In Proximity with Partners

As the McKnight Foundation approaches its 75th year, this quarterly series will celebrate the people, places, and work that have shaped the Foundation throughout its history.  

At McKnight, we believe much of our impact directly derives from the relationships we have with people close to our work. This is proximity. To us, it means building intentional relationships, bringing people together, and increasing understanding and action across communities, regions, and divides. 

From the earliest days of this family foundation, established in 1953 by William and Maude McKnight and led by their daughter Virginia McKnight Binger in the decades that followed, our board and staff have valued staying close to the people at the heart of communities. And although we may not have called it being proximate in our earlier days, we’ve embraced this approach across across our work and with partners. 

McKnight uses proximity in every aspect of our work, which includes deep relationships with our grantee partners, our philanthropic peers, civic and corporate leaders, community members, and more. We support those who are closest to the issues—the researchers, the scientists, the artists and culture bearers, the activists and leaders, the farmers, the community members who know their issue and region best. We commit to staying near to them in space, time, and relationships so that we are better capable of learning, hearing different views, and honoring diverse lived experiences. This helps us grow and ground our leadership in the solutions we seek with our partners.  

Here are three examples that highlight our history of proximity and ability to bring people together to advance a more just, creative, and abundant future for people and our planet.

Photography credit: Red Bird Hills / Tasha Herrgott

Investing in ገጠር People and Places: Minnesota Initiative Foundations 

Forged during a moment of crisis 40 years ago, the Minnesota Initiative Foundations have become a model for rural philanthropy, economic development, and forward thinking. 

While the nationwide recession was nearing its end in the mid-80s, rural Minnesota was reeling from almost a decade of bad news: a farm crisis, decline of mining and manufacturing, main street storefronts closing, and outmigration of talented youth. Thousands left their lives and land for metropolitan areas and its promise of steady employment. Rural communities were losing jobs, people, and hope. 

McKnight Foundation then-CEO Russ Ewald, board chair Virginia McKnight Binger, and other members of the family-led foundation traveled around the state and consulted with 60 local leaders. It became clear in these listening sessions that local community members were best positioned to make decisions for themselves. Through this collaboration, McKnight envisioned a regional strategy where rural Minnesota would stay in charge—one that would encourage local giving and local responsibility for the long-term care of each region. The experiment worked. 

In 1986, with seed capital from McKnight, the Minnesota Initiative Foundations were born—six separate regional entities across the state with missions and priorities that were set by the people they served. Within just a year of their launch, the six foundations began changing the economic landscape of rural Minnesota, more than doubling charitable giving in Greater MN areas, an infusion fueled largely by The McKnight Foundation’s deep investment. To date, McKnight has invested $285 million in the six regional entities, and since the beginning, the Minnesota Initiative Foundations have granted $382.6 million to empower their communities and invested $327.9 million in local businesses.

Each foundation is independent and serves its geographic region by delivering grants, business financing, regional programs, belonging work, and donor services. The foundations also leverage support from governments, other foundations, businesses, and individuals who wish to invest in the future of their communities and put those resources to work on the ground across rural Minnesota. The MIFs, as they are called, also regularly collaborate on statewide initiatives. 

“McKnight Foundation came out across Greater Minnesota and convened several meetings not with a template or plan or solution, but with an open ear, listening to what was going on, and beginning to explore what the possible ways would be to empower local people to make a shift from discouragement to hope.”– Kathy Gaalswyk, Former Director, Initiative Foundation

Together, the six foundations—including Initiative Foundation (Central Minnesota), Northwest Minnesota Foundation, West Central Initiative, the Northland Foundation, Southwest Initiative Foundation, and Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation—have awarded nearly 32,000 grants in Greater Minnesota, leveraging nearly $770 million for everything from innovations in early childhood education, to building the capacity of regional nonprofits, to coordinating disaster relief for small towns devastated by tornados and floods.  

Minnesota Initiative Foundations rose from the power of people and forged a path of rural revitalization that inspired America. With the support of McKnight, along with thousands of generous donors and passionate volunteers, the Minnesota Initiative Foundations help ensure the future of Greater Minnesota communities for generations to come.

Photography credit: Richard J Abbott

Statewide Support for Artists: የክልል ምክር ቤቶች 

For 50 years, McKnight has relied on the Regional Arts Councils to help ensure Minnesota’s working artists and culture bearers can thrive.

In decades of supporting artists in Minnesota, we have witnessed artists who powerfully reflect our humanity through their extraordinary points of view. We also know that local and regional artists and culture bearers are best positioned to help imagine the future, tell the stories, and heal the wounds of their own communities. 

We have supported more than 2,000 individuals through our McKnight Artists & Culture Bearer Fellowships since the program’s inception in 1982 and recognized 27 artists since 1998 who have made significant lifelong contributions to Minnesota. And we have been proud to support efforts that strengthen the arts and culture ecosystem in communities across the entire state of Minnesota.

In the early 1980s, McKnight contributed funding to 11 Regional ስነ-ጥበብ Councils (RACs). The Minnesota Legislature established these councils in 1977 to encourage local art and cultural activity throughout the state. McKnight early on saw the significance of building a thriving arts infrastructure that could support artists and organizations on a local level. This early grantmaking nurtured what was then a nascent arts ecosystem in Minnesota.  

