· Public charity
Southwest Minnesota Arts Council
To provide funds and services to promote and support the arts in the 18 counties of southwest minnesota.
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.
The 42 grants below total $477,017 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $637,007 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $159,990 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 · FY2025
- Under $10k26 grants · $194k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $283k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CROW RIVER PLAYERS | $29,562 |
| PIPESTONE PERFORMING ARTS CENTER | $23,818 |
| HUTCHINSON CENTER FOR THE ARTS | $23,069 |
| CITY OF COTTONWOOD | $20,000 |
| RECLAIM COMMUNITY | $20,000 |
| DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC TRANSFORMATION | $19,451 |
| DAKOTA WICOHAN | $18,990 |
| PRAIRIE ARTS CONTINUUM | $17,000 |
| WILDER PAGEANT COMMITTEE | $15,907 |
| SUNBURG COMMUNITY CENTER | $15,190 |
| DAWSON BOYD ARTS ASSOCIATION | $15,043 |
| REDWOOD AREA ARTS | $15,000 |
| AMP (ARTS AND MENTORING PROJECT) | $14,539 |
| WILLMAR AREA ARTS COUNCIL | $13,984 |
| DAWSON BOYD PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $10,864 |
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 (FY20–25, $33k) 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.
49 repeat relationships — 30 still active in FY2025, 19 since wound down; 11 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 73% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $128k 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
- DODEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC TRANSFORMATION7× · 2019–2025 · $185k · revenue +251%
- WPWILDER PAGEANT COMMITTEE INC8× · 2018–2025 · $181k · revenue +92% · 37% of their budget
- PPPipestone Performing Arts Center8× · 2017–2025 · $157k · revenue +21%
Funded once
- SMSOUTHWEST MINNESOTA HOUSING PARTNERSHIPgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $22k · revenue +72%
- COCITY OF MARSHALLone grant, 2022 · $20k
- LSLOWER SIOUX INDIAN COMMUNITYone grant, 2021 · $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.
Support of the arts
Promotion of and presentation of dramatic arts
Inspire artists, audiences, and our greater southern wisconsin community to celabrate the art of theatre.
Enhance local artistic culture
To fundraise for local events and support local events
Public service of the arts for the Campbell County, SD, community.
River Arts Alliance supports and celebrates regional arts and culture by connecting artists and community in the Winona, MN region.
Provide musical and artistic performances in rural North Idaho, mainly in Wallace, Idaho.
7961
The mission of Prairie Wind Players is to produce, promote and present cultural arts programs with a primary emphasis on dramatic arts. The Prairie Wind Players Community Theatre exists to contibute to the cultural enrichment of West…
Produce theater performances for community
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Willmar Area Arts Council and the most unlike its peers is Madison Art Gallery. 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 21 years old; the field is 29. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 10% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 4% 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.
40 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. 40 of the 94 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 HUTCHINSON CENTER FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC TRANSFORMATION ↗
- Who funds WILDER PAGEANT COMMITTEE INC ↗
- Who funds Pipestone Performing Arts Center ↗
- Who funds CROW RIVER PLAYERS INC ↗
- Who funds WILLMAR AREA ARTS COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds DAWSON-BOYD ARTS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MARSHALL AREA FINE ARTS COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds MILAN VILLAGE ARTS SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds Worthington Area Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds Jackson Center for the Arts ↗
- Who funds BIRD ISLAND CULTURAL CENTRE ↗
- Who funds AMP ↗
- Who funds BLUE MOUND AREA THEATER ↗
- Who funds GRANITE AREA ARTS COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds Lake Benton Opera House Inc ↗
- Who funds RIVERSONG MUSIC FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE AUDITORIUM INC ↗
- Who funds DASSEL AREA HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR INNOVATION IN EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWEST MINNESOTA DANCE LTD ↗
- Who funds CANBY AREA ARTS COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds CULTURAL AWARENESS ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWEST MINNESOTA HOUSING PARTNERSHIP ↗
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: Southwest Initiative Foundation · Minnesota Historical Society · C K Blandin Foundation · Communitygiving · Minnesota Community Foundation · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · United Way of Southwest Minnesota · Minnesota Humanities Center · The McKnight Foundation · Land O'Lakes Foundation · First Children's Finance · The Minneapolis 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 Southwest Minnesota Arts Council 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.