· Private foundation
The McKnight 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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k28 grants · $130k
- $10k–50k185 grants · $4.8M
- $50k–250k444 grants · $48M
- $250k+133 grants · $93M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Minneapolis Foundation | $10,000,000 |
| United States Energy Foundation | $9,600,000 |
| Minneapolis Foundation | $5,000,000 |
| Minnesota Home Ownership Center | $2,200,000 |
| Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund | $2,000,000 |
| The McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience | $2,000,000 |
| Rewiring America Inc | $2,000,000 |
| Community Foundation of Jackson Hole | $1,850,000 |
| Greater Minnesota Housing Fund | $1,750,000 |
| The McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience | $1,500,000 |
| Brick By Brick Training & Development Corporation | $1,500,000 |
| Region Nine Development Commission | $1,500,000 |
| Brick By Brick Training & Development Corporation | $1,500,000 |
| Youthprise | $1,500,000 |
| Local Initiatives Support Corporation | $1,300,000 |
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 (FY19–24, $11.7M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 9% of The McKnight 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, 61% of the giving stays in MN; read by stated purpose it is 63% — more 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +41% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.
735 repeat relationships — 449 still active in FY2024, 286 since wound down; 116 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, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $24M 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
UNITED STATES ENERGY FOUNDATION5× · 2020–2024 · $47M · revenue +40%- TMTHE MCKNIGHT ENDOWMENT FUND FOR NEUROSCIENCE6× · 2019–2024 · $22M · revenue +4% · 100% of their budget
- GMGREATER MINNESOTA HOUSING FUND6× · 2019–2024 · $13M · revenue +581% · 43% of their budget
Funded once
- TETHE ENERGY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2019 · $7.3M · revenue -13%
- MCMINNESOTA COMEBACKone grant, 2019 · $1.0M · revenue 0% · 80% of their budget
- MHMinnesota Housing Finance Agencyone grant, 2020 · $500k
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 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…
Creating powerful advocacy to enhance economic vitality in the minneapolis-st. paul region.
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…
Arts Midwest works collaboratively with private and public arts supporters to support, inform, and celebrate arts organizations and creative communities across the Midwest. Our mission is to build unprecedented opportunity across the…
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.
To create an extraordinary downtown minneapolis, applying the core values of leadership, collaboration, advocacy and innovation.
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…
To be the leading voice of medicine to make minnesota the healthiest state and the best place to practice.
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.
Minneapolis Climate Action is a 501c(3) nonprofit founded in 2007 by a group of dedicated individuals committed to addressing climate change in their community. After almost 10 years of working at the neighborhood level and piloting the…
Common good iowa engages iowans to create and advocate for research-based public policy that makes life better and more equitable for all who make iowa home.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Build From Within Alliance and the most unlike its peers is The Mcknight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience. 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 27 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 2% 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.
940 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. 940 of the 1,155 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 UNITED STATES ENERGY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE MINNEAPOLIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE MCKNIGHT ENDOWMENT FUND FOR NEUROSCIENCE ↗
- Who funds Youthprise ↗
- Who funds GREATER MINNESOTA HOUSING FUND ↗
- Who funds FAMILY HOUSING FUND ↗
- Who funds LOCAL INITIATIVES SUPPORT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NEW VENTURE FUND ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF JACKSON HOLE ↗
- Who funds THE ENERGY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FRESH ENERGY ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST MINNESOTA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWEST INITIATIVE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PROPEL NONPROFITS ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN MINNESOTA INITIATIVE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds INITIATIVE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WEST CENTRAL INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds NORTHLAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TAKEACTION MN EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds PILLSBURY UNITED COMMUNITIES ↗
- Who funds WINDWARD FUND ↗
- Who funds GREAT PLAINS INSTITUTE FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT INC ↗
- Who funds Meridian Institute ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF MINNESOTA INC ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA HOME OWNERSHIP CENTER ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PHILANTHROPIC TRUST ↗
- Who funds PARK CITY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Innovia Foundation ↗
- Who funds SAINT PAUL & MINNESOTA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Cowles Center ↗
- Who funds NEXUS COMMUNITY PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds Metropolitan Economic Development Association ↗
- Who funds BME NETWORKS INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHCOUNTRY COOPERATIVE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CLIMATE AND CLEAN ENERGY EQUITY FUND ↗
- Who funds ST PAUL TRANSPORTATION MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS 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: Target Foundation · Fr Bigelow Foundation · The Bush Foundation · Propel Nonprofits · Headwaters Foundation for Justice · Mortenson Family Foundation · Northwest Area Foundation · Minnesota Humanities Center · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · The Minneapolis Foundation · Pohlad Family Foundation · Jerome Foundation Inc
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 McKnight 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.
- Inclusive Prosperity Capital Inc — 100% of income from government
- Forth Mobility Fund — 7% of income from government
- Ceres Inc — 0% 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.