· Private foundation
Smikis Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $13k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $220k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $570k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BELWIN | $200,000 |
| GREAT MN SCHOOLS (MN COMEBACK) | $100,000 |
| CONSTELLATION FUND | $100,000 |
| AGATE HOUSING AND SERVICES | $70,000 |
| MINNESOTA CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCACY | $50,000 |
| PEOPLE INCOPORATED | $50,000 |
| MINNESOTA LAND TRUST | $45,000 |
| TWIN CITIES RISE | $30,000 |
| TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND | $30,000 |
| ED ALLIES (FKA MINNCAN) | $25,000 |
| COLLEGE POSSIBLE | $25,000 |
| PROJECT SUCCESS | $25,000 |
| CENTER FOR VICTIMS OF TORTURE | $15,000 |
| SUMMIT ACADEMY | $15,000 |
| GLOBAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–23, $290k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, 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 +48% since the first grant, against +30% for the ones you funded once.
58 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2024, 42 since wound down; 1 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $25k 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
- BCBELWIN CONSERVANCY8× · 2017–2024 · $900k · revenue +100%
- TCThe Constellation Fund5× · 2020–2024 · $530k · revenue +48%
- PSPROJECT SUCCESS8× · 2017–2024 · $415k · revenue +130%
Funded once
- VAVENTURE ACADEMIESgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $25k · revenue +66%
- TITEFSA INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLone grant, 2017 · $25k
- DSDUNWOODY SCHOOL OF TECHNOLOGYone grant, 2022 · $20k
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.
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…
MCF is a vibrant philanthropic community connecting, strengthening and mobilizing the power of philanthropy to advance prosperity and equity.
Youthprise is a nonprofit intermediary that invests in the future of Minnesota by investing in youth. Youthprise's mission is to increase equity with and for Minnesota's indigenous, low-income, and racially diverse youth.
We believe that great schools are the cornerstone of a just and thriving community. ensuring that every child is able to attend a school that works is our moral and social imperative - our children deserve no less.
Move minnesota leads the movement for an equitable and sustainable transportation system that puts people first. we are passionate about connecting communities, ending the climate crisis, expanding access to jobs and resources, and…
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…
To be the leading voice of medicine to make minnesota the healthiest state and the best place to practice.
The Minnesota Council of Nonprofits informs, promotes, connects and strengthens individual nonprofits and the nonprofit sector.
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…
Creating powerful advocacy to enhance economic vitality in the minneapolis-st. paul region.
Driven by an unwavering moral imperative that every child, regardless of its race, income or zip code, deserves the same high-quality education, mn comeback has become a growing movement of philanthropists, community leaders and education…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Summit Academy Oic and the most unlike its peers is The Center for Victims of Torture. 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 30 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
49 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. 49 of the 70 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 BELWIN CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds The Constellation Fund ↗
- Who funds PROJECT SUCCESS ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR VICTIMS OF TORTURE ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds Twin Cities Rise ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCACY ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE POSSIBLE INC ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds YOUTH FRONTIERS INC ↗
- Who funds PROJECT FOR PRIDE IN LIVING INC ↗
- Who funds SUMMIT ACADEMY OIC ↗
- Who funds AGATE HOUSING & SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds Ed Allies ↗
- Who funds MICROGRANTS ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN ↗
- Who funds Bolder Options ↗
- Who funds GROVES ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds HIAWATHA ACADEMIES ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds NORTHSIDE ACHIEVEMENT ZONE ↗
- Who funds POSITIVE COACHING ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds EDUCATORS FOR EXCELLENCE INC ↗
- Who funds LAND TRUST ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds BEACON INTERFAITH HOUSING COLLABORATIVE ↗
- Who funds Minneapolis Recreation Development Inc Love One Another ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN & NATURE NETWORK ↗
- Who funds KIPP Minnesota ↗
- Who funds PRODEO ACADEMY CHARTER SCHOOL #4213 ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds One2One ↗
- Who funds Breakthrough Twin Cities ↗
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: The Minneapolis Foundation · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Mortenson Family Foundation · The Richard M Schulze Family Foundation · Mightycause Charitable Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · Minnesota Community Foundation · The McKnight Foundation · Pohlad Family Foundation · David Winton Bell Foundation · The Walser Foundation · Ch Robinson Worldwide 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 Smikis 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Smikis Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Smikis Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.