How much does Region 2 Arts Council give?

Region 2 Arts Council reported 25 itemized grants totaling $333,212, out of $429,799 in total grant expense reported on the return in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 9 and 21 organizations a year over FY2017 to FY2024.

What does Region 2 Arts Council fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Arts & Culture (87%), Human Services (5%), Education (3%).

Who are Region 2 Arts Council's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: Bemidji Symphony Orchestra ($181k), Bemidji Community Theater Inc ($175k), Northern Light Opera Company Incorporated ($171k).

Does Region 2 Arts Council fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 24% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Which funders back the same organizations as Region 2 Arts Council?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Northwest Minnesota Foundation, C K Blandin Foundation, George W Neilson Foundation.

Where is Region 2 Arts Council based?

Region 2 Arts Council is based in MN.

Region 2 Arts Council

Region 2 Arts Council at a glance Also receives grants: funding profile →

· 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.

$430k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$25k

Largest

01What it funds

0199% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Arts & Culture$1.5MHuman Services$91kEducation$51kEnvironment$20kPublic Benefit$18kYouth Development$6kCrime & Legal$6kHousing & Shelter$6kOther$0

02FY2025 · 25 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

How this is measured

The 25 grants below total $333,212, the rows itemized in this filing. The $429,799 headline is the total grant expense on the return; the other $96,587 is giving the schedule does not break out (grants under the $5,000 itemization floor, grants to individuals, grants on other schedules). Every figure below describes the itemized rows only.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k11 grants · $69k
$10k–50k14 grants · $265k

$12,000

Median grant

States reached

$198k

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
BEMIDJI COMMUNTY ARTS THEATER	$25,000
ARMORY AND ARTS EVENTS CENTER	$25,000
NORTHER LIGHT OPERA COMPANY	$25,000
BEMIDJI SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA	$25,000
BAGLEY AREA ARTS COLLABORATIVE	$24,000
LAKE OF THE WOODS ART GUILD	$22,000
LOON COUNTRY ARTS COLLECTIVE	$18,000
NEMETH ART CENTER	$18,000
CLEAR WATERS LIFE 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

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its 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. Its grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

90%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$1.6M · 24 repeat orgs$172k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +42% since the first grant, against +10% for those 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

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$1.6M

$112k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+42%

+10%

Still filing today

50%

36%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $60k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

Arts & CultureHuman ServicesEducationHousing & ShelterFood & NutritionCrime & LegalOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

BS
BEMIDJI SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
8× · 2017–2025 · $181k · revenue +45%
BC
Bemidji Community Theater Inc
7× · 2017–2025 · $175k · revenue +42%
NL
NORTHERN LIGHT OPERA COMPANY INCORPORATED
8× · 2017–2025 · $171k · revenue +58% · 25% of their budget

Funded once

HC
HEARTLAND CONCERT ASSOCIATION
one grant, 2024 · $18k
NI
NORTHWEST INDIAN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CENTER NWICDC
one grant, 2024 · $18k · revenue -21%
IG
Individual grant recipient
one grant, 2018 · $8k

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Three Lakes Center for the Arts in the Northwoods Inc

To promote the arts to educate, entertain, and enlighten in northern WI.

Arts & Culture

Campbell County Arts Council Inc

Public service of the arts for the Campbell County, SD, community.

Arts & Culture

Boyne Arts Collective dba Boyne Arts Cen

The Mission of the Boyne Arts Center is to inspire, serve and strengthen community through the Arts.

Arts & Culture

Beloit Art Center Inc

To provide resources to help emerging artists, offer community education & cultural events, and expand the Arts Center theme.

Arts & Culture

Lake Benton Opera House Inc

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.

Arts & Culture

Calumet Art Center

To create a safe learning environment where art, culture and history inspire and challenge the people of the Keweenaw.

Arts & Culture

Mankato Area Arts Council

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

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.

Arts & Culture

Nelson County Arts Council

To provide art access to rural North Dakota

Arts & Culture

Bear Paws Cultural Art

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.

Arts & Culture

Seward Arts Council

—

Headwaters Council for the Performing Arts Inc

Musical arts programs for Eagle River, Wisconsin

—

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Bagley Area Arts Collaborative Inc; 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.

04the grantee network

23 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 23 of the 45 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

21/23

Grantees still filing

13/23

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Arts & Culture$818,265Other$720,182Human Services$114,797Public Benefit$58,900Education$12,000Housing & Shelter$6,000Food & Nutrition$6,000

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Northwest Minnesota FoundationMN50.6× affinity23 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

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

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Region 2 Arts Council funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Region 2 Arts Council. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

0get no government money at all

8report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–15%

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

Play a game based on Region 2 Arts Council’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home