Our Approach

McKnight’s Vibrant & Equitable Communities program fosters shared prosperity, power, and participation through four strategies: Accelerate Economic Mobility, Build Community Wealth, Cultivate a Fair and Just Housing System, and Strengthen Democratic Participation.

Within these strategies, we use all forms of capital—from our grants to our civic voice—to advance systemic improvements for individuals, communities, and society at large. One example of McKnight’s multifaceted approach is through our involvement in the GroundBreak Coalition seeking to build racial equity across our region.

Within the Vibrant and Equitable Communities program, we have identified the specific strategies below. Our refined approach reflects an expanded program team and two years of initial learning with partners. As we move forward, we are committed to continual learning, adaptation, responsiveness, and transparency. We expect to continue this adaptive approach and will use insights from our grantmaking and feedback from grantee and community partners to shape our learning journey. We plan to share more about our learning throughout the year.

Our Strategies

Accelerate Economic Mobility

Build Community Wealth

Cultivate a Fair and Just Housing System

Strengthen Democratic Participation

Accelerate Economic Mobility

We recognize that to create vibrant and equitable communities, all Minnesotans need high-quality jobs. We aim to drive gains in employment, working conditions, and earnings for Black, Latinx, Asian, immigrant, Indigenous, and low-income Minnesotans across the state, paying attention to industry-specific and geographic clusters. We work with a range of partners, such as networks of funders, worker centers, businesses, and government agencies.

Our grantmaking priorities in this area focus on efforts that:

  • Engage champions, allies, funders, workers, and private sector partners to identify and prioritize worker-centered approaches to high-quality jobs.
  • Develop and advance shared solutions among worker leaders, government, and the private sector to make gains in safety, wages, working conditions, and workers’ assets.

Return to Our Strategies

Build Community Wealth

We aim to increase the dollars flowing to the community investment sector and into communities of color and low-income communities, and to increase access to capital (as loans and other forms) to under-represented entrepreneurs and households, so they can launch or grow businesses and/or acquire assets, whether it is a new home, vehicle, or other resources.

Our grantmaking priorities in this area focus on efforts that:

  • Strengthen key community-focused financial institutions’ operational and lending and investment capacity.
  • Develop and spread innovative and equitable lending and investment capital—such as new underwriting, risk management, due diligence, and credit consideration—resulting in new types of loans, ownership structures, and investments.
  • Increase private and public investments in Minnesota’s Community Development Financial Institutions and other community-focused capital providers.
  • Accelerate an equitable procurement strategy designed to increase underrepresented businesses’ share of contracts for products and services to the public and private sectors.

Return to Our Strategies

Cultivate a Fair and Just Housing System

We aim to ensure that more Minnesotans of color and low-income Minnesotans are affordably housed and positioned to build wealth through housing. In doing so, we must also stabilize the housing system to ensure as little loss of existing affordability and ownership as possible.

Our grantmaking priorities in this area focus on efforts that:

  • Increase political will and public support for public sector investments in affordable housing.
  • Expand capital flows to support project pipelines and resource efforts to make it easier and faster to produce and preserve affordable housing (rental and ownership) in our state.
  • Catalyze innovative housing-oriented wealth-building efforts, such as financial products, development practices, and models of ownership.

Return to Our Strategies

Strengthen Democratic Participation

We aim to foster multi-issue coalitions organizing in support of our program goals and to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in our democratic and governing institutions.

Our grantmaking priorities in this area focus on efforts that:

  • Support a strong civic infrastructure around the state through capacity-building investments in key organizations, networks, and intermediaries focused on civic engagement, organizing, and participation.
  • Solidify our core democratic institutions through equity-focused initiatives, such as the U.S. Census and legislative re-districting.

Return to Our Strategies

Key Grantmaking Selection Criteria

These principles are important selection criteria that we use to make decisions on our grants.

Consistent with McKnight’s Strategic Framework and commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, we anchor our Vibrant & Equitable Communities program in the following principles:

Systemic Approach: In collaboration with grantees and community partners, we seek to create an environment where everyone can thrive. This requires focusing our efforts on transforming existing systems and creating innovative alternatives, often by supporting grassroots organizing, capacity building, strategic communications, and public policy changes.

Racial & Cultural Equity: We invest in organizations and efforts that are building toward equitable outcomes through their work, while also seeking to foster a multiracial portfolio of grantees advancing shared prosperity in Minnesota.

Statewide: We engage with partners in both the metro region and Greater Minnesota to achieve shared prosperity throughout the state.

Collaboration: We support collaboration, coalition building, and bridging across public, private, and civic sectors.

Integrated Work: We seek creative and innovative connections across different McKnight functions, including other programs and impact investing, to advance our goal.

How to Apply

Learn more about eligibility requirements, selection criteria, and deadlines on our how to apply page.

Some Articles that Inform Our Thinking

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