· Public charity
Northland Foundation
The NORTHLAND FOUNDATION supports northeastern minnesota people and communities working toward a future where everyone feels they belong and can thrive.
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 122 grants below total $4,950,607 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $5,624,213 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $673,606 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
- $10k–50k96 grants · $2.4M
- $50k–250k24 grants · $1.5M
- $250k+2 grants · $1.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DEPOT ON CENTRAL LLC | $750,000 |
| THE NORTHSPAN GROUP INC | $300,000 |
| ELY HARDWARE | $199,000 |
| ROOTS AND WINGS EARLY LEARNING CENTER LLC | $100,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF THE NORTHLAND | $100,000 |
| YWCA OF DULUTH | $85,000 |
| FOND DU LAC BAND OF LAKE SUPERIOR CHIPPEWA | $75,000 |
| NORTH ST LOUIS COUNTY HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $70,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF NORTHEASTERN MINNESOTA | $55,000 |
| SMART NORTH | $50,749 |
| BEAU WALSH DESIGN LLC | $50,000 |
| BOIS FORTE BAND OF CHIPPEWA | $50,000 |
| MR LARSON LLC | $50,000 |
| TAMARACK LEARNING CENTER CHILD CARE INC | $50,000 |
| CARE WITH AMANDA LLC | $50,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $4.2M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 85% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of Northland 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, 100% of the giving stays in MN; read by stated purpose it is 85% — 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 +36% since the first grant, against +4% for the ones you funded once.
200 repeat relationships — 72 still active in FY2025, 128 since wound down; 50 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, 53% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2.3M 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
- NGNORTHSPAN GROUP INC4× · 2021–2025 · $580k · revenue +124%
- CUCHURCHES UNITED IN MINISTRY9× · 2017–2025 · $542k · revenue +246%
- BCBOYS' CLUB OF DULUTH8× · 2017–2025 · $407k · revenue +10%
Funded once
- MGMJ GUNFLINT PROPERTIES LLC 1one grant, 2024 · $199k
- C1CCREF 11 1ST AVE W LLCone grant, 2023 · $199k
- MLMAIN LIVING LLCone grant, 2024 · $195k
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 promote and protect the rights of people with disabilities and their families while supporting inclusion and participation in the community throughout their lifetime.
Providing direct and indirect services in the areas of mental health, developmental disabilites, and substance use to residents of aitkin, cass, crow wing, morrison, todd, and wadena counties.
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.
Improving access to and the effectiveness of services through facilitation and coordination of community services and provision of information and referral services.
To provide learning opportunities, values, and encouragement to children & parents through our early childhood proagram. we serve infants through school-age children in a full day, year round program. our facility uses creative and…
Our mission is to enhance the quality of life of children who have experienced abuse or neglect, strengthen families and prevent childhood maltreatment, by providing timely crucial support that meets the basic needs of local families and…
To improve access to quality health care for all.
Our mission is to stimulate a focusing of all available resources upon the goal of enabling area low-income families and individuals of all ages to attain skills, knowledge, and motivations, and secure the opportunities needed for them to…
The Minnesota Leadership Council on Aging is uniting leaders to advance equitable opportunities for all Minnesotans as we age.
Promote health through skiing
Arrowhead library system enhances the value of all types of libraries to their communities by cultivating collaboration, technological innovation, and professional development; and enriches the quality of life by providing direct services…
Touchstone mental health provides innovative, person-centered services that foster hope, health and well-being. we envision a world where all people whose lives are affected by mental illness will flourish with effective treatment, quality…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is North Shore Horizons Inc and the most unlike its peers is C K Blandin Foundation. 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 32 years old; the field is 27. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 16% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.8% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
199 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. 199 of the 878 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 NORTHSPAN GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds CHURCHES UNITED IN MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds BOYS' CLUB OF DULUTH ↗
- Who funds ELDERCIRCLE ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN INDIAN COMMUNITY HOUSING ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds Something Cool Inc ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY PARTNERS-TWO HARBORS LIVING AT HOME BLOCK NURSE PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds NORTH SHORE AREA PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds LIFE HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF NE MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICE OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds LOCAL INITIATIVES SUPPORT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds AITKIN COUNTY CARE INC ↗
- Who funds ONE ROOF COMMUNITY HOUSING ↗
- Who funds ARROWHEAD ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY AGENCY INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds POLAR CUBS CHILDCARE CENTER ↗
- Who funds Family Freedom Center ↗
- Who funds KOOCHICHING AGING OPTIONS ↗
- Who funds SECOND HARVEST NORTH CENTRAL FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds KOOCHICHING COUNTY FOOD ACCESS ↗
- Who funds MEN AS PEACEMAKERS ↗
- Who funds YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF DULUTH ↗
- Who funds DULUTH AREA FAMILY YMCA ↗
- Who funds Care Partners of Cook County ↗
- Who funds ADVOCATES AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE ↗
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: Duluth-Superior Area Community Foundation · Lloyd K Johnson Foundation · Smdc Medical Center · Minnesota Power Foundation · Ordean Foundation · Duluth 1200 Fund Inc · Head of the Lakes United Way · C K Blandin Foundation · Mardag Foundation · United Way of Ne Minnesota · Pachel Foundation · Second Harvest Northland
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 Northland 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.