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Mwe Scholarship Fund at a glance

· Private foundation

Mwe Scholarship Fund

Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$365k
Granted FY2025still arriving
12
Grants FY2025still arriving
4
States reached
$175k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its granteesRead
04Its fieldRead
05Through PlinthRead
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.

Education$3.0MRecreation & Sports$8kFood & Nutrition$8kHuman Services$4k
02FY2025 · 12 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

  • Under $10k3 grants · $20k
  • $10k–50k7 grants · $91k
  • $50k–250k2 grants · $255k
$12,463
Median grant
4
States reached
$7.9M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA$175,326
NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY$79,268
MOORHEAD STATE UNIVERSITY$17,658
IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY$13,188
NORTHLAND COMMUNITY AND TECHNICAL COLLEGE$13,113
NORTHERN STATE UNIVERSITY$12,463
ST OLAF COLLEGE$12,202
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA TWIN CITIES$11,753
LAKE REGION STATE COLLEGE$10,624
CONCORDIA COLLEGE$7,941
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA MORRIS$6,140
UNIVERSITY OF JAMESTOWN$5,648
02The need
03

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:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 95% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 11%ST OLAF COLLEGE: $12k → 11%NORTHLAND COMMUNITY AND TECHNICAL COLLEGE: $37k → 11%UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: $51k → 11%MOORHEAD STATE UNIVERSITY: $18k → 11%COLORADO TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY: $11k → 9%MAYVILLE STATE UNIVERSITY: $20k → 9%UNIVERSITY OF JAMESTOWN: $21k → 11%LAKE REGION STATE COLLEGE: $11k → 13%UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA: $254k → 13%NORTHERN STATE UNIVERSITY: $12k → 11%NORTHLAND COMMUNITY AND TECHNICAL COLLEGE: $27k → 11%UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: $49k → 11%MAYVILLE STATE UNIVERSITY: $20k → 9%UNIVERSITY OF JAMESTOWN: $18k → 11%UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA: $249k → 13%NORTHERN STATE UNIVERSITY: $12k → 11%NORTHLAND COMMUNITY AND TECHNICAL COLLEGE: $23k → 11%UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: $35k → 11%MAYVILLE STATE UNIVERSITY: $12k → 9%UNIVERSITY OF JAMESTOWN: $17k → 11%NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY: $79k → 12%UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA: $217k → 13%NORTHERN STATE UNIVERSITY: $11k → 11%NORTHLAND COMMUNITY AND TECHNICAL COLLEGE: $17k → 11%UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: $22k → 11%UNIVERSITY OF JAMESTOWN: $11k → 11%NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY: $48k → 12%UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA: $201k → 13%NORTHERN STATE UNIVERSITY: $11k → 11%NORTHLAND TECHNICAL COLLEGE: $15k → 11%UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA TWIN CITIES: $12k → 11%NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY: $35k → 12%UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA: $199k → 13%NORTHLAND COMMUNITY AND TECHNICAL COLLEGE: $13k → 11%UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: $11k → 11%NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY: $31k → 12%UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA: $196k → 13%NORTHLAND COMMUNITY AND TECHNICAL COLLEGE: $12k → 11%NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY: $23k → 12%UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA: $184k → 13%NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY: $22k → 12%UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA: $175k → 13%NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY: $22k → 12%UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA: $155k → 13%NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY: $17k → 12%JOSEPH'S SCHOOL OF HAIR DESIGN: $31k → 13%NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY: $13k → 12%JOSEPH'S SCHOOL OF HAIR DESIGN: $13k → 13%0%20%40%50%more need →
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.

Which US states its grants reach

ND
MN
IL
SD
IA
IN
OH
CO
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.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

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

97%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$3.0M · 21 repeat orgs$82k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +18% since the first grant, against -2% for those funded once.

21 repeat relationships: 8 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

21
5

Total granted

$3.0M
$34k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+18%
-2%

Still filing today

14%
20%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $48k went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25
RenewedFirst-time
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

  • UO
    UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA
    9× · 2017–2025 · $1.8M
  • ND
    NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY
    9× · 2017–2025 · $291k
  • UO
    UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
    7× · 2017–2024 · $179k

Funded once

  • IS
    IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF VETERINARY MEDICINE
    one grant, 2019 · $10k
  • C
    CONCORDIA
    one grant, 2017 · $8k
  • RC
    RASMUSSEN COLLEGE
    one grant, 2020 · $8k
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
04the grantee network

6 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

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 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 6 of the 31 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.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
0
Early backer (in before they grew)
6/6
Grantees still filing
3/6
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA: $1,829,322 · OtherUNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTANORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY: $290,779 · OtherNORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITYUNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: $178,528 · OtherUNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTANORTHLAND COMMUNITY AND TECHNICAL COLLEGE: $135,448 · Other+23 more: $512,228 · Other+23 moreUniversity of Jamestown: $72,655 · EducationST OLAF COLLEGE: $12,202 · EducationST CATHERINE UNIVERSITY: $11,629 · EducationUniversity of Notre Dame du Lac: $8,462 · Education
Other$2,946,305Education$104,948

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

25%50%75%100%$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetUniversity of Jamestown: $72,655 over 5y, 0.1% of budgetCONCORDIA COLLEGE CORPORATION: $15,882 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetST OLAF COLLEGE: $12,202 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetST CATHERINE UNIVERSITY: $11,629 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetUniversity of Notre Dame du Lac: $8,462 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetLake Region Corporation: $3,595 over 1y, 0.0% of budget
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.

  • Who funds University of Jamestown ↗
  • Who funds CONCORDIA COLLEGE CORPORATION ↗
  • Who funds ST OLAF COLLEGE ↗
  • Who funds ST CATHERINE UNIVERSITY ↗
  • Who funds University of Notre Dame du Lac ↗
  • Who funds Lake Region Corporation ↗

How much its grantees rely on government

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

2025
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%funder's share of their income ↑0%3%5%8%10%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    2report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–10%
    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.
    05Through Plinth

    Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

    How do I get to Mwe Scholarship Fund?

    Find your warmest path to Mwe Scholarship Fund 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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 31 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

    Play a game based on Mwe Scholarship’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