The Minnesota Helps Fund: Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort is a collaboration of The Minneapolis Foundation, The Saint Paul Foundation, and the Minnesota Community Foundation to facilitate local contributions to disaster relief efforts.

Contributions to the Minnesota Helps Fund: Hurricane Katrina will be pooled and distributed to where they are most needed -- immediately and in the coming weeks and months as Gulf Coast residents work to rebuild their lives and their communities.

The foundations will work with agencies directly administering disaster relief aid in determining the recipients of local contributions in order to ensure Minnesotans' donations are put to the best use. No administrative fees will be collected by the foundations for this service.

Aid recipients may include the American Red Cross, Salvation Army, local community foundations and United Ways, and other organizations providing direct support.

A number of downtown area faith congregations are dedicating themselves to coordinate relief efforts for Gulf Coast communities devastated by hurricane Katrina.

Mayor Rybak joined more than a dozen of these faith leaders to create the "Minneapolis Relief Fund."

This fund, administered by The Minneapolis Foundation, will be used for both immediate and long term needs of hurricane survivors.

Faith organizations who co-founded this fund:
Basilica of St. Mary
Church of the Ascension
Gethsemane Episcopal Church
Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church
First Unitarian Society
Plymouth Congregational Church
St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral
Temple Israel
Wesley United Methodist Church
Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church
Islamic Center of Minnesota
Episcopal Diocese of MN
Central Lutheran Church
First Christian Church
St. John's Episcopal Church