“At McKnight, we believe supporting artists and culture bearers means investing in the future world we want to live in.” – Deanna Cummings, Arts & Culture Program Director

Since 2010, McKnight has worked closely with the Regional Arts Councils, as they have directed all our funding to support individual artists and artist-centered activities. The councils’ regional presence and proximity is a huge asset to our grantmaking, providing us the ability to build long-term relationships with each community and understand distinct needs and opportunities. Every region—every town—every artist is unique, and we’ve been able to create artist-centered funding strategies because of these relationships. 

With the Regional Arts Councils as our partners, the Foundation has supported working artists in all 87 Minnesota counties, with councils regranting nearly $27 million in McKnight funding to spur artistic impact throughout the state. Since 1991, McKnight has also had a robust grantmaking program for other arts organizations across the state. 

For 40 years, McKnight’s arts grantmaking has invested in working artists and the long-term creative ecosystem in Minnesota. As we reflect on this legacy of leadership, we are grateful for the opportunity to remain tightly connected to the communities where artists live and work, thanks to our many partners. We look to a future where we’ll continue that history of identifying and investing in artists whose power, depth, and breadth of practice contribute to a just, creative, and abundant Minnesota.  

Photography credit: Angela Ponce

Supporting Local Farmer-Centered Research to Transform Global Food Systems

Bringing global partners together in proximity leads to innovative food solutions.

Early in the 1980s, Mac and Pat Binger polled McKnight Foundation board members and found that food and agriculture were high among their concerns. Backed by a determination that people all over the world could feed themselves, they created a plant biology program at a time when Ethiopia was on the verge of a devastating famine and other developing countries were facing mounting food crises.

Given the scale of the problem, though, McKnight wondered: how can a small player such as a Midwest-based foundation make a global difference? Experts told us to fund research in plant science, which we did for a decade. Through this work, we learned of an urgent need for agricultural research in developing countries, where scientists lacked resources and important food crops remained underinvested, driving the Foundation to get even closer to communities and farmers. This led to the creation in 1993 of the Collaborative Crop Research Program (CCRP), now called the Global Collaboration for Resilient Food Systems (CRFS).

McKnight designed CCRP to be uniquely participatory—and proximate—in nature, bringing farmers and researchers together to forge a path back to well-grown food that nurtures people and planet. This approach honors local wisdom in the three regions where the program operates—the Andes, West Africa, and East and Southern Africa—and raises up new ways of looking at the world. The research focuses on improving the livelihoods of farmers and their communities, and care for the land they rely on.

A key approach to this work has been through forming farmer research networks, which give smallholder farmers and farm communities a voice in their collective future. Since 2013, the Foundation has supported more than 30 farmer research networks ranging in size from 15 to more than 2,000 farmers.

“Given our decades of working in proximity and inspiring collaboration among local farmers, researchers, and communities across the globe, McKnight is uniquely positioned to help influence more funding aimed at agroecological and regenerative food systems.”– Jane Maland Cady, Director

The program marked 30 years as CCRP and 40 years from its inception with a refreshed name—Global Collaboration for Resilient Food Systems—and refined program goal and strategies. Its goal is to cultivate resilient food systems globally by bridging farmer-centered agroecological research, action, and influence. At the core of the program is still place-based, farmer-centered, and agroecology-focused research as a key lever for changing food systems and ensuring a climate-ready future.

We know that farmer research networks work. According to ጄን ማሌድ ካዲ, program director of McKnight’s Global Collaboration for Resilient Food Systems, farmers around the world are collaborating with academics and professionals to co-create research agendas that the farmers otherwise wouldn’t have a say in. For example, in western Kenya, farmers are working with researchers to improve the formula for bokashi, which is a compost made from food waste. In Burkina Faso, farmer research networks are enhancing the productivity of bambara, a groundnut that is an important source of protein. Female farmers in villages in West Africa have successfully tested and selected pearl millet seeds to cross breed so that they can be grown in areas with low soil fertility. And farmers in Ecuador are working to manage crop pests without relying on chemical pesticides.

In June 2023, a group of our board members and staff went to Peru, visiting Lima, the capital and largest city, and Huancayo in the central highlands. This was an incredible opportunity for us to gain proximity with our global partners and appreciate the role that smallholder farmers play in stewarding crop diversity, and witness innovations to the multiple challenges faced by Andean farmers.

McKnight will continue to support farmers’ ability to create agroecological innovations at a local level and scale their work to create just and sustainable food systems globally. We know doing so will increase access to sufficient and nutritious food, reduce food insecurity and poverty, improve climate resilience, and halt biodiversity loss—which is a win for their communities, and a win for the world.

Looking forward, we will continue to emphasize and embed proximity even more deeply into our practices and approach. We commit to forging deeper connections and reciprocal relationships with our partners, and in doing so, we aspire to build more trust, bridge boundaries, and, together, shape and achieve people-centered, durable systems change on some of the most pressing issues of our day.