Funders › Minnesota

Otter Tail Corporation Foundation

Fergus Falls, MN · EIN 83-1883575. Reported 73 grants totalling $726,025 to 72 organizations across tax years 2024. This foundation did not tell the IRS it funds only preselected organizations.

Does this foundation accept applications?

Yes -- on its own tax return. Form 990-PF asks every private foundation whether it makes grants only to organizations it selects itself. Of the 91,758 foundations in our data that made a grant and answered, 78% said yes -- and applying to those is wasted effort. Otter Tail Corporation Foundation did not check that box on its most recent filing, which puts it in the minority that is at least open to being approached.

How big are its grants?

The median grant is $5,000. Half of everything it gave fell between $5,000 and $10,000; the smallest was $100 and the largest $125,000. If you are asking for materially more than the top of that range, you are asking the wrong foundation.

Every organization it funded

This is the complete list from its filings, largest first. Years funded is the number of separate tax years in which the organization received money -- more than one means a real relationship rather than a one-off.

What the money was for

Taken verbatim from the purpose field of its filings. This is the closest thing to a statement of what this foundation cares about, in its own words.

• Project 412 $125,000 · 2024
  Troll Project by world-remounded Danish artist Thomas Dambo
• Und STEM Complex $50,000 · 2024
  Building fund gift agreement
• Lake Region Healthcare $50,000 · 2024
  Luminate Hope campaign for the enhancement and expansion of 3D mamography technology and equipment supporting early detection and treatment of breast cancer
• Clearwater Foodshelf $25,000 · 2024
  Funding the construction of a new food shelf building
• Family Wellness $25,000 · 2024
  The Neuroid Program providing individuals with Parkinsons desease and other neurological disorders the tools they need to manage their symptoms through strength balance and functional movement exercises
• Lifeworks Services Inc $20,000 · 2024
  Serving people with disabilities and their families

What kind of organizations it funds

By the recipient's own IRS classification, for the 37 grants where we could identify the organization. These are assigned categories, not our guesses.

Already committed for future years

Form 990-PF has a separate schedule for grants approved but not yet paid. Otter Tail Corporation Foundation has 5 of them, worth $261,444. This is the one part of the filing that looks forward rather than back -- and it also tells you how much of the next year's budget is already spoken for.

Where its money goes

Foundations concentrate geographically far more than their mission statements suggest. 51% of this one's giving went to organizations in Minnesota. If you are outside its footprint, that matters more than how well your programme fits.

Funders that support the same organizations

These funders gave to organizations this one also funded -- some private foundations, some community foundations and other grantmaking charities. Shared grantees are the strongest available signal that two funders have overlapping priorities, and a funder already backing your peers is a far warmer prospect than one that merely lists your cause.

How to approach this foundation

1. Check you are its size. The median grant is $5,000. Asking for ten times that is the most common way small organizations waste a submission.
2. Check you are in its geography. Its giving is concentrated in Minnesota.
3. Read the recipient list above for organizations like yours. If nothing on it resembles your work, that is a real answer, and a cheap one to get.
4. Look up the current filing before writing. The 990-PF names the foundation's officers and, where one exists, its application procedure. We link it below.

Where these numbers come from

Everything above is taken from Otter Tail Corporation Foundation's own Form 990-PF filings, which the IRS publishes in bulk. We used 4 returns (tax years 2021-2024). Nothing here is scraped, inferred, or estimated.

Address of record on the latest return: 215 South Cascade Street, Fergus Falls, MN, 56538. This is the address the foundation gave the IRS; many small foundations file through an accountant or a bank trust department, so it may not be where post to a programme officer should go.

EIN 83-1883575 · See the original filings on ProPublica · How we build this

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