McKnight, Other Minnesota Funders Answer Ford’s Call With Over $12 Million for BIPOC-led Arts

Scene from a production at Pangea World Theater in Minneapolis. Photo: Bruce Silcox

Last year, Ford and several partner organizations launched America’s Cultural Treasures, a $156 million-plus, two-phase national initiative to save BIPOC-led arts organizations from becoming casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic and to provide them with the means to achieve long-term stability.

Ford’s metaphorical rocket continues to ascend. Last month, one of the regional partners participating in Ford’s larger funding program—Minnesota’s McKnight Foundation—announced its own two-phase initiative, powered by an initial $12.6 million, to take that moonshot higher.

In its announcement, McKnight listed 10 BIPOC-led arts nonprofits that will receive “at least $500,000” over the next five years or more as part of Phase 1 of its program, called “Regional Cultural Treasures.” Grantees for Phase 1 include American Indian Community Housing Organization Arts Program in Duluth; Mizna, a St. Paul-based organization that supports the work of Arab, Southwest Asian and North African artists; and the Somali Museum in Minneapolis.

During a second phase, “Seeding Cultural Treasures,” McKnight, Ford and two other funders plan to provide $5.6 million to BIPOC-led arts and cultural organizations across “Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and the 23 Native Nations that share the same geography.”

How the funding team came together

McKnight is one of the 10 regional funding partners that joined Ford’s nation-spanning moonshot initiative in 2020, a group that includes the Barr Foundation in Massachusetts, the Getty Foundation and the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation in L.A., and the William Penn Foundation in Philadelphia. Ford apportioned an initial $35 million among each of the regional funders, which all agreed to provide a matching sum to BIPOC-led arts organizations and individual artists in their respective areas.

For their part, McKnight and Ford united to raise the first $7 million, and then the Bush and Jerome Foundations joined the pair to raise the total for both phases to $12.6 million.

As part of the upcoming second phase, “Seeding Cultural Treasures,” grants will go out via a participatory grantmaking process administered by Propel Nonprofits and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC), each of which will solicit participation from area artists and stakeholders in the creation of their respective programs. Information on how to apply for that funding is expected “later in 2021.”

Making the pie bigger

McKnight Arts Program Director DeAnna Cummings told Inside Philanthropy that the large amount of money being moved, and the focus on BIPOC-led arts organizations and individual artists, aren’t the only unique aspects of America’s Cultural Treasures.

“This funding is funding that is on top of payout, both for Ford Foundation as well as for McKnight Foundation and the other partners” who have collectively created the $12.6 million program, she said. In other words, she added, rather than simply slicing off a portion of their respective money “pies” for people-of-color-led cultural institutions, “we said, ‘no, we’re going to make the pie bigger.’”

The focus on BIPOC-led arts, and the amount of money involved, are both unique by themselves. As recently as 2017, the Helicon Collaborative reported that less than 50 cultural organizations with missions focused primarily on BIPOC, rural or low-income communities received enough funding to maintain budgets of $5 million a year.

By making their pie bigger for BIPOC-led organizations and, eventually, individual artists, McKnight and its partners are doing something about that funding inequity and, Cummings said, contributing to both the arts scene and the movement for equity. Each of the Regional Treasures Phase 1 grantees, Cummings said, represent the “best of the best” of the region’s arts world—but that’s not all. They also “do work that’s rooted in building a more equitable world,” she said, adding that their very existence makes Minnesota a better place.

Calling back to the name of Ford’s national effort, Cummings said that “these organizations are our treasures and should be held up and valued as such, as jewels.”

When I asked her how the Phase 1 grantees align with McKnight’s mission to “advance a more just, creative, and abundant future where people and planet thrive, Cummings cited one grantee, TruArt Speaks. During its 10-year existence, TruArt Speaks has used Hip Hop “as a vehicle to engage underrepresented voices in poetry and spoken word, but their work is also really deeply rooted in creating a more just, equitable Twin Cities, and even more broadly,” Cummings said.

