· Private foundation
The Scrooby Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k14 grants · $270k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $350k
- $250k+1 grant · $500k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| VAIL VALLEY FOUNDATION | $500,000 |
| THE ART PARTNERSHIP | $200,000 |
| THE NATURE CONSERVANCY | $100,000 |
| AMERICAN RED CROSS | $50,000 |
| TPT | $25,000 |
| NATIONAL SOCIETY OF COLONIAL DAMES | $25,000 |
| OCEAN REEF CUTURE CENTER | $25,000 |
| OCEAN REEF MEDICAL CENTER | $25,000 |
| GRAYVIL ANIMAL CENTER | $25,000 |
| MN LAND TRUST | $20,000 |
| ANIMAL HUMANE SOCIETY | $20,000 |
| EAGLE VALLEY LAND TRUST | $20,000 |
| ORDWAY CENTER - PERFORMANING ART | $20,000 |
| BETTY FORD ALPINE GARDEN | $15,000 |
| SECOND HARVEST HEARTLAND | $15,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY18–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 59% of your 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 16% of The Scrooby 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, 62% of the giving stays in MN; read by stated purpose it is 58% — 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.
32 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2025, 20 since wound down; 5 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, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $180k 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
- TAThe Arts Partnership5× · 2019–2025 · $550k · revenue +22%
- AHAnimal Humane Society7× · 2018–2025 · $291k · revenue +14%
THE MOUNT VERNON LADIES' ASSOCIATION OF THE UNION2× · 2023–2024 · $200k · revenue +24%
Funded once
- MHMIN HISTORICALSOCIETYFIRST INSTALLone grant, 2023 · $250k
- 4F4 FOR ONE ARTS PARTNERSHIPone grant, 2023 · $125k
- RCRAMSEY COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY INCone grant, 2022 · $100k · revenue -53%
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.
To support charitable, plant-based scientific, and educational activities exclusively for the benefit of the minnesota landscape arboretum of the university of minnesota
The minnesota orchestra mission is to enrich, inspire and serve our community as an enduring symphony orchestra internationally recognized for its artistic excellence.
The great northern celebrates our cold, creative winters through ten days of diverse programming that invigorate mind and body. in an era of changing climate that threatens our signature season, we seek to create community, inspire action,…
The museum's mission statement is "turn on the science: inspire learning. inform policy. improve lives."
The Minnesota Opera connects people in the shared pursuit of a more empathetic, equitable, joyful life by expanding the circle of musical storytelling.
To create community vibrancy by making strong parks superb. our vision is that everyone has equitable access to truly great green spaces where they feel welcomed, pursue wellness and find joy.
Theater mu produces great performances born of arts, equity, and justice from the heart of the asian american experience.
The minneapolis institute of art (mia) enriches the community by collecting, preserving, and making accessible outstanding works of art from the world's diverse cultures.
The Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) is a non-profit educational and cultural institution established in 1849. MNHS collects, preserves, and tells the story of Minnesota's past through museum exhibits, libraries and collections,…
Wp theater is the nation's oldest and largest theater company dedicated to developing, producing, and promoting the work of women+ at every stage of their careers. for over four decades we have served as leaders of a global movement…
The mission of minnesota public radio is creating the future of public media by amplifying voices to inform, include, and inspire.
The Minneapolis Parks Foundation transforms human lives through parks and public spaces by aligning philanthropic investment and community vision.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Ordway Center for the Performing Arts and the most unlike its peers is Balletx. 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 44 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 63 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 VAIL VALLEY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Arts Partnership ↗
- Who funds Animal Humane Society ↗
- Who funds THE MOUNT VERNON LADIES' ASSOCIATION OF THE UNION ↗
- Who funds WALKING MOUNTAINS ↗
- Who funds SECOND HARVEST HEARTLAND ↗
- Who funds COMO FRIENDS ↗
- Who funds EAGLE VALLEY LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds Colonial Williamsburg Foundation ↗
- Who funds WILDLIFE REHABILITATION CENTER OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds Betty Ford Alpine Gardens ↗
- Who funds RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds HENNEPIN THEATRE TRUST ↗
- Who funds THEATER LATTE DA ↗
- Who funds OCEAN REEF CHAPEL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GUTHRIE THEATER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PARK SQUARE THEATRE ↗
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: Ibm International Foundation · Xcel Energy Foundation · The Minneapolis Foundation · Mightycause Charitable Foundation · Dellwood Foundation Inc · Fleetwood Foundation · The Hubbard Broadcasting Foundation · The McKnight Foundation · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · William Boss Foundation · Nicholson Family Foundation · Hugh J Andersen 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 Scrooby 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 Scrooby Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Scrooby 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.