IN BRIEF

  • Program goal: Our program works to advance a vibrant future for all Minnesotans with shared power, prosperity, and participation.
  • How we get there: We will accomplish our goal by accelerating economic mobility, building community wealth, cultivating a fair and just housing system, and strengthening democratic participation.
  • What it means: Along with our streamlined grant application process, commitment to ongoing learning, and new accountability framework, our refined approach will help us drive durable, systems-level impact as effectively and equitably as possible to serve our grantee partners and communities better.

“Real change takes organized people and organized money. Abundant communities create belonging. We need to organize the people and the infrastructure to help do that,” says Abdulahi Farah, a lead organizer with ISAIAH Minnesota, a grantee partner of our Vibrant & Equitable Communities program.

That infrastructure, he continues, requires intentional bridging across differences and targeted investments in power-building organizations that focus on relational organizing and advocacy to advance an inclusive, equitable future for all Minnesotans—especially those who have historically been excluded from our state’s rich social fabric and economic prosperity.

This spring, McKnight’s Vibrant & Equitable Communities (Communities) team traveled to St. Cloud with our Board of Directors to better understand how we can support the work of building shared prosperity for all Minnesotans.

“Real change takes organized people and organized money. Abundant communities create belonging. We need to organize the people and the infrastructure to help do that.”–ABDULAHI FARAH, LEAD ORGANIZER WITH ISAIAH MINNESOTA’S MUSLIM COALITION

We were honored to share space, break bread, and have courageous conversations with St. Cloud community leaders, including Abdulahi, at the Multicultural Mall, a new multi-use community-owned facility that serves and celebrates Central Minnesota’s African immigrant community. The mall, which is actively being transformed from a former gym to a one-stop destination, will house an event center, restaurant, coffee shop, salon, two dozen small retail spaces, professional services, and more. It’s part of a growing vision of what the next iteration of cultural malls could and should look like in the region.

Like many communities across Minnesota, St. Cloud has changed dramatically in recent decades. With about 70,000 residents, it is the largest population center in Central Minnesota and is surrounded by small towns and rural areas. The city’s population of people of color has more than doubled in the last decade. In 2020, people of color comprised about 32 percent of St. Cloud’s population—up from 17 percent in 2010.

While St. Cloud has its own unique culture, its demographics reflect changes happening throughout Greater Minnesota. Demographic shifts in our largest regional population centers parallel those in St. Cloud. This growth is largely made up of immigrants and refugees. The commonly held image of Greater Minnesota is that it is homogenous and mostly white, and that’s far from reality. Duluth, Rochester, Mankato, and Moorhead all saw their populations of people of color either double or triple over the past twenty years. Smaller regional hubs across the state are also becoming more diverse. For example, in Southern and Southwest Minnesota, Worthington’s population is now made up of approximately two-thirds people of color—the second-highest ratio in the state after more than doubling since 2000. Willmar’s population has also doubled in that time, with people of color accounting for about forty percent of the population—roughly the same makeup as Minneapolis. In Austin and Faribault, the number of residents of color has more than tripled since 2000.

In many of these places, populations of people of color are responsible for stemming and reversing trends of population decline, making communities more vibrant and bolstering local economies with new business and more jobs. In addition to the opportunities presented by Greater Minnesota’s demographic shifts, there are challenges related to community and economic inclusion. Since Minnesota’s populations of people of color are significantly younger than the white population, these trends will likely continue for the foreseeable future.

