Nonprofit
Mission Award for
Responsive Philanthropy
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Criteria
This
award recognizes the partnership between funders
and nonprofits in mobilizing resources for public
benefit. Nominated organizations should:
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Be responsive to citizen initiatives;
- Recognize
public policy issues and long-term strategies
to fight problems; and
- Commit
substantial resources to disadvantaged people
and Minnesota communities through a process of
dialogue and partnership.
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Recipient:
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Other
Finalists:
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Recipient
Profile
American
Indian Family Empowerment Program
 The American Indian Family Empowerment
Program’s (AIFEP) purpose is to support and encourage
American-Indian families and individuals to be of service
to their community, connect to their culture and to support
realization of their individual and family potential.
AIFEP began operating in 1996 under the direction of the
Marbrook Foundation and with the leadership of an American
Indian community advisory committee. Today, the Marbrook
Foundation, in partnership with the Westcliff Foundation,
the Grotto Foundation and an American Indian Advisory
Committee, support the work of AIFEP. The three foundations
combined, contribute about $100,000 annually to AIFEP,
allowing it to make meaningful grants to those in the
American Indian community. The AIFEP is critical to development
of Native self-determination in the Twin Cities urban
community, because American Indians receive very little
of total foundation sector resources and lack American
Indian staff and leadership within the philanthropic area.
Locally, AIFEP is striving to close the gap that exists
between mainstream philanthropy and the American Indian
community.
Through the collaborative relationship
of the three foundations and the AIFEP advisory committee,
approximately 500 small grants, ranging in size from $500-2,500,
have been awarded to American-Indian individuals and families.
Approximately 45 grants are awarded annually. AIFEP grantees
have used their grants to complete bachelor’s degrees,
master’s degrees and PhDs. Others have used the
grant as seed money to start small community-based businesses
or connect to their Native traditions, spiritual practices
and revitalization of indigenous languages.
 The innovative approach of the three foundations
and the American Indian Family Empowerment Program support
the local Native community in its efforts to control its
own destiny while being guided and sustained by the power
of its own traditions, culture and values. With the support
of the three foundations, the American Indian Family Empowerment
Programs brings resources to the communities it funds
in culturally accessible ways with an advisory committee
that has both philanthropic expertise and strong community
relations and experience.
AIFEP is a culturally responsive grantmaking
initiative that blends the values of American-Indian tradition,
with innovative philanthropic concepts. Native philanthropy
can be a tool for preserving and transmitting indigenous
traditions into the future, and AIFEP takes care to insure
that that mainstream structures do not supplant its Native
traditions and become another tool of assimilation. In
this sense, AIFEP’s impact helps to forge contemporary
ways in which Native communities can practice their traditional
ways and can pass them onto their children.
During the past 18 months, AIFEP has embarked
upon a new initiative, seeking to become an independent
foundation that can increase its grantmaking capacity
and philanthropic presence through the long-term potential
of endowed reserves. AIFEP funds are intended for self-improvement
in one’s own life, family and community through
one or more of the following goals: preserving and renewing
Native cultural connections, educational achievement and
economic self-sufficiency. AIFEP’s grantmaking is
unquestionably an investment in human capital.
American
Indian Family Empowerment Program Web site: www.grottofoundation.org/empower.php
Finalist Profiles
Blandin Foundation
The Blandin Foundation has committed
the full range of its programming efforts to healthy rural
communities grounded in strong economies, where the burdens
and benefits are widely shared. Their mission is to strengthen
communities in rural Minnesota, especially the Grand Rapids
area.
Statewide, many rural communities are
underserved. Unemployment rates are often twice what urban
and suburban neighborhoods experience, with accompanying
high levels of domestic conflict, depression, substance
abuse, poor achievement in schools and all the other indicators
of societal failure. The Foundation is dedicated to improving
life—economic life and quality of life—by
partnering with the very people impacted by these deficiencies:
listening to them, engaging them, empowering them.
In particular, the Foundation’s
Public Policy and Engagement office works with partners
all across the state to implement strategies that promote
the connection between a healthy forest-based economy,
a healthy forest ecosystem and healthy communities, and
to increase high-speed, next-generation broadband service
and opportunities throughout rural Minnesota. Through
its Public Policy and Engagement project, the Blandin
Foundation convenes groups of businesses, organizations
and individuals to determine what sorts of resources are
most needed, where and how the Foundation’s assets
can best be deployed to help make long-term meaningful
by realistically addressing real problems. This procedure
led to a two-pronged focus on forests and broadband.
