· Private foundation
The Birkey Family 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 $10k12 grants · $21k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $110k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Coe College | $110,000 |
| Lakes Area Music Festival | $10,000 |
| Heartland Symphony Orchestra | $10,000 |
| Grand Rapids Community Foundation | $5,000 |
| Itasca Community College Foundation | $5,000 |
| United Way 1000 | $5,000 |
| International Rescue Committee | $1,000 |
| Doctors Without Borders | $1,000 |
| Community Presbyterian Church | $1,000 |
| Questscope | $500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $500 |
| Lakes Area Habitat for Humanity | $500 |
| Southern Poverty Law Center | $500 |
| Initiative Foundation | $500 |
| Alight | $500 |
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 (FY17–17, $42k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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.
8 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2024, 4 since wound down; 10 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, 80% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $30k 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
- CCCOE COLLEGE8× · 2017–2024 · $366k · revenue +19%
- ICItasca Community College Foundation2× · 2023–2024 · $6k · revenue +53%
- SASwim Across America Inc2× · 2017–2018 · $1k · revenue +39%
Funded once
- I1ISD 129one grant, 2021 · $90k
- ICITASCA COUNTY FAMILY YMCA INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $42k · revenue +59%
- NMNorthern Minnesota Railroad Heritage Associationone grant, 2018 · $10k
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.
A nonprofit scientific research organization that develops vaccines and antibodies for hiv, tuberculosis, and emerging infectious diseases.
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 serve our communities by provding innovative and compassionate healthcare.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
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;…
To be the leading voice of medicine to make minnesota the healthiest state and the best place to practice.
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…
The common application is a not-for-profit membership organization of over 1,100 colleges and universities across the globe committed to access, equity, and integrity in the college admission process. every year, over 1.5 million students…
Grow businesses, build wealth and increase reinvestement in the african communities of minnesota
Engages, equips and empowers learners to explore their vocations, fulfill their potential and serve the world.
Lake forest academy strives to embody in its practices - and to cultivate in its students -excellence of character, scholarship, citizenship, and responsibility.
United way of northeastern minnesota invests in nonprofits, programs, and collaborations that equip and empower, creating opportunities for people to thrive in our communities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Itasca County Family Ymca Inc and the most unlike its peers is International Rescue Committee Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 28 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 COE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds ITASCA COUNTY FAMILY YMCA INC ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF 1000 LAKES ↗
- Who funds LAKES AREA MUSIC FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds HEARTLAND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds Itasca Community College Foundation ↗
- Who funds Swim Across America Inc ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds VALLEY CHRISTIAN SCHOOL INC THOMPSON ↗
- Who funds FILMNORTH ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds QUESTSCOPE LTD ↗
- Who funds ALIGHT ↗
- Who funds LAKES AREA HABITAT FOR HUMANITY ↗
- Who funds INITIATIVE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
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: C K Blandin Foundation · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Communitygiving · Minnesota Power Foundation · Minnesota Community Foundation · The Minneapolis Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Amazonsmile 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 The Birkey 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Birkey Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Birkey Family 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.