH ↗
- Who funds URBAN ROOTS MN ↗
- Who funds CULTURAL WELLNESS CENTER ↗
- Who funds ALLINA HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA EDUCATION EQUITY PARTNERSHIP ↗
- Who funds WELLSHARE INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds SOUTHSIDE FAMILY NURTURING CENTER ↗
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: Fr Bigelow Foundation · The McKnight Foundation · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · The Minneapolis Foundation · Youthprise · Greater Twin Cities United Way · Otto Bremer Trust · Target Foundation · Pohlad Family Foundation · Propel Nonprofits · The Bush Foundation · Marbrook 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 Mortenson 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.
- Root Capital Inc — 9% of income from government
- Sandy Hook Promise Foundation — 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 Mortenson Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Mortenson 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.