Unveiling a New Grant Opportunity

After two years of engaging with our key stakeholders, we are extremely excited to share a new grant opportunity that is aligned with our new Strategic Framework.

When we launched the Framework in the fall, we shared with you that we engaged in a deep listening and co-creation process with our community. We convened over 100 nonprofit leaders specifically to understand how our foundation could partner with them and communities they serve more closely and in ways that benefit their work. That process was invaluable and informed our new framework and the grant opportunity we are announcing today.

Based on those learnings, we are pivoting under our new Framework to offer two new annual grant opportunities: Reimagine Education and a new focus that we’re pleased to announce today, Racial and Economic Justice.

These grants will build on our past work and position us to deepen our impact in partnership with nonprofit leaders, our donors, and our communities.

• Advance structural and systems change through policy advocacy, organizing, and movement building.
• Invest in economic systems and practices that build wealth and stabilize communities.
• Advance narrative strategies focused on racial and economic justice.

Our Reimagine Education and Racial and Economic Justice grants are grounded in our longstanding commitment to advance equity by:

• Promoting civic participation and leadership.
• Fostering belonging and inclusion.
• Actualizing access to opportunities that advance upward mobility.
• Seeing and dismantling barriers that hold inequities in place.

These grant opportunities are just two examples of the ways that we are re-visioning our work at the Foundation. Today more than ever, we strive to be responsive rather than prescriptive, and to get as close as we can to those most affected by injustice.

They also reflect input from a variety of nonprofit leaders and other community partners.

• Philanthropy must have a role in addressing injustice by leading and investing in systems-change work.
• Philanthropy must be willing to invest in solutions that reflect the increasingly interconnected nature of community issues.
• Philanthropy must invest in solutions that embed and are driven by community voices.

In addition to these new grants, we are also leaning in to responsive funds like our OneMPLS Fund and Fund for Safe Communities, and we invite you to learn more about how you can join us in those investments.

The challenges of 2020 exposed and amplified hard truths about our society’s inequities. Yet in the midst of sorrow and conflict, we are continually inspired by the grit and resilience of our nonprofit community, and by the passion and generosity of our donors. The Minneapolis Foundation will continue to be a committed partner in realizing strong, vibrant communities, and we look forward to learning, listening, and investing with you.