One of the best LGBTQI funders in America ($105 million to LGBTQI groups in the last 20 years) has decided to wind down its LGBTQI program. There will be two years of transition funding, but the board believes the Fund has done its work and needs to move on. Hmmm… This is/was a leader in the LGBTQI funding community. It will be hard to find a replacement.
Besides its donor advised funds, The Phillips Family Fund, and other unrestricted funds, the Minneapolis Foundation has EIGHT program funds:
— Catalyst Initiative
— Climate Action Fund
— Fourth Generation
— Fund for Safe Communities
— ONEMPLS
— Restore/Rebuild/Reimagine
— Reimagine Education
— WCA Foundation
NWAF’s Karla Miller recently wrote a piece for their website saying the foundation is keeping equity as a goal but focusing on justice. “Supporting equity is an important goal, but it doesn’t reach far enough. We need to cultivate justice. Our new grantmaking approach centers justice and systems change to help our priority communities thrive on their own terms. It emerged from our continual effort to be a better grant-maker and partner. We aspire to:
— Honor grantees’ worldviews and values
— Share power with grantees
— Trust grantees to know their challenges and know what might work for them
— Recognize that we need to do things differently from a traditional philanthropic approach
— Listen to our grantees
— Support healing within grantees’ communities
— Hold ourselves accountable to learning.”
Read the article on the NWAF website. The Foundation has recently spent a big chunk of cash and resources on American Indian causes, and immigrant and refugee issues.
PROPEL NONPROFITS announced their 2021-2023 Nonprofit Infrastructure Grant Program grantees. A great program in a deeply needed area. Congrats to our friends at Brownbody, one of Propel’s grantees. We love Brownbody’s tagline: “Skate Truth to Power.”
STATE FARM IS 100 YEARS OLD THIS YEAR
Why is that important? Every year the company awards 40 Neighborhood Assist grants. BUT this year, they’re awarding 100 grants of $25,000 to help fund neighborhood improvement projects. The program is unusual in two ways:
— Submissions begin on February 16 and close when State Farm receives 4,000 of them
After State Farm choose 200 finalists, anyone can vote (up to 10x day!) to select the winners.
If you’re up for the competition, it’s a relatively simple application.
MINNESOTA DEPARTMENT OF EMPLOYMENT AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
$3 million was awarded to 26 organizations to provide business loans to disadvantaged entrepreneurs, women, and people of color. Our congratulations to friends at First Children’s Finance and African American Economic Development Solutions.”