Groves Foundation

Groves Foundation is a small, single-family Minneapolis foundation founded in 1955 by Frank M. Groves in honor of his daughter Mary Groves Anderson, who lived with cerebral palsy — its first grant went to the Cerebral Palsy Association, which evolved into today's top grantee, AccessAbility Inc ($155,500 across four grants in the tracked data). Seven decades later, the mission has not drifted: every dollar in the grantee dataset supports Twin Cities/Minnesota organizations serving people with physical or cognitive disabilities.

The most important strategic fact for applicants is a direct contradiction between the foundation's IRS/directory listing and its own website. Foundation registries list an application process ("Letter, Nature of Request"), an eligibility restriction ("Locally Based 501c3 Org"), and a nominal deadline ("Mid August Each Fiscal Year"). But groves-foundation.com states unambiguously: "We do not accept unsolicited grant applications." Read together, this describes a relationship-driven funder where the board proactively identifies and approaches partners, and where any formal "letter of request" channel is effectively reserved for organizations already known to, or introduced to, the board — not a public RFP.

Grantee data reinforces this: 12 of the top 21 recipients received two or more grants, and several relationships (AccessAbility, Augsburg's CLASS program, Groves Academy/Groves Learning Organization, We Can Ride, Shriners Children's Twin Cities) span years and multiple purposes, from operating support to specific equipment. First-time applicants should not treat this as a cold-application funder. The realistic path in is a warm introduction — through a current grantee's leadership, a board member (President F N Groves Jr; Trustees C Gangelhoff, T Asgrimson, T Hartstein), or a Minnesota disability-services network — followed by a short, specific letter of request once that relationship exists. The foundation has explicitly said it prefers funding programs with a defined purpose (an adaptive-bicycle program, a scholarship fund, a therapy program) over general operating or building/capital funds, though long-tenured partners like AccessAbility have received operating grants, suggesting that restriction loosens with trust built over time.

Groves Foundation is a legacy endowed foundation, not an actively fundraising one: contributions_received is $0 in every fiscal year on record (2010-2022), meaning all giving comes from investment returns on a corpus that has slowly shrunk — from $11.17M in FY2013 to $9.4M in FY2022 (assets currently listed at $9.14M), an roughly 16-18% decline over a decade. Total giving has ranged $464,763 (FY2010) to $716,503 (FY2012), averaging roughly $570,000/year across the ten years of financials on file; grants paid specifically (net of administrative/excise costs) ranged $179,000-$503,133, with FY2022 at $412,992 and FY2021 at $503,133.

The foundation's own typical-grant-size data (21 tracked grants) shows a median of $10,000, an average of $16,825, and a range of $2,500 to $75,000 — a foundation built for mid-four-figure to low-five-figure gifts, not six-figure commitments, though outliers exist. The broader 41-grant grantee dataset totals $870,133 (average $21,223 per grant, likely aggregated across multiple fiscal years) and shows heavy concentration at the top: the four largest recipients — AccessAbility Inc ($155,500), Groves Learning Organization ($150,000, a single matching-gala grant), Augsburg University's CLASS program ($130,000), and Groves Academy ($125,000) — together account for $560,500, or roughly 64% of all tracked dollars. The remaining 37 grants split about $309,633 among smaller and newer partners, most under $15,000.

By program type, education and scholarship support (Augsburg CLASS, Groves Academy/Groves Learning Organization, Minnesota Private College Fund) represents the largest share, roughly 48% of tracked dollars; direct disability services and adaptive equipment (AccessAbility, Shriners Children's Twin Cities, We Can Ride, Blind Inc) account for roughly 35%; smaller community and youth-STEM grants (FIRST Robotics teams at Irondale High School, Urban Boat Builders) fill out the remainder. Geographically, 100% of tracked grants ($870,133 across 41 grants) went to Minnesota-based organizations — there is no evidence of out-of-state giving in the data reviewed.

Groves Foundation sits at the small end of Minnesota's private-foundation landscape, both in asset size and in its narrow disability-services mandate, compared with better-known Twin Cities funders that also support human-services and community causes.

