· Private foundation
Raft Charitable Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
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.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k21 grants · $540k
- $50k–250k9 grants · $830k
- $250k+1 grant · $260k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HAMLINE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA | $260,000 |
| MINNESOTA TEEN CHALLENGE INC | $230,000 |
| THE SALVATION ARMY | $100,000 |
| AMERICAN RED CROSS | $100,000 |
| MINNESOTA PUBLIC RADIO | $100,000 |
| MANY RIVERS MONTESSORI | $100,000 |
| SCIENCE MUSEUM OF MINNESOTA | $50,000 |
| FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH OF DULUTH | $50,000 |
| UNITED FUND OF CUMBERLAND INC | $50,000 |
| MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $50,000 |
| University of Minnesota Foundation | $40,000 |
| Cumberland Tsap Library Foundation | $40,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE ST PAUL PUBLIC LIBRARY | $30,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE RAMSEY COUNTY LIBRARIES | $30,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE HENNEPIN COUNTY LIBRARY | $30,000 |
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, $1.2M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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.
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 Raft Charitable 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.
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 -12% for the ones you funded once.
38 repeat relationships — 31 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- MTMinnesota Teen Challenge Inc9× · 2017–2025 · $2.1M · revenue +88%
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches9× · 2017–2025 · $910k · revenue +46%
- MRMANY RIVERS MONTESSORI8× · 2018–2025 · $821k · revenue +101%
Funded once
- ACApollo Club of Minneapolis Incone grant, 2017 · $500 · revenue -12%
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 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…
MCF is a vibrant philanthropic community connecting, strengthening and mobilizing the power of philanthropy to advance prosperity and equity.
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…
To be the leading voice of medicine to make minnesota the healthiest state and the best place to practice.
Creating powerful advocacy to enhance economic vitality in the minneapolis-st. paul region.
Minnesota Children's Museum is dedicated to providing children with a fun, hands-on and stimulating environment to explore and discover. The museum helps to instill a lifelong love of learning by nurturing the real-world skills children…
Mn community measurement empowers stakeholders with meaningful information to drive improvement.
To create an extraordinary downtown minneapolis, applying the core values of leadership, collaboration, advocacy and innovation.
Purpose: we inspire, advocate and invest to advance community visions. continued on sch o
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…
The foundation cultivates generosity by taking action on the greatest civic, social, and economic needs partnering with nonprofits, facilitating grantmaking, driving research and advocacy, and providing services to donors seeking to make a…
Led by minnesota state university students, we are the inclusive voice for all future, current, and former students. we actively work to represent and support minnesota state university students and advocate at a campus, state, and federal…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library and the most unlike its peers is Apollo Club of Minneapolis 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 37 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
31 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. 31 of the 39 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 Minnesota Teen Challenge Inc ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds MANY RIVERS MONTESSORI ↗
- Who funds UNITED FUND OF CUMBERLAND INC ↗
- Who funds SCIENCE MUSEUM OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA PUBLIC RADIO AMERICAN PUBLIC MEDIA ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE HENNEPIN COUNTY LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S SHELTER OF CEBU ↗
- Who funds RAMSEY COUNTY LIBRARY FRIENDS ↗
- Who funds THE FRIENDS OF THE SAINT PAUL PUBLIC LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds TWIN CITIES PUBLIC TELEVISION INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF THE NORTH ↗
- Who funds DULUTH LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CUMBERLAND TSAP LIBRARY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds KINSHIP OF CUMBERLAND INC ↗
- Who funds TEXTILE CENTER OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds PARABLE FUND ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN SWEDISH INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE MISSION ↗
- Who funds TWIN CITIES HABITAT FOR HUMANITY ↗
- Who funds COURAGE KENNY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HEIFER PROJECT INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds CHURCHES UNITED IN MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds ALLINA HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAFE HAVEN SHELTER FOR BATTERED WOMEN ↗
- Who funds HEIFER INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Dwelling Place ↗
- Who funds LAKE SUPERIOR YOUTH CHORUS INC ↗
- Who funds Apollo Club of Minneapolis Inc ↗
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: Mightycause Charitable Foundation · Thomas and Julianne Youngren Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Xcel Energy Foundation · Thrivent Charitable Impact & Investing · Lahti Family Foundation · Ordean Foundation · Lloyd K Johnson Foundation · Minnesota Power Foundation · Edina Realty Foundation · Duluth-Superior Area Community 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 Raft Charitable 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.