|
- Assets: $491,823,825 (2006)
- Grants Received: $21,254,796 (2006)
- Grants Awarded: $35,756,947 (2006)
Established in 1915, the Minneapolis Foundation is one of America's oldest and largest community philanthropies. Its President and CEO is Emmett Carson, who was previously the Manager of the Ford Foundation's worldwide grantmaking program on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. The Minneapolis Foundation gives almost exclusively to leftist organizations located in Minnesota. Its areas of grantmaking include: the arts, sciences, education, health, housing, religion, immigration, and the environment.
The Foundation allows benefactors to make various types of donations: (a) Donor-Advised Funds, where individuals determine specifically where their contributions will go (while they can retain anonymity and avoid being publicly associated with the grantees, if they so desire); (b) Community Action Funds, which leave grantmaking decisions up to the Foundation's program staff and Board Committee; and (c) Field of Interest Funds, which allow donors to specify a particular area of charitable interest while letting the Foundation decide which particular organizations should receive money.
Viewing the United States as a nation rife with injustices, the Minneapolis Foundation supports groups that seek to rectify the "social inequities that exist related to poor people, people of color, women, individuals with disabilities, or gays and lesbians." Emmett Carson has expressed the Foundation's view that blacks and Mexicans in America have historically been, and continue to be, "subjected to capricious and racist government policies."
The Minneapolis Foundation characterizes the federal government's post-9/11 anti-terrorism measures as racist assaults on the civil rights and liberties of immigrants. "Once in America," says the Foundation, "[immigrants] find that world events continue to influence their lives in the form of federal and local policies that regulate immigration, documentation, and mobility. Since September 11th, the phrase 'national security' has been invoked as the impetus for many of these changes. For example, male temporary visitors from more than a dozen Muslim countries—most of them in the Middle East—have been photographed and fingerprinted by the federal government. In Minnesota, as elsewhere throughout the country, policy debates about national-security and human and civil rights are often emotional and divisive. In some respects, this is reminiscent of the anti-German and Japanese campaigns during the first and second world wars."
Among the recent recipients of Minneapolis Foundation grants are the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Centro Campesino; the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN); the National Immigration Forum; the Headwaters Fund; the Council on Foundations; the International Peace Academy; National Public Radio; the Public Broadcasting Corporation; Planned Parenthood; the Trust for Public Land; the Wilderness Society; the League of Women Voters; the Ploughshares Fund; the Storefront Group; the Urban Coalition; Peaceworkers; the American Refugee Committee; Citizens for a Safer Minnesota Education Fund; Twin Cities RISE; ISAIAH; Advocating Change Together; the Population Coalition; the Human Rights Campaign Foundation; Human Services; Outfront Minnesota; the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy; the Green Institute; the Headwaters Fund; the Northern Environmental Support Trust; the White Earth Land Recovery Project; Chrysalis - A Center for Women; Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights; the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless; the Minnesota Womens Political Caucus; the Farmers' Legal Action Group; Hispanic Advocacy and Community Empowerment through Research; the Immigrant Law Center; and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
|
