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We are pleased to share with you the executive summary of The Minneapolis Foundation’s 2009-2015 Strategic Plan. The Foundation’s Board of Trustees focused the last year on listening to our donors, nonprofits, and community leaders to re-evaluate how we can best deliver on our core purpose: helping Minnesotans make the most of their charitable giving and working in partnership with others to strengthen our community.
Our donors told us they want to be more engaged by the Foundation, to have greater opportunities to share their ideas and expertise with us – and with other donors. We learned that our community leadership role is highly valued, and that our constituents want us to continue to raise awareness of and promote solutions to regional challenges. And we heard that we cannot do it all – a community foundation must be flexible and responsive, but also focused and collaborative to sustain significant impact over the long term.
What's New?
While the strategic plan will bring a sharper focus, clearer goals, and a more collaborative and sustainable approach, you will not see an abrupt change in our priorities and investments. Our new strategic plan will provide enhanced donor services to support the broad range of our donors’ giving, while focusing our unrestricted assets on specific strategies for strengthening our community – and finding opportunities when appropriate to connect these two major efforts. We believe this approach will lead to a more vibrant community in which every person has an opportunity to thrive.
Our donors will have greater opportunities to connect with one another, with interesting organizations and emerging issues, and with enhanced tools and opportunities for giving. Donors can continue to support all of the unique causes and charities they care about. However, with so many of our donors supporting similar outcomes for our community, we are building a framework to leverage shared interests, competitive ideas, and increased resources to strengthen our community.
You’ll also see a clearer definition of the areas in which we feel we can have the greatest community impact with our unrestricted resources: transforming education, promoting economic vitality, and building social capital. Furthermore, we will work to promote social, racial, and economic equality. In doing so, we are working towards the positive vision of realizing our community’s full potential, rather than only addressing the problems. Finally, we have narrowed the geographic scope of our Community Grants (our competitive grantmaking program) to organizations and activities that can demonstrate measurable outcomes for Minneapolis residents.
We are optimistic about our ability to create positive community change and we look forward to continuing our partnership with you.
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