Clear Creek Foundation

Clear Creek Foundation is a small, family-run private foundation headquartered in Deephaven, Minnesota, established in February 2018 and governed entirely by three uncompensated Class A Directors — Blake Carlson, Candace Carlson, and Shawn Carlson. With roughly $5.93M in assets, it sits in the same size tier as thousands of similar single-family vehicles nationally. Critically, the record's listed website (clearcreek.org) does not actually belong to this foundation — that URL resolves to Clear Creek Community Church, an unrelated Texas-based congregation — and no independent website, grants portal, or public program description could be located for the foundation itself. Its own IRS Form 990-PF filings list "application_instructions: none," and internal data marks it as preselected-only, meaning grants are directed to organizations the family already knows rather than sourced through open competition. There is no LOI process, no online portal, and no published deadline to target. For grant seekers without an existing tie to the Carlson family, the realistic path is not a cold application but relationship-building: identifying board, alumni, congregational, or advisory connections to Blake, Candace, or Shawn Carlson, or to organizations they already fund, and approaching through a warm introduction rather than a form. The grant history bears this out unambiguously — of $1.166M distributed across 24 recorded grants, virtually every recipient reflects a personal or family affinity: Mayo Clinic and MD Anderson Cancer Center (medical/health), Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited, and Northern Waters Land Trust (hunting, wildlife, and land conservation), University of Wyoming and the University of Minnesota Foundation (higher education, likely alma maters), and St. John's Lutheran Church (faith community). First-time applicants should treat this less as a grants program to pursue and more as a closed-circle philanthropic vehicle to monitor — organizations aligned with conservation, rural land stewardship, academic medicine, Wyoming/Minnesota higher ed, or Lutheran congregational life are the closest fit if a connection can be found.

Clear Creek Foundation's total giving has grown modestly and steadily: $233,818 (2019) → $236,537 (2020) → $259,267 (2021) → $343,498 (2022, the peak) → $331,242 (2023) → approximately $307,200 in charitable disbursements (2024, per Cause IQ's read of the FY2024 990-PF, which was not yet fully reflected in the underlying giving-total field). Grants paid directly tracked a similar curve: $217,200 (2019) rising to $321,800 (2022) before settling to $285,200 (2023). Across the 24 grants captured in the record, the median/typical grant size is $30,000 (range $7,800-$90,000, average $43,560 on the smaller five-grant sample; average $48,583 across all 24). At the recipient level, Mayo Clinic tops the list at $340,000 across 4 grants (29% of the $1.166M tracked total), followed by Pheasants Forever at $250,000/4 grants (21%) and Ducks Unlimited at $219,200/4 grants (19%) — together, conservation and wildlife organizations (Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited, Northern Waters Land Trust at $68,000) account for roughly $537,200, or 46% of tracked giving. Medical/health causes (Mayo Clinic, MD Anderson Cancer Center at $90,000/3 grants) total $430,000, or 37%. Higher education (University of Wyoming, cumulatively $150,000 across two entity-name variants and 3 grants, plus University of Minnesota Foundation at $20,000) totals $170,000, or 15%. Faith (St. John's Lutheran Church, $28,800/4 grants) is 2%. Geographically, Minnesota dominates by grant count (14 of 24 grants, reflecting the foundation's home state and likely smaller local gifts), with Tennessee (4), Texas (3), and Wyoming (3) rounding out the recorded geographic footprint — consistent with the foundation's own stated geographic focus of MN, TN, and TX. The concentration in just eight named organizations across six years strongly suggests a fixed, recurring donor list rather than a rotating grantee pool.

Clear Creek Foundation sits among a cluster of similarly-sized private family foundations in the $5.9-5.93M asset range, none of which maintain a public application process — a pattern typical of foundations at this scale, which are usually managed part-time by family members rather than professional program staff.

All five peers carry the identical "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" NTEE classification and near-identical asset totals to Clear Creek, and none has a listed website in this dataset — a strong signal that this entire peer cohort consists of small, closely-held family foundations rather than institutional grantmakers with published guidelines. Clear Creek's giving-to-asset ratio (roughly 5-6% annually) is in line with the IRS's 5% minimum distribution requirement for private foundations, suggesting disciplined but not aggressive payout relative to its peers.

The most recent verified financial activity is the FY2024 Form 990-PF, showing $653,995 in total revenue (driven primarily by $323,492 in dividends and $299,349 in asset sales — i.e., investment performance, not new outside contributions) against $363,910 in total expenses, of which $307,200 (84.4%) went to charitable disbursements. This continues a stable six-year pattern with no signs of programmatic change: the same three Carlson family members (Blake, Candace, Shawn) have served as the foundation's only directors since its 2018 founding, all uncompensated, and there is no indication of new staff, a name change, a new program area, or a shift toward open/competitive grantmaking. No press coverage, news announcements, or social media presence could be found for the foundation under any search variation — searches for "Clear Creek Foundation" instead surface unrelated organizations (Clear Creek Schools Foundation in Colorado, Clear Creek Education Foundation in Texas, Clear Creek Community Church) that grant seekers should be careful not to confuse with this Minnesota-based private foundation. The one notable historical data point is a $1,636,050 contributions-received spike in 2021 (versus $0-$14,237 in surrounding years), which grew the asset base from roughly $4.25M (2019) to $5.5M (2021) and ultimately to $5.93M (2024) — most plausibly an additional corpus gift from the Carlson family rather than a fundraising event. Grant seekers should not expect a near-term announcement of a new open grants cycle; the most useful "recent activity" signal available is simply the steady, uninterrupted continuation of gifts to the same eight organizations.

There is no public application process for Clear Creek Foundation — its own filings list application instructions as "none" and its internal classification is preselected-only, so standard grant-writing tactics (cold LOIs, portal submissions, RFP responses) will not reach a live process here. The single most effective strategy is relationship identification: research whether your organization already has any tie — board overlap, alumni network, congregational membership, or program participation — to Mayo Clinic, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited, Northern Waters Land Trust, the University of Wyoming, the University of Minnesota Foundation, or St. John's Lutheran Church, since these eight organizations represent the foundation's entire six-year giving history and the most likely proxy for the Carlson family's personal networks and geography (Minnesota, Wyoming, Texas, Tennessee). A common mistake would be treating this as a conventional open foundation and investing time in a formal proposal package; without a warm introduction, that effort is unlikely to be reviewed at all. If your organization works in wildlife/habitat conservation, land trusts, academic medical research or cancer care, Wyoming or Minnesota higher education, or Lutheran faith-based programming, and can identify a plausible connection point (e.g., a shared board member, a University of Wyoming or University of Minnesota alumni tie, or a Deephaven/Twin Cities-area presence), that is the strongest alignment language to use in any direct outreach — e.g., framing a request around shared interest in land stewardship or medical research rather than generic "community impact" language. Because the foundation is run entirely by three family directors with no program staff, outreach is best attempted through a personal letter or a mutual-connection introduction rather than a general info@ inquiry, and should not assume a response given the closed nature of the giving pattern. Monitor the foundation's annual Form 990-PF (filed via ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer, EIN 82-3365263) each year for any new grantee names, which would be the clearest signal that the family's giving circle has expanded and that unsolicited outreach might have better odds.