 The Vital Forests/Vital Communities Initiative
is guided by an advisory board of hands-on professionals
and advocates, gathering and analyzing issues inclusively,
so that cooperative and often innovative compromise-driven
solutions are shaped by actual stakeholders. This helps
to ensure that no one feels left out or unheard when agreements
are reached and new practices put in place. One significant
consequence was the Blandin Foundation’s role in
leveraging funds for the Forest Legacy Partnership, with
a $6 million challenge grant to purchase conservation
easements, which brought in an additional $1 million in
private foundation money and a proposal for $10 million
in matching state bonding dollars.
The Foundation’s Broadband Initiative has achieved
similar successes: the creation of a strategy board of
public and private leaders, to learn more about broadband
and explore and execute options; delivery of the Get Broadband—Keeping
Communities Competitive program to 29 rural Minnesota
communities; and a start-up contribution of $250,000 to
the Get Broadband project, which effectively raised more
than twice that amount in additional public and private
sector support.
The Foundation’s work in Public
Policy and Engagement has literally connected communities
all across the state to one another and to the world,
which is crucial for these communities. In these towns
and neighborhoods, broadband is revolutionizing commerce,
governance, education and lifestyles, and opening markets,
creating new jobs and morale. In areas of the state where
the forest is the key determinant, the Blandin Foundation
has succeeded in bringing together all the players—
including foresters, artists, environmentalists, tourism
promoters, politicians, private landholders, hikers, community
planners, business leaders and educators—and facilitated
open, respectful discussion that is translating into consensus
and forward progress.
Blandin Foundation Web site: www.blandinfoundation.org
Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation
Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation’s
(SMIF) mission is to invest in the future growth of the
20 counties of Southeastern Minnesota through grants,
loans, technical expertise and partnerships that foster
community assets through workforce readiness and entrepreneurial
activity—especially in areas of bio-medical, bio-agriculture
and alternative energy. A key element of SMIF’s
Community Success Program is the Town Meeting Initiative
(TMI), which seeks to bring citizens together, foster
leadership and civic participation, and develop communities
through local initiatives. Through the TMI, SMIF guides
communities through a process of leadership development
and training, community engagement, asset-mapping, project
planning, and implementation of community-based initiatives.
It encourages a community to utilize the passions and
capabilities of its citizens and build on the existing
wisdom in their community and allows a community to come
together to focus on what they do have, giving them a
feeling of richness, abundance, and the confidence to
move forward. The process takes approximately two years
to complete, and SMIF continues to support the community
with additional resources after completion.
The TMI has been used with 32 communities
throughout southern Minnesota. All but three communities
fall have populations with a median household income of
$49,000 or less, which is well-below the state median.
Of those three, the unique Rochester Hawthorne TMI works
with a neighborhood within a larger community. The neighborhood,
defined as the 2,200 adult learners who utilize the Hawthorne
Educational Center, are typically non-English speakers,
new to the Rochester area, represent 60 countries of origin
and of whom approximately 85 percent are at or below the
poverty line.
 Every TMI project focused on the existing
assets and resources within each community, recognizing
that everyone has valuable talents skills and interests.
This changes the dynamic of the development process creating
an inclusive, positive community-based effort that builds
leadership, expands participation and focuses on the gifts
of individuals and groups. Projects based in community
talent and supported by local efforts are sustainable
and help to create vibrant futures. The process creates
a legacy that continues as communities continue to build
on assets and talents and find new leaders for projects
to improve the community.
During the five years of Town Meeting
Initiative implementation, SMIF has made broad accomplishments.
In five years, TMI worked with 23 communities and involved
well over 4,000 local citizens and 50,000 volunteer hours,
supporting 27 new community-based projects and leveraging
nearly $750,000. Individual communities had their own
specific accomplishments, from a historic steam engine
to symbolize the town’s history with the railroad
to development of “oral memoirs” project with
older residents to including a promotional video for the
community and surrounding region. Other communities matched
250 volunteers with 80 older adults this year to assist
with spring chores, created a Community Garden for collective-use
by community members, taught students about financial
literacy and provided free tax assistance to low income
residents and older adults, and many other engaging projects.
Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation Web site: www.smifoundation.org
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