Generational Goodness
Family with deep Wadena roots models the way for giving at a time of great generational wealth transfer
By Kevin Allenspach | Photography by John Linn
Don Bottemiller can trace his deep-seated commitment to generosity to a simple yet pivotal moment inspired by his parents.
As a recently married young father with another child on the way, Bottemiller was visiting his mom and dad one afternoon and happened to glimpse the check his mother was writing for their weekly Immanuel Lutheran Church offering in Wadena. “It was way more than I ever thought it should be,” he said. “I might have been putting in a dollar or two a week.”
Bottemiller’s budget for his young and growing family was tight. After observing his parents’ generosity, though, he made a decision that has influenced his spirit of giving to this day. “I thought, ‘I can’t give what they’re giving, but what I can do is give 10 percent of my pay increases.’ I’ve basically followed that [ever since], and it really started my interest in philanthropy.”
For decades, Bottemiller has managed a private fund benefiting the Wadena area. In 2023, to streamline operations and access professional assistance, he endowed the fund to the Initiative Foundation. Named the Bottemiller Family Fund, its focus is to fund scholarships for Wadena-area high school graduates and to support local arts and history in his hometown. Together with his children and grandchildren, they make decisions on where grants should be awarded.
A Wave of Local Wealth
Bottemiller’s decision to align with the Initiative Foundation comes at an unprecedented time. According to a study by the University of Minnesota Extension and its Department of Community Development, the next 10 years marks the leading edge of the greatest transfer of wealth in history. It comes as baby boomers, flush with their own inherited and accumulated wealth, decide on the legacy they’d like to leave behind. The study—an analysis based on assets such as homes, businesses and investments—found that $5.6 billion in Central Minnesota wealth will transfer during the next decade. That number rises to $36.7 billion over the next 50 years.
Keeping just 5 percent of the 10-year transfer of wealth by aligning with organizations like the Initiative Foundation would result in nearly $280 million in new endowments and gifts, said study co-author Ben Winchester, a rural sociologist with University of Minnesota Extension and its Department of Community Development. “Over 20 years, this endowment could support grantmaking of nearly $335 million.”
Bottemiller’s Beginnings
Bottemiller grew up in the shadow of World War II. While attending Wadena high school in the 1950s, he worked for Homecrest—an indoor-outdoor patio furniture company started in 1953 by his father and an uncle.
After earning a degree from St. Olaf College and attending graduate school, he served in the Air Force and worked two years at Control Data Corporation. He returned home and rejoined the family business in 1966, and his career took off. Bottemiller climbed from purchasing agent and shipping supervisor to plant engineer, where he supervised building expansions that led Homecrest to employ hundreds of local workers.
In 1973, the family sold the business to Sperry & Hutchinson (S&H). Bottemiller remained as chief executive. While attending a company dinner atop the Pan Am Building in New York, he experienced yet another epiphany about his own generosity when he met William Sperry Beinecke, whose great uncle founded S&H in 1896, and his wife, Betty.
Philanthropy was part of S&H’s core values, and the Beineckes had just given a major gift to Yale University to fund a rare book library. “We were having an after-dinner conversation, and Betty looked across the table and said, ‘Hey, Don. What’s your philosophy on philanthropy?’ Everybody went silent. I gulped and stammered something, including the story about my mother writing that check. I got through my answer, but I decided maybe this is something that needs a little better definition.”
Not long after, Bottemiller was able to reclaim ownership of Homecrest. One of his first moves was to create a stand-alone 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation to award college scholarships and to support activities benefitting the Wadena area.
As global competition increased, times got tight for Homecrest. The business was briefly shuttered, but in 2008 Bottemiller helped to recruit a new buyer and became a minority shareholder in a separate entity. The assets of the foundation, however, continued to grow and produce earnings that were used to make local grants. Bottemiller’s children, Sharon Trahan and Mark Bottemiller, eventually took over as director and secretary/treasurer around the time the fund was endowed with the Initiative Foundation.
Generational Blessings
The transfer of wealth potential across Central Minnesota is noteworthy: $5.6 billion over the next decade. Across all 87 Minnesota counties, that number jumps to $78 billion—a sum that would generate almost $4 billion in new endowments if just 5 percent was directed to philanthropic purposes.
“The opportunity that Minnesota has coming is for local communities—especially rural ones, because we know from the study that this wealth is not concentrated in the Twin Cities metro area,” said Susie Brown, president of the Minnesota Council on Foundations. “People who have lived and raised their families here, got their education here, perhaps farmed or built their businesses, and have been a part of our communities, now have the chance to think about where to invest the fruits of all that labor.”
Philanthropic experts see great potential to make inroads to support childcare, economic development, education, health care, workforce housing and other community needs that can’t or won’t be addressed by federal, state and local government funding.
