How much did SANFORD GROUP RETURN grant in FY2024?

A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 43% of SANFORD GROUP RETURN’s grantee dollars go to organizations outside the IRS cause taxonomy (common for large international and research funders), so a chart would be mostly “unclassified” and misrepresent the portfolio.

02beneath the categories

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Beneath the NTEE codes, this is what the grant descriptions actually say.

…and in their own words, year by year

2019

sports medpaymentortho sportspledgemed contractcapitalsports medicine

2020

yearlysports medortho sportscovid foodfood insecuritymed contractagreement

2021

scholarship endowmenthealth improvementworkforce scholarshipeducation workforceskilldisciplinespecies

2022

scholarship endowmentworkforce scholarshiphealth improvementvarsityeducation workforcemilitary veteranspromotes

2023

physical improvementimprovement housinghealth professionsprofessions educationhealth improvementathletic healthcreate life-changing

2024

physical improvementsimprovements housinghealth improvementhealth professionsprofessions educationimprovement workforcegolf fitness

Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.

03FY2024 · 166 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2024

Under $10k25 grants · $175k
$10k–50k91 grants · $1.9M
$50k–250k34 grants · $3.5M
$250k+16 grants · $20M

$25,000

Median grant

States reached

$4.3B

Total assets

Largest grants

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA (USD)$3,604,552
CONCORDIA COLLEGE$3,306,000
NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY (NDSU)$2,346,667
AUGUSTANA$2,166,750
SOUTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY (SDSU) FOUNDATION$2,125,000
STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA$1,432,412
SD COMMUNITY FOUNDATION$1,250,000
UND ALUMNI FOUNDATION$1,036,571
UNIVERSITY OF MARY$647,249
SOUTH DAKOTA PARTNERS IN EDUCATION$616,922
FARGO PARK DISTRICT$445,288
SIOUX FALLS SCHOOL DISTRICT 49-5$310,000
SIOUX EMPIRE TRIAGE CENTER$300,000
SD MILITARY HERITAGE ALLIANCE INC$250,000
SEATTLE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL$250,000

02The need

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY18–24, $3.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 11% — the area typically sits at 10%. 40% of those dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Your grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

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

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; 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, United Way ALICE — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.

03Your edge

repeat funding

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.

88%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.

$223M · 337 repeat orgs$31M to everyone else

And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +42% since the first grant, against +37% for the ones you funded once.

337 repeat relationships — 143 still active in FY2024, 194 since wound down; 22 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

337

197

Total granted

$223M

$29M

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+42%

+37%

Still filing today

72%

66%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.3M went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

HealthEducationRecreation & SportsHuman ServicesPhilanthropyArts & CultureOther

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

AU
AUGUSTANA UNIVERSITY
7× · 2018–2024 · $24M · revenue +45%
UO
University Of South Dakota FoundationUniversity of South Dakota
7× · 2018–2024 · $17M · revenue +36%
SD
SOUTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION
7× · 2018–2024 · $15M · revenue +78%

Funded once

SH
Sanford Health Foundationgraduated
one grant, 2020 · $6.6M · revenue +288%
VA
VETERANS AFFAIRS
2× · 2023–2024 · $6.0M
DV
DURHAM VETERANS AFFAIRS HEALTHCARE SYSTEM
one grant, 2021 · $5.0M

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

04Your field

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.

South Dakota Foundation for Medical Care

Collaborate with partners to improve health outcomes.

Health

Ne South Dakota Community

The organization was formed to reduce poverty, revitalize low-income communities, and empower low-income individuals and families to become self sufficient.

—

North Dakota Natural Resources

—

Northeast South Dakota Area Health

To advance rural health educational opportunities.

Education

Foundation for a Healthy North Dakota

A coalition that empowers people to make science-based decisions for themselves, their families, and the community through education, advocacy and collaborative partnerships.

Philanthropy

Avera Health

Promotion of health

Health

Nebraska Sports Council

The nebraska sports council, which conducts the cornhusker state games, live healthy nebraska, and nsc racing events, is a nonprofit organization with a mission of providing quality competition for amateur athletes of all ages and to…

—

North Dakota Association for the

Assisting people with physical and mental disabilities in the state of north dakota

Human Services

Unmc Physicians

Our mission is to lead the world in transforming lives to create a healthy future for individuals and communities through premier educational programs, innovative research, and extraordinary patient care.

Health

Great Plains Food Bank

The Great Plains Food Bank is North Dakota's largest hunger-relief organization with a mission to end hunger through community partnerships. Our vision is a hunger-free North Dakota and western Minnesota. Both our mission and vision are…

Food & Nutrition

Dakota Curling

Dedicated to growing the sport of curling, introducing, developing and teaching people the sport of curling, and preparing members for national and international competition.