Cummings was also refreshingly open about the reason McKnight can afford to increase its payout. “Like practically every other foundation around the country—and especially foundations that are at the billion dollar or more club—McKnight Foundation’s assets made more money this year than we’ve ever made in the history of the foundation,” Cummings said, citing the COVID-era stock market surge. And McKnight did so without some of the creative techniques other grantmakers (Ford included) have used to raise COVID-era capital, like selling bonds.

Speaking not only of McKnight, but to some extent, of philanthropy more broadly, Cummings said, “Part of what I think what we’re seeing is an acknowledgment that we can do more, and that we must do more,” as the pandemic has both showcased and exacerbated vast inequities in wealth.

Getting ready for Phase 2

Leading into Phase 2, the funders went about choosing administrating organizations in a thoughtful way, adopting criteria to fit both immediate and longer-term goals. In the short term, the funders were looking for administrators who had or could develop the capacity to create the program and start moving money quickly.

Ford has encouraged all of the regional partners to move with urgency. According to Cummings, Ford’s message continues to be that “the time is now get the money out to folks as quickly as possible,” without “spend[ing] a minute more than is necessary” on planning, holding strategy meetings, and creating procedures—as the sector as a whole is so famous for doing.

McKnight and its partners also wanted to work with organizations that already had “deep relationships in community,” specifically, the community of BIPOC artists and BIPOC-led arts organizations.

Finding administrators who coupled both of these competencies with the ability and relationships to attract additional funding—a long-term criterion—was a challenge.

“Typically, a partner who had the capacity [to move quickly] maybe didn’t have the relationships in community; chances are they didn’t,” Cummings said. At the same time, “partners who had deep relationships in community, and especially in this past year, didn’t have the capacity right now, and would take a minute” before they were able to develop the capacity to quickly create the program and start moving money out the door.

The two-phase approach to the overall grant program resulted from this challenge, with the Minneapolis Foundation serving as steward for the Phase 1 grant process; Propel for Nonprofits and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC) were chosen to create the process and get funds moving in Phase 2, Seeding Cultural Treasures.

‘Resisting the urge to create the program’

Now that the emphasis is on switching to Phase 2, McKnight and its partners are clear that their role is to establish a minimum base of criteria and then to get out of the way and let the community take the lead. The Seeding Cultural Treasures phase of the overall America’s Cultural Treasures program, Cummings said, is specifically intended to be a space where the funders give up control.

“We are resisting the urge to create the program before we give the program to community to create; we really want that,” she said. The funders envision the creation of a community-driven advisory committee of some sort, so that “people of color [including artists and BIPOC leaders of arts organizations] are creating the program and deciding how this next pot of funds is going to be distributed.”

Going beyond accolades to real, long-term investment

Looking toward the long term, McKnight and the other initial funders hope to attract additional money to this overall project. As a demonstration of that fact, the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council was chosen as an administrator, in part because it administers a lot of local donor-advised funds.

The hope is that these existing relationships will give wealthy donors a way to show their ongoing support of BIPOC communities in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the resulting uprisings, both in the Twin Cities and across the country.

“We don’t want to happen what can happen,” Cummings said, when a smaller nonprofit receives major support for a given timeframe and then, at the end of that time, “they just fall off a cliff, right? That source of money goes away.”

When it comes to keeping that money flowing, Cummings said that McKnight doesn’t feel proprietary about the program, and will, in fact, be pleased if other foundations create their own programs to support BIPOC-led arts in Minnesota. Instead, the wider goal is to “spotlight and amplify” the very real ways that communities of color are essential to the vibrancy of the wider area so that those communities continue to receive “real investment.”

In other words, it’s time for wealthy, mostly white Minnesotans to pay much more than lip service to the BIPOC arts organizations and artists that contribute so much to the area’s arts and advocacy communities.

“So not just accolades,” Cummings said. “Accolades are well and fine, but you can’t pay bills with accolades. [We need to] put money, big resources, [into BIPOC arts communities], just the same as we’ve done for decades in building the predominantly white cultural institutions in our region.”

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