Paul Grassmann, an attorney specializing in estate planning with Tennessee-based Thompson & Associates, is an Initiative Foundation partner who meets with local people who want to explore their philanthropic interests. One day each month, in a service provided for free by the Initiative Foundation that might otherwise cost thousands, Grassmann engages with families and individuals who might want to transition ownership of a business, save on taxes, or channel wealth to heirs while also giving back to the organizations and communities that matter to them. He listens to their wishes and responds with possibilities they can take back to their lawyers and financial consultants for consideration.
“The work I do is more about the ‘why’ of people’s giving,” Grassmann said. “I have clients who will say, ‘Paul, I can do anything I want. I can leave so much to my children that they wouldn’t have to work another day. But if all I do is transfer my wealth and not my values, I have failed my children.’ Giving back and supporting your neighbor is important to them, just as it was to their parents, and their parents before that.”
The ‘Why’ of Giving
Some donors support churches or local schools. Others create charitable funds as a seed for their families to follow and nurture. Corporate donor-advised funds can be a tool for employees to help channel a company’s philanthropic principles. Still others simply want to leave a legacy. The paths are many and varied.
“I recently met with family members who had sold their grandfather’s business,” Grassmann said. “It was life changing. They became the first generation to really experience wealth. As children, they could remember growing up where it was a luxury to be able to go out for fast food. But now it was also important to them that they knew the values that drove their grandfather and that company to success. It was fun seeing these grandchildren throw out stories about their grandfather and how they related his experience to staying involved in the community where he was from.
“People are being intentional, and there’s been a generational shift, too, in the sense that money went from being this taboo subject that nobody talked about to now being something where you should have advisors and others working with you and be diligent about communicating intentions with your heirs—even if you don’t talk about the dollar amounts themselves.”
The Bottemiller Legacy
Now 85, Don Bottemiller doesn’t get to Wadena much anymore. In retirement, he splits his time between a home on Gull Lake near Nisswa and a residence in Minneapolis. His son Mark, who could be found on the Homecrest shop floor not long after he learned to walk, returned to Minnesota this spring after an absence of nearly 20 years to become the company’s vice president of sales. Don’s daughter and her husband, Ted Trahan, live in St. Paul and have two adult children—Greg, 29, and Käthe (pronounced Kayta), 26—who have already signed on to be future advisors to the family fund.
“I think you can learn an appreciation for the joy of giving,” Sharon Trahan said. “You do it by rote when you’re little—it felt like duty to me, to be honest. But then you get involved with something and you’re like, ‘Oh, this is actually really cool.’ Money follows action, and those actions are important. When your skill set meets a problem, that’s where the joy comes in.”
She said the greatest value the Initiative Foundation brings is providing a steward to handle compliance with the IRS, reporting, and verification that funds are used properly. Donors simply focus on the fun: figuring out what causes to support and making grants. It’s also important that the funding remains permanent and yet flexible into the future.
“Someday we’ll be able to address the different priorities I have, and that my brother has, and that my children will have,” Trahan said. “They know someday they might have to sign some papers, but it’s not going to encompass their life—unless they want it to. We spent quite a bit of time with dad talking about values and reasons, and they’re comfortable with it as much as we can see what the future holds. Eventually they’ll foster their own passions and hopefully put this money where it can do some good.”
Don Bottemiller further has designated a portion of his estate that will go to the family fund after his death, perhaps doubling its value.
“There’s definitely a philosophy of sharing the wealth,” he said. I want to make the world a better place, and this is how I can address a small part of it.”
Billions in Wealth to Transfer in Central Minnesota
During the next 10 years, an estimated $5.6 billion in personally held Central Minnesota wealth will transfer from one generation to the next. Over the next 50 years? It’s $36.7 billion.
“A lot of what we’re looking at is: where wealth is held and by whom,” said Ben Winchester, a rural sociologist with University of Minnesota Extension and its Department of Community Development. Winchester is co-author of a deep-dive transfer-of-wealth study published in April.“Never before have three-quarters of homeowners been baby boomers and older, so a lot of this wealth is in rural Minnesota.”
Rural communities have twice the population of people 65 and older than urban communities do, Winchester said. “That means all this wealth is going to turn over in the next 10 years. Then there will be a little lull and, once Millennials get to the same stage, the transfer of wealth will pick up again.”
Key Takeaways
THE REGION HAS ASSETS: Central Minnesota has a current household net worth of $212 billion. Communities regularly struggle to overcome the perception that they lack the means and the ability to make a lasting change for the better. Simply understanding the scale of Central Minnesota’s net worth can help to dispel the low- to no-resource perception and lead community members to dream more fully about what might be possible.
THE 5 PERCENT DIFFERENCE: If just 5 percent of the 10-year transfer of wealth were directed to philanthropy, Central Minnesota could support nearly $335 million in local grantmaking over the next 20 years.
“That would create significant additional funding for local nonprofits, our community safety nets, and for recreation, food shelves, crisis centers, childcare solutions and other critical community needs,” said Carl Newbanks, vice president for philanthropy at the Initiative Foundation. “As traditional sources of local funding come under increasing pressure, local generosity and planned giving can be a solution and a means to direct benefits to the place you call home.”