· Community foundation
Rochester Area Foundation
Building and enhancing the quality of life in the greater rochester area through philanthropic leadership and community partnerships.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 125 grants below total $4,827,215 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $6,343,078 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $1,515,863 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 · FY2024
- Under $10k28 grants · $199k
- $10k–50k85 grants · $1.6M
- $50k–250k10 grants · $827k
- $250k+2 grants · $2.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OLMSTED COUNTY HRA | $1,540,000 |
| FIRST HOMES PROPERTIES | $700,075 |
| MAYO CLINIC DEPARTMENT OF DEVELOPMENT | $150,060 |
| THREE RIVERS COMMUNITY ACTION | $142,188 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF ROCHESTER | $97,640 |
| MAYO FOUNDATION | $91,019 |
| CHANNEL ONE REGIONAL FOOD BANK | $63,230 |
| UNITED WAY OF SOUTHEAST MINNESOTA | $61,700 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD NORTH CENTRAL STATES | $60,350 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $56,370 |
| OLMSTED COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $54,680 |
| SOUTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA FOUNDATION | $47,250 |
| ABILITY BUILDING COMMUNITY | $46,780 |
| CAMP VICTORY | $46,500 |
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 (FY17–24, $1.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 9% 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.
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.
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.
190 repeat relationships — 103 still active in FY2024, 87 since wound down; 18 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 62% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.8M 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
- FHFIRST HOMES PROPERTIES6× · 2018–2024 · $2.9M · revenue +400% · 91% of their budget
- RCROCHESTER COMMUNITY AND TECHNICAL COLLEG8× · 2017–2024 · $1.6M · revenue +15% · 71% of their budget
- RMRONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES MIDWEST MN WI IA8× · 2017–2024 · $590k · revenue +11%
Funded once
- CCCENTER CITY HOUSING CORPgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $210k · revenue +64%
- BCBEAR CREEK CHRISTIAN CHURCHone grant, 2020 · $161k
- MAMINNESOTA ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE UNITED METHODIST CHURCHone grant, 2023 · $125k
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 be the leading voice of medicine to make minnesota the healthiest state and the best place to practice.
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…
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…
Mn community measurement empowers stakeholders with meaningful information to drive improvement.
Creating powerful advocacy to enhance economic vitality in the minneapolis-st. paul region.
MCF is a vibrant philanthropic community connecting, strengthening and mobilizing the power of philanthropy to advance prosperity and equity.
Purpose: we inspire, advocate and invest to advance community visions. continued on sch o
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…
The mission of community shares of minnesota is to create a fair, just and equitable minnesota. community shares of minnesota accomplishes its mission by: supporting collective action to eliminate root causes of inequality and injustice;…
Grow businesses, build wealth and increase reinvestement in the african communities of minnesota
Empowering people of all abilities to reach their full potential. we provide individualized services that maximize independence, boosts community engagement and improves physical and emotional well-being.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Children's Health Care Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Cut Circle. 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 36 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
268 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. 268 of the 366 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 FIRST HOMES PROPERTIES ↗
- Who funds ROCHESTER COMMUNITY AND TECHNICAL COLLEG ↗
- Who funds RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES MIDWEST MN WI IA ↗
- Who funds JEREMIAH PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds CHANNEL ONE INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF ROCHESTER ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF SOUTHEAST MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds SOLDIERS FIELD VETERAN'S MEMORIAL INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ENDOWMENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds Bear Creek Development Center Inc ↗
- Who funds ABILITY BUILDING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds DYSLEXIA INSTITUTE OF MN INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OLMSTED COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds IRONWOOD SPRINGS CHRISTIAN RANCH INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER CITY HOUSING CORP ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF QUARRY HILL NATURE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds GIFT OF LIFE INC ↗
- Who funds ROCHESTER - OLMSTED COUNTY LAW ENFORCEME ↗
- Who funds FAMILY PROMISE ROCHESTER ↗
- Who funds SENIOR CITIZENS SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S MUSEUM OF ROCHESTER INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY SERVICE ROCHESTER INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JUSTFAITH MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds LEGAL ASSISTANCE OF OLMSTED COUNTY ↗
- Who funds THREE RIVERS COMMUNITY ACTION INC ↗
- Who funds DOROTHY DAY HOSPITALITY HOUSE ↗
- Who funds DIVERSITY COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds CHOSEN VALLEY COMMUNITY 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: Mayo Clinic · United Way of Southeast Minnesota · Otto Bremer Trust · Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation · Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council Inc · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Mardag Foundation · Mayo Clinic Group Return · The K Foundation · Hormel Foods Corporation Charitable Trust · The Minneapolis Foundation · The American Center for Philanthropy Inc
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 Rochester Area 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.
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- Food for the Poor Inc — 0% of income from government
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.