· Private foundation
The Bush Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k5 grants · $26k
- $10k–50k48 grants · $993k
- $50k–250k51 grants · $7.5M
- $250k+44 grants · $45M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| EXODUS FINANCIAL SERVICES | $4,200,000 |
| BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS | $3,150,000 |
| OWAMNIYOMNI OKHODAYAPI | $2,625,000 |
| WAKAN TIPI AWANYANKAPI | $2,482,095 |
| COMUNIDADES LATINAS UNIDAS EN SERVICIO INC | $1,700,000 |
| SAINT PAUL AND MINNESOTA FOUNDATION | $1,600,000 |
| SOUTH DAKOTA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $1,600,000 |
| NORTHCOUNTRY COOPERATIVE FOUNDATION | $1,410,000 |
| BUILD WEALTH MN INC | $1,375,000 |
| MINNEAPOLIS FOUNDATION | $1,350,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,335,000 |
| MIDWEST INDIGENOUS IMMERSION NETWORK | $1,270,050 |
| BUSH FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM - COHORT 20 | $1,215,658 |
| BUSH FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM - COHORT 20 | $1,210,371 |
| NORTHWEST NORTH DAKOTA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC | $1,200,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $21.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 82% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 33% of The Bush Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 60% of the giving stays in MN; read by stated purpose it is 37% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
159 repeat relationships — 84 still active in FY2024, 75 since wound down; 20 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, 51% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $21M 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
- NGNATIVE GOVERNANCE CENTER4× · 2020–2024 · $6.0M · revenue +726% · 70% of their budget
- FBFOUR BANDS COMMUNITY FUND INC4× · 2020–2024 · $5.6M · revenue +450%
- NANATIVE AMERICAN COMMUNITY CLINIC5× · 2020–2024 · $4.2M · revenue +93%
Funded once
- FHFAMILY HOUSING FUNDone grant, 2021 · $4.0M · revenue -89%
- MIMINNESOTA INCLUSIVE GROWTH FUND LLCone grant, 2021 · $2.5M
- COCITY OF LAKES COMMUNITY LAND TRUSTone grant, 2021 · $2.2M · revenue -38% · 44% of their budget
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.
Grow businesses, build wealth and increase reinvestement in the african communities of minnesota
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…
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…
Creating powerful advocacy to enhance economic vitality in the minneapolis-st. paul region.
Mn community measurement empowers stakeholders with meaningful information to drive improvement.
United way of northeastern minnesota invests in nonprofits, programs, and collaborations that equip and empower, creating opportunities for people to thrive in our communities.
Minnesota Voice is a collaboration of organizations working toward permanent change in social, racial, and economic justice by increasing civic engagement and voter participation across the state.
To create an extraordinary downtown minneapolis, applying the core values of leadership, collaboration, advocacy and innovation.
To be the leading voice of medicine to make minnesota the healthiest state and the best place to practice.
The minnesota land trust protects and restores minnesota's most vital natural lands in order to provide wildlife habitat, clean water, outdoor experiences and scenic beauty for generations to come.
To develop and advocate for public policy that makes Minnesota's economy more prosperous and fair for all Minnesotans.
The organization's mission is to bring stakeholders together to promote prosperity and long-term growth of minnesota's economy.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Charities Review Council and the most unlike its peers is Fargo-Moorhead Crossroads. 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 23 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
269 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. 269 of the 337 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 NEXUS COMMUNITY PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds NDN COLLECTIVE INC ↗
- Who funds SAINT PAUL & MINNESOTA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTH DAKOTA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATIVE GOVERNANCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds LOCAL INITIATIVES SUPPORT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds FOUR BANDS COMMUNITY FUND INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST NORTH DAKOTA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NATIVE AMERICAN COMMUNITY CLINIC ↗
- Who funds EXODUS FINANCIAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds INDIAN LAND TENURE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NORTHSIDE ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY NETWORK ↗
- Who funds FAMILY HOUSING FUND ↗
- Who funds Build Wealth MN Inc ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL ARTS STRATEGIES INC ↗
- Who funds Knowledgeworks Foundation ↗
- Who funds PROPEL NONPROFITS ↗
- Who funds THE MINNEAPOLIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LOWER PHALEN CREEK PROJECT ↗
- Who funds HEADWATERS FOUNDATION FOR JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWEST INITIATIVE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OWAMNIYOMNI OKHODAYAPI ↗
- Who funds Makoce Agriculture Development ↗
- Who funds FINNOVATION INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds CITY OF LAKES COMMUNITY LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds LAND BANK TWIN CITIES INC ↗
- Who funds NACA-INSPIRED SCHOOLS NETWORK ↗
- Who funds North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems ↗
- Who funds SPRINGBOARD FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds COMMUNIDADES LATINAS UNIDAS EN SERVICO INC ↗
- Who funds Family Tree 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: The McKnight Foundation · Northwest Area Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · Fr Bigelow Foundation · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Target Foundation · The Minneapolis Foundation · Women's Foundation of Minnesota · Propel Nonprofits · Mortenson Family Foundation · Headwaters Foundation for Justice · Pohlad Family 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 Bush 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.
- Enterprise Community Partners Inc — 22% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Third Sector New England Inc — 3% of income from government
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 Bush Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Bush 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.