· Private foundation
Otto Bremer Trust
Its FY2025 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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k3 grants · $13k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $207k
- $50k–250k103 grants · $13M
- $250k+65 grants · $44M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GREATER TWIN CITIES UNITED WAY | $4,200,000 |
| INITIATIVE FOUNDATION | $3,150,000 |
| GREATER MILWAUKEE FOUNDATION INC | $3,150,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF WISCONSIN | $2,100,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR THE FOX VALLEY REGION | $1,575,000 |
| MONTANA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC | $1,575,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA FOUNDATION | $1,300,000 |
| ALLINA HEALTH FOUNDATION | $1,250,000 |
| NORTH DAKOTA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $1,050,000 |
| LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICE OF MINNESOTA | $1,000,000 |
| FROEDTERT HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $1,000,000 |
| MAYO CLINIC | $1,000,000 |
| MONTANA CHILDREN'S HOME & HOSPITAL DBA SHODAIR CHILDRENS HOSPITAL | $1,000,000 |
| THE BASILICA LANDMARK | $750,000 |
| GOODWILL INDUSTRIES INC DBA GOODWILL-EASTER SEALS MINNESOTA | $750,000 |
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 (FY19–25, $39.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 84% 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 8% of Otto Bremer Trust’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.
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 +31% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
1308 repeat relationships — 119 still active in FY2025, 1189 since wound down; 27 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, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $9.8M 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 FOUNDATION7× · 2019–2025 · $11M · revenue +111%
- AHALLINA HEALTH FOUNDATION4× · 2022–2025 · $4.3M · revenue +26%
- LSLUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICE OF MINNESOTA6× · 2019–2025 · $3.1M · revenue +60%
Funded once
- ISIMPACT SEVEN INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $2.0M · revenue +26%
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTIONone grant, 2019 · $1.0M · revenue +22%- UHUNITED HOSPITAL FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $1.0M · revenue -92%
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…
Improving access to and the effectiveness of services through facilitation and coordination of community services and provision of information and referral services.
Mn community measurement empowers stakeholders with meaningful information to drive improvement.
Develop resources and opportunities which empower people and 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…
Innovative services, inc. (isi) cares for those with disabilities, helping them lead fulfilling lives with maximum independence. innovative's vision is to be the most trusted care provider for people with disabilities in wisconsin.
Radias health is a non-profit mental health & substance use disorders services organization customizing community based services through the integration of knowledge, compassion, and collaboration. we are committed to being an inclusive,…
Creating powerful advocacy to enhance economic vitality in the minneapolis-st. paul region.
A b l e , inc (a brighter living experience, inc) is organized to provide residential care for developmentally disabled minnesota residents at its residential and intermediate care facilities located in houston county, minnesota. the…
Enhancing the lives of people with disabilities by providing innovative services that promote inclusion and self-determination.
Our mission is "empowering individuals and communities by helping people, buy, fix and keep their homes". to further this work, we provide homeownership education and advising as well as residential community lending programs to families…
To provide financing that will help people of lower income find, purchase, and fix their homes, for both single family homes as well as rental housing situations.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is United Way of Central Minnesota and the most unlike its peers is East African Healing Services. 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 33 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) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% 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.
1685 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 1685 of the 2,000 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 INITIATIVE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER TWIN CITIES UNITED WAY ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds GREATER MILWAUKEE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR THE FOX VALLEY REGION INC ↗
- Who funds REGIONS HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ALLINA HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MONTANA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICE OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY REINVESTMENT FUND INC ↗
- Who funds NORTH DAKOTA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT NORTH ↗
- Who funds MONTANA COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORP ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds IMPACT SEVEN INC ↗
- Who funds EVERY MEAL ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE ↗
- Who funds WALLIN EDUCATION PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds UNION GOSPEL MISSION ASSOCIATION OF ST PAUL INC ↗
- Who funds PROPEL NONPROFITS ↗
- Who funds SOUTHSIDE COMMUNITY HEALTH SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds ST DAVID'S CENTER ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY DENTAL CARE ↗
- Who funds JEREMIAH PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds Goodwill Industries Inc ↗
- Who funds MONTANA FOOD BANK NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds Community of Recovering People ↗
- Who funds NORTHEAST ENTREPRENEUR FUND INC ↗
- Who funds PACER CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF THE NORTH ↗
- Who funds ST MARYS UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN WOMEN'S BUSINESS INITIATIVE CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE POSSIBLE INC ↗
- Who funds HENNEPIN HEALTH 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: Greater Twin Cities United Way · Mardag Foundation · Fr Bigelow Foundation · Medica Foundation · Target Foundation · Fred C and Katherine B Andersen Foundation · Edina Realty Foundation · Andersen Corporate Foundation · Hardenbergh Foundation · Allina Health System · Hugh J Andersen Foundation · The Sauer Family 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 Otto Bremer Trust 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Otto Bremer Trust?
Find your warmest path to Otto Bremer Trust 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.