MANKATO, MN—N’West Iowa has a chance to benefit from a foundation created by former Minnesota Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor.

In 2023, Taylor, who then owned the National Basketball Association franchise, created the Taylor Family Farms Foundation. The foundation’s goal is to enhance rural communities through direct financial grants.

After creating the foundation, Taylor gifted about $173 million of farmland to the foundation as the start of a charitable legacy plan. The money generated from that farmland has since been used by the foundation to support community-focused programs.

On Tuesday, the foundation received another influx of assets when Taylor, who officially sold the Timberwolves in June for $1.5 billion and is worth about $3 billion, transferred farmland and securities valued at more than $100 from Taylor to the Taylor Family Farms Foundation.

Taylor lives in Mankato, MN, and while the foundation gives grants to counties throughout southern Minnesota, it also dips into the neighboring southern state, serving 17 counties in northwest Iowa, including Lyon, O’Brien, Osceola and Sioux counties.

The farmland Taylor gifted spans throughout southern Minnesota and northwest Iowa. Taylor Family Farms Foundation board member Kristin Duncanson said there “may or may not” be farmland owned by Taylor in the four N’West Iowa counties but each one of the counties does have a connection to Taylor.

“Glen may have had employees or people who run the farms or may have lived in them,” Duncanson said. “Although the land may not be there, they may work on them. Our land operators live in those areas, so that’s kind of how we determine where we operate.”

The Minnesota Star Tribune reported in 2023 that Taylor owned about 18,000 acres of land between the two states. In Buena Vista County, beacon.schneidercorp.com lists more than 100 parcels of land under Glen Taylor Revocable Trust.

The foundation, which is based in Mankato, has its first grant period of 2026 coming up. The granting period will be open Feb. 1-28 with a focus on food insecurity.

Duncanson said the foundation received 60-70 applications during the last granting round and awarded about 50 grants.

“We’ve got this opportunity to impact where people work and live,” she said.

Duncanson knew of a few organizations that received grants near N’West Iowa. Buena Vista Regional Medical Center in Storm Lake was given $100,000 to help purchase emergency service equipment for a new ambulance. Sioux Rapids Family Care received a $50,000 grant to replace its X-ray machine. Pipestone, MN, received $25,000 to help convert a church into a child-care center. The Storm Lake Fire Department received $15,000 from the foundation to assist in purchasing new radios.

The foundation plans to support a variety of nonprofit organizations with the focus on rural well-being.

“This is a long-term investment and a long-term commitment to rural communities in those counties that we serve,” Duncanson said. “It’s Glen’s desire as well as the foundation’s desire to be around for a really, really long time.”

The foundation also plans to hold two grant rounds each year. The board has focused its contributions on three areas in past granting rounds:

Small-town emergency services providers.Small-town park and recreation facilities including renovating ball fields and creating pickleball courts.Child-care centers to address the shortage of day-care slots.

Food insecurity in the upcoming grant period will add to the board’s focus.

Since the foundation is only a couple of years old, Duncanson said the impact is tough to judge, but it has gotten some great reports back.

“One of the things we ask the grantees to do is kind of report back to us with who do you serve, what do you do, how would you like to do it again and what would you do differently?” she said. “We work a lot with keeping in touch with folks that we’ve given grants to to see how things are going ask about what that impact looks like.”