“It Is So Worth It.” How This Regional Funder Shares Power Through Partner-Led Grantmaking

staff from the NDN Collective and Nexus Community Partners, with Eileen Briggs (seated far left) and Jackie Statum Allen (seated far right). photo courtesy of Bush foundation.

In 1953, Minnesota couple Archibald and Edyth Bush established the Saint Paul, Minnesota-based Bush Foundation with the mission of supporting organizations and people in Minnesota, the Dakotas and 23 Native nations. The couple intentionally set up the foundation with few restrictions, and by the early 2010s, its leaders had embraced a power-sharing model in which “community partners” design grant programs, evaluate applicants and regrant dollars.

In a recent interview with Bush Foundation leaders, vice president of grantmaking Anita Patel said Bush “doubled down” on its strategy in 2021 with the Community Trust Fund, an initiative that awarded $50 million apiece to NDN Collective (Rapid City, South Dakota) and Nexus Community Partners (St. Paul, Minnesota) to address racial wealth gaps caused by historic racial injustice in Native American and Black communities, respectively. By 2022, a whopping 87% of Bush’s grants and program-related investments were made through its community grant partners and community-led efforts.

At its most fundamental level, power-sharing is a series of gradations. On one end of the spectrum, risk-averse funders may earmark a fraction of grantmaking dollars to regrantors. Bush clearly takes a maximalist approach, but I’d remind readers that outsourcing close to 90% of funding does not, in and of itself, ensure that money will have a positive impact across recipient communities. While handing over the purse strings is important, successful power sharing also requires funders to define and guide the relationship so partners aren’t left twisting in the wind.

Joining Patel on the call were grantmaking directors Jackie Statum Allen and Eileen Briggs. Having collectively overseen multiple community-led programs throughout the years, the trio imparted a wealth of practical guidance into how funders can navigate and dilute the dreaded power dynamic that lies at the heart of most grantmaking relationships.

“We try to meet the partner where they are without imposing our perspective, like, ‘You need to use this grant software or this process,’” Briggs said. “We ask questions, but we also recognize the unique creativity each organization brings to the table.” 

“This is about building capacity”

The Bush Foundation lists all of its grants and opportunities on its website. Some of them, like its Community Innovation Grants, are funded and operated by the foundation. But many of them are funded by the foundation and operated by a community partner.

Consider the Bush Prize, which “celebrates organizations that are highly valued within their communities and have a track record of successful community problem solving.” While Bush provides the funding, a community partner in each of the four regional areas — Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Native Nations — operates the prize. For example, the South Dakota Community Foundation administers the Bush Prize: South Dakota.

The foundation issues something akin to a request for proposal (RFP) when it seeks out grant partners with deep ties to the community. “There’s the obvious fact that we trust the organizations that are regranting our dollars,” Statum Allen said. “We trust their capabilities and their relationships. We can’t be everywhere, and these organizations can be part of those communities in a way that a foundation can’t.”

This doesn’t mean the foundation leaves community partners to their own devices. Having fine-tuned this approach for the better part of a decade, its leaders have embraced a set of roles to effectively support its community partners.

“This is about building capacity,” Patel said. “Some partners need more support, while others may not have done grantmaking before. We devote a lot of time and resources to help them build the infrastructure they need.”

To this end, foundation leaders provide partners with technical assistance, access to consultants and support in developing grant programs. For example, Briggs noted that she and her team regularly meet with Bush Prize partners, discussing and refining its processes.

“It’s a roll-up-your-sleeves power sharing that’s done together,” she said, “and it creates a different and unique condition for grantmaking.”

Lessons from the Community Trust Fund

The foundation’s development of its Community Trust Fund provides an illuminating look into how the strands of its power-sharing work tie together.

In 2021, the foundation put out an RFP asking applicants about their grantmaking experience and knowledge of racial wealth disparities in Black and Native American communities. The foundation received 17 applications and staff selected six finalists. Over the next couple of months, Statum Allen and Briggs conducted extensive due diligence and stayed in contact with organizational leaders.

Next, the foundation convened a community advisory panel consisting of two board members and community leaders from the regional Black and Native American communities. Panelists interviewed the finalists and advised Statum Allen, Briggs and foundation President Jennifer Ford Reedy, who selected NDN Collective and Nexus Community Partners.

The organizations each received a $500,000 design grant to develop their respective grantmaking programs. This process took about a year for the NDN Collective and a year and a half for Nexus Community Partners, with leaders meeting with foundation staff every month.

In a poignant anecdote, Statum Allen recalled a conversation that took place when Nexus Community Partners presented its final program. “I had some suggestions,” she said. “It wasn’t like, ‘You have to do this or you won’t get the $50 million.’ It was more of, ‘Have you considered these things based on what we’ve heard?” Nonetheless, Statum Allen worried that her suggestions, however thoughtfully articulated, would be interpreted as a mandate since she was, after all, the foundation rep who had the power.

Later on, she expressed these concerns to Nexus staff, who immediately waved them away. “They said, ‘Why would you be worried? We’ve been working together for a year and a half, and it felt like we were sharing the program with a member of the team. We wanted your suggestions.’” For Statum Allen, the lesson is that cultivating a power-sharing relationship where the power itself dissipates doesn’t happen overnight.

“If we had done this in a way where there wasn’t time for a relationship, it probably would have felt like I was telling them what to do,” she said.

“It is so worth it”

Given the expansive scope of the $100 million Community Trust Fund, there are some differences between how the foundation worked with NDN Collective and Nexus Community Partners versus its other grant partners. For example, the latter audience typically develops their processes in less time, and the foundation includes the cost of that time in the partner grant award. 

Nonetheless, the larger point still stands — the foundation helps all of its partners develop programs aligned with community needs, underscoring its consultant-like approach to ensure partners effectively wield the levers of grantmaking. But this work doesn’t exist in a philosophical vacuum. One of the most striking takeaways from my conversation with Patel, Statum Allen and Briggs was that this hands-on support is informed by a conscious shift in mindset.

“As you think about power sharing with community partners, you need to be humbled and ready to be challenged,” Briggs said. “You need to have those dialogues in an open and honest way.”

Patel picked up on this theme, telling me, “I think folks need to do some soul-searching and ask, ‘Am I ready to engage? Am I ready to think about the assumptions I hold about people, institutions and communities? It can be messy, but there’s a deep joy in working this way, and I hope more people will lean into it.”

As for where things stand with the Community Trust Fund’s regrantors, in June 2023, Nexus Community Partners launched its $50 million Open Road Fund to “create tangible pathways to liberation, prosperity and healing” for Black residents in Minnesota and the Dakotas. It awarded its first round of funding last year and will re-open its call for applications this summer. Meanwhile, NDN Collective established the $50 million Collective Abundance Fund to provide Indigenous individuals and families in Minnesota and the Dakotas with grants of $25,000 or $50,000 “to support their dreams and aspirations of rebuilding Indigenous wealth.” The fund is taking applications until April 24, 2024. 

Whenever I speak with power-sharing practitioners, I usually ask them what advice they’d give their risk-averse peers, and this conversation was no exception. “I would tell them it is so worth it,” Statum Allen said a few minutes before we signed off. “The Open Road Fund and the Collective Abundance Fund are so much bigger and [more] brilliant and beautiful than I could have ever imagined when we announced the initiative in 2021. They are going to serve people in our region wonderfully over the next few years.”