What legal services and nonprofit groups in Minneapolis reported increased foundation or DAF support during the January 2026 ICE surge, and where are their 2024–2025 990s filed?
Executive summary
Reporting reviewed does not identify any Minneapolis legal-services or immigrant-rights nonprofits that explicitly told reporters they received increased foundation or donor-advised-fund (DAF) grants as a direct result of the January 2026 ICE surge; available coverage documents grassroots fundraising and municipal legal action but not foundation/DAF flows, and public Form 990 records for Minnesota nonprofits can be searched via ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer and specialized databases like Grantmakers.io [1] [2] [3] [4] [5].
1. What the coverage actually documents: municipal lawsuits and grassroots giving, not foundation boosts
News releases and local reporting around the ICE “Operation Metro Surge” focus on legal action by the state and cities and on neighborhood fundraisers for immediate needs — the Minnesota Attorney General and the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul filed suit seeking to halt the federal surge [2] [6] [7], and community fundraisers and neighborhood food/rent drives were described as ways to support immigrant neighbors [1]. None of the sources reviewed quote a named Minneapolis legal-services organization stating it had reported an influx of foundation or DAF support tied to the surge [2] [1] [6].
2. Where to look for nonprofit tax filings (Form 990s) tied to Minneapolis legal/immigrant services
Public, searchable repositories for Form 990s covering 2024–2025 filings include ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer, which hosts IRS-processed Form 990 documents and state-level nonprofit summaries for Minnesota [3] [4], and Grantmakers.io for private foundation returns (Form 990-PF), where profiles such as the Katherine Wells Macmillan Foundation are available and list grantees for the 2024 tax year [5]. The Minnesota State Bar Foundation’s Form 990s are also accessible via ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer [8]. These platforms are the documented public places where 2024–2025 filings — when processed by the IRS and uploaded — would appear [3] [4] [5] [8].
3. Why reporters didn’t (or couldn’t) name nonprofits as having received foundation/DAF surges
Reporting in the immediate aftermath of law-enforcement actions typically emphasizes on-the-ground emergency response and legal fights (state and city suits are foregrounded in multiple sources) rather than audited funding flows, and foundations and DAF grants may be processed after the events or reported only in subsequent tax filings; the sources reviewed therefore document municipal legal responses and neighborhood fundraising but do not provide contemporaneous confirmation of increased foundation or DAF grants to specific Minneapolis legal-service nonprofits [2] [6] [1]. Public Form 990 databases will reflect those institutional donations only after returns are filed and processed [3] [4].
4. What can be done next to verify which groups saw increased foundation/DAF support and where their 990s are filed
To definitively answer which Minneapolis legal services or immigrant-rights nonprofits reported increased foundation or DAF support, investigators should (a) search ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer and Grantmakers.io for 2024 and 2025 Form 990/990-PF filings for likely organizations and foundations [3] [5] [4], (b) review press releases and websites of major local legal-service nonprofits for statements or donor acknowledgements after January 2026, and (c) check the IRS-sourced databases again once 2025 returns are processed and posted — the public repositories named in reporting are the documented places those returns appear [3] [4] [5]. The materials reviewed show where filings are hosted but do not include any source-level claim that a particular Minneapolis legal-services group reported a spike in foundation/DAF support tied to the ICE surge [1] [2] [6].