· Public charity
Northwest Minnesota Arts Council
Support and enhance the development of the arts in northwestern minnesota.
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 36 grants below total $398,560 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $545,278 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $146,718 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 $10k19 grants · $130k
- $10k–50k17 grants · $268k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AURORA CENTER FOR THE ARTS | $41,000 |
| THIEF RIVER FALLS AREA COMMUNITY THEATER | $40,960 |
| KITTSON CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT | $22,250 |
| WARROAD SUMMER THEATER | $17,220 |
| SUMMER ARTS STAGES | $15,890 |
| FOLK SCHOOL WARROAD | $13,750 |
| EAST GRAND FORKS MUSIC BOOSTERS INC | $13,000 |
| ROSEAU COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $13,000 |
| TRI-COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT | $11,270 |
| WARROAD COMMUNITY PARTNERS | $10,000 |
| ASSOCIATIONOFTHE FRENCHOFTHENORTH | $10,000 |
| WARROAD RIVERPLACE | $10,000 |
| CITY OF FOSSTON ARTS AND CULTURE COMMISSION | $10,000 |
| CARE AND SHARE OF CROOKSTON INC | $10,000 |
| EAST GRAND FORKS CAMPELL LIBRARY | $10,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 37% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
43 repeat relationships — 22 still active in FY2025, 21 since wound down; 14 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, 74% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $102k 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
- TRTHIEF RIVER FALLS AREA COMMUNITY THEATER9× · 2017–2025 · $280k · revenue +87% · 49% of their budget
- WSWARROAD SUMMER THEATRE COMPANY4× · 2017–2020 · $40k · revenue +28% · 37% of their budget
- RCROSEAU COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY3× · 2020–2025 · $32k · revenue +62%
Funded once
- PCPOLK COUNTY AGRICULTURAL FAIR ASSOC IATIONone grant, 2021 · $12k
- SASTEPHEN ARTS COUNCILone grant, 2022 · $11k
- WCWARROAD COMMUNITY PARTNERSone grant, 2022 · $11k
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.
Administration of fond du lac county fair - fond du lac, wisconsin
Promote & hold agricultural, horticultural, young, women's, mechanical arts, industrial and commercial projects, fairs and expositions.
To provide a county fair for rural iowa
PreservePromoteMN Agriculture and Heritage with Youth and Community
The ashland county fair promotes area tourism and provides recreation for the area residents. the fair also promotes 4-h programs and allows local farmers, 4-h members, and the general public to complete projects crafting to raising…
The Nemeth Art Center is a 501(c)3 non-profit arts organization and gallery space located in rural northern Minnesota. Open in the summer months, the NAC exhibits contemporary art from emerging and recognized artists and is particularly…
Annual Jackson County Fair
Preserve History of Area
Conducting annual agricultural fair
Support of the arts
4-h/ffa fair
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Roseau County Agricultural Society Inc and the most unlike its peers is Roseau County Historical Society. 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 37 years old; the field is 32. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 10% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 4% 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.
17 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. 17 of the 88 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 THIEF RIVER FALLS AREA COMMUNITY THEATER ↗
- Who funds AURORA CENTER FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds SUMMER ARTS STAGES ↗
- Who funds WARROAD SUMMER THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds ROSEAU COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds MARSHALL COUNTY AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST MINNESOTA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CARE AND SHARE INC ↗
- Who funds Pennington County Fair Association ↗
- Who funds WIN-E-MAC ALUMNI ASSOCIATION ↗
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: Northwest Minnesota Foundation · Hartz Foundation · Minnesota Historical Society · C K Blandin Foundation · Minnesota Community Foundation · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Amazonsmile 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 Northwest Minnesota Arts Council 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.