Recreation & Sports

North Dakota Soybean Growers Association

The NDSGA advocates for soybean growers at the legislature in Bismarck, through alliance and coalitions. It provides member services while working to recruit and retain members.

—

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Make-a-Wish Foundation of South Dakota & and the most unlike its peers is Lifescape. 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.

the sector your giving your giving is ahead of the sector the sector’s ahead of you· dot size = how much the theme matters to each side

Ordered by the change in your giving — leaning in on top, pulling back at the bottom. The bar between the two dots is how out of step you are with the sector. Hover any row for detail.

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 34 years old; the field is 25. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.

The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 7% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund

1%6/558

the rest of the field

437/6,414

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.

05the grantee network

409 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

145

Early backer (in before they grew)

392/409

Grantees still filing

308/409

Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

Other$114,080,060Education$82,632,024Recreation & Sports$16,105,861Health$15,275,088Philanthropy$15,040,173Human Services$5,319,911International$5,021,655

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.

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.

Avera HealthSD139× affinity77 shared granteesties to 6 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Avera Health · Sioux Falls Area Community · Midcontinent Foundation · South Dakota Community Foundation · Fargo-Moorhead Area Foundation · Dakota Medical Foundation · Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota Caring Foundation · The Barry Foundation · United Way of Cass-Clay · North Dakota Community Foundation · Impact Foundation · Dakota Medical Charities

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 organisation SANFORD GROUP RETURN 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.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

3get no government money at all

0rely on government for over half their income

typical government reliance, FY20–24

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. 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.

05Through Plinth

Through Plinth

Your grantmaking, live and operational

This dossier was generated cold from public filings. In Plinth it’s a working system — every applicant assessed and every grant monitored. Here’s a taste, run on one of your grantees: FRIENDS OF THE UNIV OF STELLENBOSCH FOUNDATION.

Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk

Financial management

medium risk

~5 months of operating runway; revenue grew over 8 filed years.

Track record & reputation

low risk

8 years of Form 990 filings, still active; revenue up 2.6× since.

Legal standing

low risk

US 501(c)(3); EIN 134091453 on file with current IRS Form 990 filings.

Governance

Live in Plinth

Board composition & governance documents — verified live in Plinth from the applicant.

Compliance & sanctions

Live in Plinth

OFAC / UN sanctions screening — run live in Plinth at assessment.

Program capacity

Live in Plinth

Staffing, M&E and activity alignment — assessed live in Plinth from submitted proposals.

Live · Plinth’s real DD engine

Run the actual assessment on FRIENDS OF THE UNIV OF STELLENBOSCH FOUNDATION, cold from public data.

Generated live from public IRS filings + open web sources by Plinth’s agentic engine. Shown as an illustration of the product, not a formal assessment.

Post-award monitoring · continuous checks

WatchFinancial stability— Roughly 5 months of cash on hand.
On trackSustained operations— Filing through 2024; revenue grew over the period.
WatchReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 97% of their budget — load-bearing; a dependency Plinth would track.
Awaiting reportEvidence of delivery— Plinth collects the grantee's own monitoring reports post-award.

What you see here is static and public. In Plinth it’s operational — the full six-pillar framework on every applicant (with their own documents + live registry and sanctions checks), monitoring dashboards on every award, custom board reports, and eligibility routing for intake.

Agentic due diligenceMonitoring dashboardsCustom board reportsEligibility routing

Preview generated from this grantee’s public IRS filings and independent reporting. Pillars marked “live in Plinth” require the applicant’s submitted documents. Shown as illustration, not a formal assessment.

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPro

How do I get to Sanford Group Return?

Find your warmest path to Sanford Group Return through people who sit on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the introduction across shared trustees and officers.

Every link is a documented governance overlap in public IRS 990 filings — not a personal network — and each hop carries its own confidence tier. Low-confidence or distant paths are held back rather than guessed.

SANFORD GROUP RETURN

What you funded, over time

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Where the money goes

Do your dollars go where the need is?

Who you back again

Backed again, and grew

Funded once

409 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Government reliance of your grantees

Your grantmaking, live and operational

How do I get to Sanford Group Return?

More from the funding graph

SANFORD GROUP RETURN

What you funded, over time

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Where the money goes

Do your dollars go where the need is?

Who you back again

Backed again, and grew

Funded once

409 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Government reliance of your grantees

Your grantmaking, live and operational

How do I get to Sanford Group Return?

More from the funding graph