· Public charity
Region 2 Arts Council
Strengthening the presence of the arts by supporting opportunities for arts creation, promotion, and education throughout the community in north central 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 25 grants below total $333,212 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $429,799 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $96,587 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 $10k11 grants · $69k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $265k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NORTHER LIGHT OPERA COMPANY | $25,000 |
| BEMIDJI SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $25,000 |
| BEMIDJI COMMUNTY ARTS THEATER | $25,000 |
| ARMORY AND ARTS EVENTS CENTER | $25,000 |
| BAGLEY AREA ARTS COLLABORATIVE | $24,000 |
| LAKE OF THE WOODS ART GUILD | $22,000 |
| CLEAR WATERS LIFE CENTER | $18,000 |
| LOON COUNTRY ARTS COLLECTIVE | $18,000 |
| NEMETH ART CENTER | $18,000 |
| NORTHER ARTIST ASSOCIATION | $15,026 |
| MASK & ROSE WOMEN'S THEATER | $14,500 |
| BELTRAMI COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $12,075 |
| HUBBARD COUNTY DAC | $12,000 |
| HEARTLAND ARTS | $11,000 |
| HEADWATERS SCHOOL OF MUSIC | $8,899 |
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, $115k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 0% of those 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +42% since the first grant, against +10% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 7 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, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $60k 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
- BSBEMIDJI SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA8× · 2017–2025 · $181k · revenue +45%
- BCBemidji Community Theater Inc7× · 2017–2025 · $175k · revenue +42%
- NLNORTHERN LIGHT OPERA COMPANY INCORPORATED8× · 2017–2025 · $171k · revenue +58% · 25% of their budget
Funded once
- HCHEARTLAND CONCERT ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2024 · $18k
- NINORTHWEST INDIAN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CENTER NWICDCone grant, 2024 · $18k · revenue -21%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2018 · $8k
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 the arts to educate, entertain, and enlighten in northern WI.
Public service of the arts for the Campbell County, SD, community.
The Mission of the Boyne Arts Center is to inspire, serve and strengthen community through the Arts.
To provide resources to help emerging artists, offer community education & cultural events, and expand the Arts Center theme.
The Lake Benton Opera House, one of the premiere historic buildings in southwest Minnesota. Home to an active community theatre, the Opera House has begun its second century in our community.
To create a safe learning environment where art, culture and history inspire and challenge the people of the Keweenaw.
The mission of the Mankato Area Arts Council, DBA Carnegie Art Center, is to be a vibrant community destination that inspires, nurtures, and expands artistic, cultural, and educational experiences.
Heijeu Arts goal is to provide a variety of experiences, important conversations and activities that appeal to our diverse community, serving audiences located in and around Central Minnesota.
To provide art access to rural North Dakota
At Bear Paws Cultural Art, we aim to revitalize Ojibwe cultural heritage, foster mutual understanding and respect with our neighbors, and facilitate community healing through art.
Musical arts programs for Eagle River, Wisconsin
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Bagley Area Arts Collaborative Inc and the most unlike its peers is Heartland Arts Incorporated. 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 22 years old; the field is 26. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 14% startups (under 5 years old) — 12% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 5% 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.
22 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. 22 of the 45 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 BEMIDJI SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds Bemidji Community Theater Inc ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN LIGHT OPERA COMPANY INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds North Country Museum of Arts Inc dba NEMETH ART CENTER ↗
- Who funds BEMIDJI COMMUNITY ARTS COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds HEARTLAND ARTS INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds CLEAR WATERS LIFE CENTER ↗
- Who funds BAGLEY AREA ARTS COLLABORATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds Farm By The Lake ↗
- Who funds THE ARMORY ARTS & EVENTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds HEADWATERS SCHOOL OF MUSIC AND ARTS ↗
- Who funds CREATE COMMUNITY RESILIENCE EDUCATION ART TRAININ ↗
- Who funds PAUL BUNYAN PLAYHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST INDIAN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CENTER NWICDC ↗
- Who funds BELTRAMI COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds MANIDOO OGITIGAAN ↗
- Who funds NAMELESS COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS ↗
- Who funds PEACEMAKER RESOURCES ↗
- Who funds LAKE OF THE WOODS COUNTY FAIR ASSOC ↗
- Who funds HEARTLAND LAKES COMMUNITY SCHOOL ↗
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 · C K Blandin Foundation · George W Neilson Foundation · Sanford Group Return · Headwaters Foundation for Justice · Mardag Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Minnesota Historical Society · The McKnight Foundation · American Endowment 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 Region 2 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.