How much does Southwest Minnesota Arts Council give?

Southwest Minnesota Arts Council reported 42 itemized grants totaling $477,017, out of $637,007 in total grant expense reported on the return in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 21 and 48 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does Southwest Minnesota Arts Council fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Arts & Culture (76%), Public Benefit (13%), Education (5%).

Who are Southwest Minnesota Arts Council's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: Hutchinson Center for the Arts ($259k), Department of Public Transformation ($185k), Wilder Pageant Committee Inc ($181k).

Does Southwest Minnesota Arts Council fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 38% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Which funders back the same organizations as Southwest Minnesota Arts Council?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Southwest Initiative Foundation, Minnesota Historical Society, C K Blandin Foundation.

Where is Southwest Minnesota Arts Council based?

Southwest Minnesota Arts Council is based in MN.

Southwest Minnesota Arts Council

Southwest Minnesota Arts Council at a glance Also receives grants: funding profile →

· Public charity

Southwest Minnesota Arts Council

To provide funds and services to promote and support the arts in the 18 counties of southwest minnesota.

$637k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$30k

Largest

01What it funds

01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Arts & Culture$2.6MPublic Benefit$457kEducation$175kHuman Services$57kCommunity Improvement$48kCivil Rights$27kHousing & Shelter$22kHealth$17kOther$0

02FY2025 · 42 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

How this is measured

The 42 grants below total $477,017, the rows itemized in this filing. The $637,007 headline is the total grant expense on the return; the other $159,990 is giving the schedule does not break out (grants under the $5,000 itemization floor, grants to individuals, grants on other schedules). Every figure below describes the itemized rows only.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k26 grants · $194k
$10k–50k16 grants · $283k

$9,250

Median grant

States reached

$720k

Total assets

Largest grants
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

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its 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 its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

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

How this is measured

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.

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

87%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$3.0M · 49 repeat orgs$440k to everyone else

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

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$3.0M

$312k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+18%

+74%

Still filing today

43%

26%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 73% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $128k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

Arts & CultureEducationHuman ServicesHousing & ShelterYouth DevelopmentCivil RightsOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

DO
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC TRANSFORMATION
7× · 2019–2025 · $185k · revenue +251%
WP
WILDER PAGEANT COMMITTEE INC
8× · 2018–2025 · $181k · revenue +92% · 37% of their budget
PP
Pipestone Performing Arts Center
8× · 2017–2025 · $157k · revenue +21%

Funded once

SM
SOUTHWEST MINNESOTA HOUSING PARTNERSHIPgraduated
one grant, 2019 · $22k · revenue +72%
CO
CITY OF MARSHALL
one grant, 2022 · $20k
LS
LOWER SIOUX INDIAN COMMUNITY
one grant, 2021 · $20k

How this is measured

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

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Seward Arts Council

—

Meadowlark Arts Council Inc

Support of the arts

Arts & Culture

Sioux City Community Theater

Promotion of and presentation of dramatic arts

Arts & Culture

Rock River Repertory Theatre

Inspire artists, audiences, and our greater southern wisconsin community to celabrate the art of theatre.

Arts & Culture

Prairie Arts Council Inc

Enhance local artistic culture

Arts & Culture

Yankton Area Arts Association

To fundraise for local events and support local events

Arts & Culture

Campbell County Arts Council Inc

Public service of the arts for the Campbell County, SD, community.

Arts & Culture

River Arts Alliance

River Arts Alliance supports and celebrates regional arts and culture by connecting artists and community in the Winona, MN region.

Arts & Culture

Wallace District Arts Council Inc

Provide musical and artistic performances in rural North Idaho, mainly in Wallace, Idaho.

—

Dawson County Arts Council Inc

7961

Arts & Culture

Prairie Wind Players of Grant County Inc

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…

Arts & Culture

Wisconsin Rapids Community Theatre Inc

Produce theater performances for community

Arts & Culture

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Willmar Area Arts Council; 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.

04the grantee network

40 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 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.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

34/40

Grantees still filing

26/40

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Arts & Culture$1,987,837Other$1,341,820Education$54,050Human Services$32,905Housing & Shelter$21,519Health$7,000Civil Rights$6,990Youth Development$6,450

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Southwest Initiative FoundationMN65.1× affinity34 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

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

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Southwest Minnesota Arts Council funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Southwest Minnesota Arts Council. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

0get no government money at all

13report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–10%

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

Play a game based on Southwest Minnesota Arts Council’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home