· Private foundation
Severson Family 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
- Under $10k9 grants · $28k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $150k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Augustana University | $100,000 |
| First Lutheran Church | $50,000 |
| Westwood Lutheran Church | $9,920 |
| The Banquet | $4,000 |
| Habitat for Humanity | $4,000 |
| Pickerel Lake Conservancy | $3,200 |
| Sioux Falls Area Humane Society | $2,000 |
| Rise Early Learning Center | $2,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| The Furniture Mission | $1,000 |
| First Tee South Dakota | $1,000 |
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, $15k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 100% 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.
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 +79% since the first grant, against +28% for the ones you funded once.
34 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 23 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
- AUAUGUSTANA UNIVERSITY ASSOCIATION5× · 2017–2025 · $178k · revenue +79%
- PLPICKEREL LAKE CONSERVANCY7× · 2017–2025 · $117k · revenue +21% · 62% of their budget
- RERise Early Learning Center5× · 2021–2025 · $75k · revenue +583%
Funded once
- FNFLC Nokomis Child Care Centerone grant, 2021 · $100k
- FOFRIENDS OF EDUCATIONone grant, 2023 · $20k · revenue -1%
- HCHope Community Development Assocone grant, 2024 · $15k · revenue 0%
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.
Engaging the community to end hunger
Lss housing will support the continued vitality of north dakota communities by providing housing and housing-related services.
To provide financing that will help people of lower income find, purchase, and fix their homes, for both single family homes as well as rental housing situations.
The mission of the foundation for health care continuums is to strengthen each community we serve by providing a wide spectrum of housing and health care services that honor the evolving, aging population.
Guided by our values, Catholic Charities North Dakota serves people in need and advocates for the common good of all.
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…
End hunger together.
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;…
Southeastern north dakota community action agency (sendcaa) was formed in 1965 to provide a range of services and activities in a six county area designed to alleviate poverty and give low-income people the opportunity to improve their…
Habitat for humanity brings people together to build homes, community, and hope. through advocacy, collaboration, and leadership, hfh-mn advances the work of minnesota's habitat for humanity affiliates to create and preserve affordable…
Midwest dairy works with others to give consumers an excellent dairy experience increasing sales, fostering innovation, and inspiring consumer confidence of dairy products and practices.
To partner with communities to develop places for people to call home so that people in southwest and south-central minnesota have access to dignified affordable housing, and thriving, inclusive and equitable communities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Interfaith Outreach and Community Partners and the most unlike its peers is Northside Boxing Club 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 38 years old; the field is 31. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% 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 6% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 59 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 AUGUSTANA UNIVERSITY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds PICKEREL LAKE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds Rise Early Learning Center ↗
- Who funds THE BANQUET ↗
- Who funds SECOND HARVEST HEARTLAND ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds Hope Community Development Assoc ↗
- Who funds SIOUX FALLS AREA HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF GREATER SIOUX FALLS ↗
- Who funds SHARING AND CARING HANDS INC ↗
- Who funds UNSEEN ↗
- Who funds SOUTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHURCHES UNITED ↗
- Who funds SIOUX FALLS AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BOCA GRANDE HEALTH CLINIC FNDTN INC ↗
- Who funds GASPARILLA ISL CONSER & IMPROVE ASSN ↗
- Who funds YWCA CASS CLAY ↗
- Who funds FURNITURE MISSION OF SOUTH DAKOTA ↗
- Who funds CONCORDIA COLLEGE CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
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: Thrivent Financial for Lutherans · Thrivent Charitable Impact & Investing · Xcel Energy Foundation · The Minneapolis Foundation · Midcontinent Foundation · The Graco Foundation · Ch Robinson Worldwide Foundation · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Jerstad Family Foundation · First Lutheran Church Foundation · Tenfold Foundation Inc · The Robert and Rita Elmen 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 Severson Family 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.