TMN Grants

Grant Recommendations
One or more grant recommendations may be made in a calendar year, subject to the Regional Board member's annual limit under the grant budget determined for the program. The current minimum grant recommendation is $100, and the annual grant limit is $10,000 (or $12,000 for Board Chairs). Grant requests are due before December 1 each year.

Grant recommendations made by TMN Regional Board Members are advisory only, and Thrivent Charitable retains sole discretion to determine grant recipients and amounts. If your grant recommendation is unable to be fulfilled, a Thrivent Charitable team member will contact you.

Qualifying charities and grantmaking due diligence
Thrivent Charitable strives to ensure that grants from your charitable fund achieve your giving intentions and verifies the charitable status of all nonprofits receiving grants. Each grantee’s financial and program information is reviewed. While most grants recommended by donors are honored by Thrivent Charitable, the following types of grant requests are not permissible:

• Grants providing a more than incidental benefit to the donor or other third party. This includes all or a portion of the cost to attend a charitable event, goods bought at charitable auctions, raffle tickets, grants to satisfy a financial obligation to any individual or entity, grants to fulfill fundraising pledges or other commitments, or grants directed to or for the benefit of specific individuals (e.g., school tuition, scholarships earmarked for individuals).
• Grants to organizations whose purpose or work is not solely charitable or when the grant is used for a non-charitable purpose (e.g., cemeteries, VFW, fraternal societies).
• Grants to private non-operating foundations.
• Grants to supporting organizations 501(c)(3)s identified in 509(a)(3) without an IRS determination letter stating they are “Type I” or “Type II.”

In addition, as one of the goals of this program is for TMN Regional Board members to recommend grants to organizations that use the granted funds to address important issues or needs in their communities, re-granting these funds to other public charities or community foundations for donor-advised or other funds in the name of the Regional Board Member is not allowed.

For more information about permissible grants from your charitable fund, please contact the Thrivent Charitable donor services team at donorservices@thrivent.com.

Research Charities
In our role as steward, we perform due diligence on all grants we distribute. We believe that learning more about charities and their work leads to more informed and thoughtful giving decisions; and being an informed and thoughtful giver will result in more effective grants to help charities advance their work. To support and encourage donor research, we suggest you to use the resources below to gather information about specific charities you wish to support, and learn more about charitable giving.

• Charity Navigator: Charity Navigator is America's largest evaluator of charities. Their rating system examines two broad areas of a charity's financial health - how responsibly it functions day-to-day, as well as how well positioned it is to sustain its programs over time. Each charity is then awarded an overall rating, ranging from zero to four stars.
• GuideStar: With free registration, you can view information on all 1.7 million nonprofits listed with GuideStar; all are formally registered with the IRS or have proven they meet all IRS criteria for exempt organizations.

Your Giving Plan Booklet
Set your course for giving by downloading Your Giving Plan Booklet. Use this booklet designed for our donors to help outline why and where you'd like to give. Note this tool is designed for our typical donor-advised fund and not specifically for the TMN Regional Board Advised Grant Program, but it gives you experience with Thrivent Charitable's tools and will assist you in deciding where to allocate your provided funds.