(Peer figures are approximate, drawn from publicly reported general knowledge rather than this platform's verified database, since no matched peer records were returned for Groves Foundation; treat them as directional, not exact.) Groves Foundation is roughly 1-2 orders of magnitude smaller than the large MN institutional funders in this table, and unlike Otto Bremer Trust, Bigelow, or Phillips, it runs no open application process at all — its closest analog in behavior is a corporate or family foundation that gives almost exclusively through board-sourced relationships. That makes it a poor target for cold outreach but a strong, durable partner once a relationship is established, evidenced by its multi-decade ties to AccessAbility Inc and Groves Academy/Groves Learning Organization.

Direct news coverage of Groves Foundation itself is sparse, consistent with a small, low-visibility family foundation that does not run public campaigns or issue press releases. Its Candid (Foundation Directory Online) profile shows a last-updated date of September 19, 2025, but no accompanying announcement of new priorities, staff, or board changes was found in that update.

The most notable adjacent development involves Groves Learning Organization — formerly Groves Academy, and one of Groves Foundation's oldest and largest grant relationships ($125,000-$150,000 in tracked grants). In December 2025, Otto Bremer Trust awarded Groves Learning Organization $1.5 million over three years to launch the first phase of the "Groves Impact Cohort." This is a grant to a Groves Foundation grantee, not from Groves Foundation itself, but it signals that one of the foundation's flagship partners is scaling up its programming and actively courting larger institutional co-funders — a dynamic worth watching for organizations hoping to build joint proposals or coalition asks that could appeal to both Groves Foundation and larger funders active in the same space.

No leadership transitions were identified: President/Executive Director F N Groves Jr and Secretary/Assistant Treasurer D F Cmiel appear consistently across the most recent filings reviewed, alongside Trustees C Gangelhoff, T Asgrimson, and T Hartstein. Absent evidence of a strategy shift, applicants should assume continuity — the same disability-services mandate, the same invitation-driven process, and the same modest, steady giving level (roughly $400K-$700K/year in recent years) the foundation has maintained for over a decade.

Because Groves Foundation states outright that it does not accept unsolicited grant applications, the single highest-leverage move is securing a warm introduction before drafting anything. Look first to organizations already in its portfolio — AccessAbility Inc, Augsburg University (CLASS program), Groves Academy/Groves Learning Organization, We Can Ride, Shriners Children's Twin Cities, Fraser, True Friends, Sharing and Caring Hands, Blind Inc — as potential referral sources or coalition partners; a co-signed or endorsed introduction from one of these long-standing grantees carries far more weight than a cold approach.

If a relationship opens the door, keep materials lean. IRS/directory data describes the required document as a "Letter, Nature of Request" — not a full grant proposal with attachments — filed around a "Mid August Each Fiscal Year" window, so treat this as a concise, one-to-two-page letter stating who you are, the specific program or item you need funded, the dollar amount, and how it serves Minnesotans with physical or cognitive disabilities. Avoid asking for general operating support or capital/building funds as a first ask; the foundation has said it prefers to fund a defined purpose (e.g., "Adaptive Bicycle Grant," "Sensory Dysfunction Grant," "Hydraulic Lift Grant," scholarship funds) rather than open-ended requests — items and named programs, not budgets, are the currency here. Once trust is established over multiple grant cycles, the foundation has shown willingness to fund broader operating and program support, as it has for AccessAbility Inc.

Common mistakes to avoid: submitting through a generic web contact form as a first touch, requesting amounts well outside the typical $2,500-$75,000 range (median $10,000) without an unusually compelling case, framing the request as regional/national rather than strictly Twin Cities/Minnesota-based, and omitting a clear tie to disability services (the foundation's STEM/robotics grants to Irondale High School's FIRST Robotics team appear to be an exception tied to a specific local relationship, not a broadened mandate). Given the modest, unpaid trustee board and lean staff (President and Secretary/Asst. Treasurer are the only compensated roles, each under $80,000), expect a slow-moving, high-trust, low-bureaucracy process — persistence and genuine local ties will outperform polished but impersonal proposals.