· Public charity
Think Small
To advance quality care and education of children in their crucial early years.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 135 grants below total $8,729,155 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $10,133,472 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $1,404,317 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k52 grants · $375k
- $10k–50k63 grants · $1.4M
- $50k–250k12 grants · $1.5M
- $250k+8 grants · $5.4M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NEW HORIZON CHILD CARE INC | $2,505,427 |
| KUEHG Corp | $628,962 |
| LAKESHORE LEARNING MATERIALS | $549,861 |
| COMMUNITY ACTION PARTNERSHIPS RAMSEY & WASHINGTON COUNTIES | $417,109 |
| LA CRECHE EARLY CHILDHOOD CENTERS | $396,328 |
| YMCA OF THE GREATER TWIN CITIES | $334,298 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF ST PAUL AND MINNEAPOLIS | $312,672 |
| PHYLLIS WHEATLEY COMMUNITY CENTER | $287,724 |
| OLUS CENTER LLC | $229,009 |
| THE FAMILY PARTNERSHIP | $222,061 |
| YWCA OF MINNEAPOLIS | $212,262 |
| AGAPE CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTER | $181,772 |
| PARENTS IN COMMUNITY ACTION INC | $167,584 |
| TUTOR TIME LEARNING CENTER LLC | $97,444 |
| PLYMOUTH ACADEMY | $93,101 |
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 (FY17–25, $24.6M) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 97% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +24% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.
338 repeat relationships — 104 still active in FY2025, 234 since wound down; 30 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $279k 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
- PIPARENTS IN COMMUNITY ACTION INC8× · 2017–2025 · $5.9M · revenue +57%
- CACommunity Action Partnership of Ramsey and Washington Counties8× · 2017–2025 · $4.1M · revenue +67%
- LELACRECHE EARLY CHILDHOOD CENTERS INC9× · 2017–2025 · $3.5M · revenue +34% · 44% of their budget
Funded once
- BCBARAKA CHILD CARE CENTERone grant, 2017 · $176k
- SASTILLWATER AREA PUBLIC SCHOOLSone grant, 2017 · $166k
- VLVANHSY LORone grant, 2017 · $142k
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 offer a happy, healthy, and inspired early childhood learning environment that builds a positive sense of self in children and a connectedness to community.
Monarch Preschool offers a unique play-based learning experience for your child. Play-based, child-led education supports social and emotional development, strengthens language and numeracy skills, and inspires a life-long love of learning.
Good news children's center provides quality childcare to southeast minnesota families, in a safe environment that promotes life-long learning through developmentally appropriate and active learning curriculum.
Little Beginnings provides pre kindergarten and day care to children under 6 years of age. We believe that learning and playing are synonymous for the preschool age child. Young children learn best when they have an opportunity to practice…
By tapping the intrinsic motivation and curiosity of every child, we deliver higher than usual growth.
Rrlc offers exceptional childcare and early childhood learning to children attending its eclp allowing parents to obtain and focus on employment and granting them the peace of mind that their children are being well cared for.
We help children discover a way of dealing with life that is realistic, comfortable, and satisfying. Self-confidence is nurtured as children learn to rely on themselves and each other. The noncompetitive environment is one that allows each…
Childcare services for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and school age children
Little sprouts learning center is an educationally based child care facility located in sleepy eye, mn that strives to serve the child and family in a safe and nurturing environment.
To nurture children to become lifelong learners and citizens of the world using the montessori method of education.
Wild Lilac Dev Community offers high quality, inclusive, culturally competent, accessible early childhood education,comprehensive family support, and educational opportunities for child development educators, social service professionals…
The general philosophy of Northpoint Cooperative Preschool is that we all learn together - adults and children alike. Guided by our qualified, caring, and endlessly imaginative teachers, co-op parents create an environment of learning and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Life Prep and the most unlike its peers is Happy Time Day Care Center. 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 47 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
104 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. 104 of the 606 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 PARENTS IN COMMUNITY ACTION INC ↗
- Who funds Community Action Partnership of Ramsey and Washington Counties ↗
- Who funds LACRECHE EARLY CHILDHOOD CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF THE NORTH ↗
- Who funds YWCA OF MINNEAPOLIS ↗
- Who funds Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis ↗
- Who funds BABY'S SPACE A PLACE TO GROW ↗
- Who funds The Family Partnership ↗
- Who funds Phyllis Wheatley Community Center Inc ↗
- Who funds ANEW DIMENSION CHILD ENRICHMENT CENTER ↗
- Who funds AMHERST H WILDER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Close To My Heart ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA WILDFLOWER MONTESSORI SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds EXCELL ACADEMY FOR HIGHER LEARNING INC ↗
- Who funds CREEKSIDE MONTESSORI SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE SERVING PEOPLE 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: First Children's Finance · Minnesota Child Care Resource and Referral Network · Minnesota State High School League Foundation · The Sheltering Arms Foundation · Greater Twin Cities United Way · The Sauer Family Foundation · Catholic Schools Center of Excellence (Cscoe) · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Medica Foundation · Minnesota Community Foundation · The Walser Foundation · Catholic Community Foundation of Minnesota
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 Think Small 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.