The Science Museum Of Minnesota

The Science Museum of Minnesota, a tax-exempt nonprofit based in St. Paul, Minnesota, operates as a federal grant recipient and prime contractor delivering museum exhibition design and fabrication, scientific research and data analysis services, and STEM education programming to civilian federal agencies. The vendor's Accounting Division designation in the source carries no set-aside implications; the museum competes in full-and-open procurements across contract and grant vehicles with no SBA certifications.

The museum's federal footprint divides sharply between two distinct capability streams. A dominant lease/rental business—191 of 286 awards under NAICS 722 (Lessors of Nonresidential Buildings)—accounts for $28.9 million in combined potential value across 95 task orders on GSA Basic Ordering Agreement GS05B16890 and 94 task orders on GSA BOA GS05B17117. These are GSA PBS real-estate leasing arrangements tied to the museum's St. Paul facility rather than museum services per se. The secondary capability stream, grounded in the museum's research and education operations, includes prime federal grant work and limited prime contracting. The National Science Foundation has issued 25 awards to the museum across research and education domains; NSF Biological Sciences grants include a $233,888 Long-Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB) award through August 2030 studying extreme climate disturbance in Arctic lakes and a $459,803 ULTRA-DATA award through July 2028 on global riverine solute regimes and machine-learning-driven water-quality prediction. The National Science Foundation's Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) funded an $843,830 two-year award through October 2025 titled "Connecting Opportunities for Research Experiences (CORE) in the Geosciences," leveraging the museum's St. Croix Watershed Research Station and Kitty Andersen Youth Science Center for inclusive geoscience career pathways. The Department of Education Office of Elementary and Secondary Education awarded the museum $2.5 million under the Innovative Approaches to Literacy program (CFDA 84.215) on June 1, 2026, to establish statewide STEM education resource centers running through June 1, 2029. The Institute of Museum and Library Services has funded multiple education and collections projects: a $704,677 21st Century Museum Professionals award through July 2026 supporting equity and inclusion professional development across 20 upper-Midwest museums, and fossil digitization and Maya ethnographic collection projects. The Smithsonian Institution awarded a $150,000 definitive contract on June 25, 2026, for design and fabrication of a traveling skateboarding exhibition with completion due June 25, 2027.

Customer concentration is low by award count (GSA PBS leasing accounts for 28% of 286 awards) but heavily weighted to GSA dollars through the two BOA vehicles. The National Science Foundation ranks second by award count (25 awards) with no dollar totals aggregated in the source. NASA Shared Services Center places six orders worth $5.8 million combined potential value. The museum serves 23 distinct federal agencies with no recurrence cliff risk—only five awards (combined potential value $295 thousand) reach ultimate completion inside the next twenty-four months. Recent year activity is modest: two awards in 2026, three in 2025, four each in 2023 and 2024. The museum's sole sub-award role appears in a March 2024 federal grant sub-award under Sciencenter Discovery Museum, where the museum's evaluation team conducted formative and summative assessment of STEM toolkit and mobile-app projects.