Photos: Community Conversations in St. Cloud

Pictured, left to right: Chad Schwitters, Vibrant & Equitable Communities program officer; Shirwa Adan, executive director of the Central Minnesota Community Empowerment Organization; Nora Hertel, founder of McKnight grantee partner Project Optimist. The Central Minnesota Community Empowerment Organization supports and empowers Central Minnesota refugee and immigrant communities through service and advocacy. Project Optimist engages residents of greater Minnesota to collaborate across divides through solution-focused stories and local art.
Vibrant and Equitable Communities program director David Nicholson (left) and Central Minnesota Communtiy Empowerment Organization executive director Shirwa Adan discuss how foundations like McKnight can best support communities in Greater Minnesota. “Scarcity isn’t lack of resources, but allocation of resources,” Adan said.
Pictured, left to right: Greta Stark-Kraker of the Central Minnesota Community Foundation, which works to engage people, connect resources and build a more interconnected community across the St. Cloud region; Hudda Ibrahim, founder and CEO of Diversity and Equity consulting firm Filsan Talent Partners; and McKnight board member Kathy Tunheim at the St. Cloud Multicultural Mall.
Jama Alimed, an elder in St. Cloud’s growing Somali community, explained that while Black descendants of enslaved people and new immigrants have different histories, cultural nuances, and lived experiences, unity across those differences is key to achieving equity for all Minnesotans. “People who are in the same socio-economic bracket are treated the same regardless of race. There are people left behind,” Alimed said. “Black American, Somali, or African – we need to uplift everyone the same.”
In a panel discussion with fellow community leaders Greta Stark-Kraker (Central Minnesota Community Foundation) and Matt Varilek (Initiative Foundation), Jama Mohamed, Social Equity program officer at the Morgan Family Foundation, says foundations can best support equity initiatives in communities of color by centering the aspirations of different groups – and the barriers they face. “When it comes to resource allocation, it works differently for different communities. Look at health outcomes and the history of medicine and the African American community. Trust needs to be built. It looks different in African immigrant communities than in African American communities,” Mohamed shared.
Pictured, left to right: McKnight board member Karen Coleman, community leader Nasibu Sareva, and McKnight chief of staff Cedrick Baker. Sareva is chief executive officer of the African Development Center of Minnesota, a McKnight grantee partner that grows businesses, builds wealth, and increases reinvestment in the African communities of Minnesota, providing culturally relevant lending, counseling, and other services to African communities across the state.
“Abundant communities create belonging,” says Abdulahi Farah, lead organizer for ISAIAH Minnesota’s Muslim Coalition. “We need to organize to build the infrastructure to help do that,” Farah said. McKnight grantee partner ISAIAH is a multi-racial, state-wide, nonpartisan coalition of faith communities fighting for racial and economic justice in Minnesota.
Pastor James Alberts, CEO and Founder of Higher Works Collaborative, says bold leadership is essential to effecting durable systems change. “You need courageous characters in each county who aren’t afraid to say hard things and hold tensions, to bring their full community forward,” said Pastor Alberts. The Higher Works Collaborative advances the lives and livelihoods of the African-American community in Central Minnesota through a variety of services and programming in the key areas of Education, Transportation, Housing, Employment, Health & Wellness, and the Arts.
The Initiative Foundation, one of six Minnesota Initiative Foundations serving Greater Minnesota in partnership with the McKnight Foundation, has a 14-county service area including the St. Cloud area. Working in conjunction with a diverse array of partners and using tools like loans, grants, and charitable funds, the Initiative Foundation empowers people throughout Central Minnesota to build a thriving economy, vibrant communities, and a lasting culture of generosity. Matt Varilek, pictured, served as president of the Initiative Foundation for more than six years. He was recently appointed to serve as the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.
Margaret Kaplan, president of the Housing Justice Center, emphasized that the region’s socio-economic divides contribute to housing insecurity. “Many people don’t have choices about housing. Discrimination, bad jobs, barriers to accessing their rights, and a lack of trust in people to make their own choices, prevent people from having safe, stable places to call home,” Kaplan said. The Housing Justice Center is a McKnight grantee partner whose mission is to preserve and expand affordable housing for low-income individuals and families.
Eunice Adjei is the executive director of the Jugaad Leadership Program, which provides people of color and other underrepresented community members with the knowledge, skills and resources to become effective leaders at the grassroots level. The program runs on grants from the Initiative Foundation, a close partner of McKnight, as well as the Central Minnesota Community Foundation and the United Way. Adjei says St. Cloud’s emerging leaders come from many backgrounds and are already doing the work to make the city a more inclusive, equitable, and vibrant place for all its residents. Pictured, left to right: board member Phyllis Goff, Eunice Adjei, and board member Roger Sit.
Pictured, left to right: McKnight president Tonya Allen, community elder Jama Alimed, and Central Minnesota Community Empowerment Organization executive director Shirwa Adan. "This is an opportunity to ask community if what we are doing is actually helpful, or is harming,” Allen reflected about the St. Cloud convening.
McKnight President Tonya Allen offers her reflections before dinner at St. Joseph restaurant Krewe, a New Orleans-inspired Creole restaurant owned by Mateo Mackbee and Erin Lucas. A loan from the Initiative Foundation, a McKnight grantee partner, supported the opening of the restaurant and adjacent bakery, Flour & Flower. Mackbee serves on the Initiative Foundation’s Board of Trustees. “The success of Minnesota requires all of us to embrace the rich diversity of our state. The closer we are to the people, the more change we can make so every Minnesotan can thrive,” said Allen.

Proximity Is About People and Connection

Many leaders are working to navigate these changes and strengthen the fabric of their communities. Hudda Ibrahim, founder and CEO of diversity and equity consulting firm Filsan Talent Partners, immigrated from Somalia to St. Cloud in 2007 and has been working to make the city safer, more inclusive, and more equitable for every resident. When she saw that a lack of understanding was causing division among neighbors, she launched ‘Dine and Dialogue’, a monthly event that brings together community members from all backgrounds to learn about each other’s cultures. Using shared meals as a bridge across differences, Hudda’s work is part of a collective movement to build a more inclusive St. Cloud. “Equity work is hard. It requires us to engage in diverse discussions with different people, while recognizing our shared values. If we don’t come together, build relationships, lift up and invest in people, we won’t be able to collectively benefit from all of the abundance Minnesota has to offer,” Hudda shared.

