Minnesota foundations: Give ’til it hurts so good

Like the saying goes, it matters where you grow up. So it is with nonprofits in Minnesota, which benefit from generous giving from foundation and corporate grantmakers.

Corporate and foundation contributions make up a small portion of charitable giving (25 to 30 percent) and an even smaller portion of total nonprofit revenue. Still, corporate and foundation giving plays an important financial role for many nonprofits, and this giving often comes in big chunks critical for new or expanded services.

In that vein, Minnesota nonprofits are blessed with a large institutional giving sector, whose charitable contributions are considerably larger than those in neighboring district states, even on a per capita basis.

For example, in 2012 (the most recent year with comparable state data), Minnesota foundations gave roughly twice as much to charitable causes as the four other Ninth District states combined, according to the Foundation Center (see Chart 1). One of the reasons for this big gap has to do with foundation assets. For example, Wisconsin has almost 40 percent more in-state foundations than Minnesota, but only half the total assets ($8 billion vs. $16 billion), according to the Foundation Center.

Minnesota also has a number of very large corporations, with affiliated foundations, headquartered in the state. In 2013, the top 25 corporate foundations in Minnesota—which include the likes of Target, General Mills and Cargill—gifted $146 million to in-state organizations (see Chart 2), along with more than $500 million to non-Minnesota organizations, according to the Minnesota Council on Foundations.

For more discussion of charitable giving and other trends affecting nonprofits, look for the upcoming April issue of the fedgazette.