Watch a video featuring Hudda Ibrahim, How a Somali Refugee Is Creating Community in Minnesota.

Proximity is about people—building trust, learning with and from each other, and being accountable to those we aim to serve. Together with our board of directors, the Vibrant & Equitable Communities program staff were grateful for this opportunity to be in community and learn from courageous leaders who graciously shared their aspirations, the barriers they face, and how we as a Foundation can best use our resources to break those barriers down. Opportunities like these help us grow our practice of responsive, equitable, and community-centered philanthropy.

We appreciate the community partners that joined us in St. Cloud, including African Development Center of Minnesota, Central Minnesota Community Empowerment Organization, Central Minnesota Community Foundation, Filsan Talent Partners, Housing Justice Center, Initiative Foundation, ISAIAH Minnesota, Jugaad Leadership Program, Krewe, Morgan Family Foundation, and Project Optimist.

“By deepening our proximity—nearness in space, time, and relationship—to our work, our partners, and our issues, we enrich our solution sets and approaches. Proximity strengthens our ability to listen, learn, hear different views, and honor diverse lived experiences.”–TONYA ALLEN, PRESIDENT

Economic Equity Through Four Strategic Pathways

To achieve our goal, we focus on economic equity, a powerful force multiplier that improves everyone’s quality of life and creates vibrant communities. When we invest deeply in our most under-resourced and marginalized communities, everyone benefits from better public health outcomes, stronger communities, and economic growth.

The Communities program has been working to understand how we can best support organizations tackling some of the most important elements for building strong communities across Minnesota. We see these organizations as agents of change and look for alignment with our core values and commitment to transforming harmful systems. Since we launched three years ago, we have identified 185 organizations to support and engage with through dialogue, responsive grantmaking, and emergent learning tables. We have listened to and learned from each of them. We’ve sought to hone our program strategies to improve impact and get us closer to shared prosperity from Minneapolis to Mankato, and from Rochester to Roseau.

Through this work, and in response to Minnesota’s evolving socio-economic landscape, we understand that we must look and act holistically, addressing the interrelated factors of income generation, housing, economic mobility and opportunity, and the wider democratic process. This requires us to go beyond traditional grantmaking by adopting a systems-change approach and deploying a broader range of resources, such as capacity and influence, in addition to capital support for nonprofits.

We’ve worked to strengthen the Communities program’s strategic approach to reflect the increasingly complex and interconnected realities of communities across our state, and how best to deploy our resources to affect systems change and maximize impact. We have gained clarity in our work, grown our team, and honed our strategies as we seek to build a vibrant future for all Minnesotans. In addition to streamlining our grantmaking process to improve accessibility, we identified four key systems-change strategies as having the most potential for driving maximum impact toward our goal:

  • Accelerate Economic Mobility
  • Build Community Wealth
  • Cultivate a Fair and Just Housing System
  • Strengthen Democratic Participation

Over the coming months, my colleagues will share more details about each of these strategies and examples of how they are showing up in our grantmaking and partnerships across the state.

Our Commitment to Continual Learning

The Communities program works at the intersection of people and place, looking for where we can make the biggest impact.

We are excited about our refined approach to changemaking and the potential impact—and we know that we can’t do this work alone. Partnering with people and organizations who can inform, inspire, challenge, and push us forward through collaborative solutions is foundational as we seek to advance a better future for all Minnesotans.

In April, we adopted a new accountability framework, developed in partnership with Brookings Metro. The new tool—an innovative approach to a traditional data index—will allow us to make more strategic decisions about our programming and develop a richer impact analysis.

“Partnering and being in community with people who can inform, inspire, challenge, and push us forward through collaborative solutions is foundational as we seek to advance a better future for all Minnesotans.”–DAVID NICHOLSON, VIBRANT & EQUITABLE COMMUNITIES PROGRAM DIRECTOR

The framework adds a dynamic quantitative lens to our analysis. It complements community-centered qualitative data informed by real people, places, and experiences—such as our 2022 visit to Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, our program advisory panels, and the recent convening in St. Cloud. By taking a holistic approach to that includes both qualitative and quantitative data, we can make more deeply informed decisions about our strategies.

We are excited about the opportunities ahead, at a time when many across the country are looking at Minnesota for how it is leading. We look forward to continued partnership on these priorities and, more importantly, to the future it will create for communities across this state. We will regularly share our progress and the work and impact of the ecosystem of partners who are shaping this work collaboratively.