Minnesota Community Foundation & The Saint Paul Foundation: Two Foundations One Direction

www.mncommunityfoundation.org

Background and Purpose
Minnesota Community Foundation is a statewide community foundation that has been bringing together individuals, organizations, and communities for more than 50 years to help shape their visions for the future health and vitality of their communities through philanthropy. The Foundation does this by: working with donors to achieve their philanthropic goals; responsibly managing the Foundation’s assets; encouraging and participating in community initiatives and partnerships; broadening the base of effective leadership in the community; building awareness of the role of philanthropy in meeting the needs of the community; and providing services to other charitable organizations. Minnesota Community Foundation and The Saint Paul Foundation collaboratively developed a strategic plan in 2008 that will guide their work for the next five years through 2012. The plan clarifies how the two Foundations will work together and where they can make the greatest difference. A common vision, mission and four major goals were developed to guide the Foundations’ work. The Foundations share a common board of directors and intend to build on their long history of partnerships via shared staff, infrastructure and expertise, learning with and from others, and adding even greater value to the communities and people they serve.

Current Request
New tools and technologies are enabling exciting new ways to give. Organizations on the cutting edge of these changes are engaging millions of people - both new and existing donors who are drawn by the ability to make new kinds of direct connections with their favorite causes, the organizations that are advancing those causes and the people directly affected. Minnesota Community Foundation is proposing the creation of GiveMN.org - the first statewide giving portal that connects donors and nonprofit organizations in a thriving online philanthropic community. GiveMN will combine the best elements of all previous efforts and add a few twists of its own to create a new model that is both state-of-the-art and a true community effort. Minnesota donors will be able to search by program type, geography, or population served to find programs in the state that best meet their giving objectives; manage all their charitable giving through a single site; engage in an active, donor-centric online community with opportunity for collaborative giving and information exchange; and take advantage of new charitable capabilities like purchasing charity gift cards and contributing to buy specific items to go directly to people in need. Minnesota nonprofit organizations will be able to reach thousands of new donors; showcase their work on a program level-by posting videos, photos, articles and other materials; post GiveMN fundraising widgets on their own websites to facilitate quick and easy donations for their own donors; and take advantage of new fundraising capabilities like “e-drives” that raise funds for goods or contributions. Minnesota communities will benefit from an improved philanthropic marketplace; increased overall philanthropic giving; and new generations of donors informed about issues that face Minnesota and supporting Minnesota organizations. GiveMN is partnering with the best search and giving platform provider, Razoo.com, to make GiveMN distinctively functional, fun, and easy to use. The Razoo platform is designed to be extremely easy for nonprofit organizations to post and manage their content. GiveMN will wage an aggressive nonprofit engagement campaign with the goal of getting 200 organizations to add rich, program-level content before GiveMN goes live. This campaign will include direct mail and virtual e-mail campaigns, webinars, volunteer SWAT teams, promotion of GiveMN at key nonprofit conferences, online tutorials, and phone-based assistance. GiveMN will be established as a supporting organization of Minnesota Community Foundation, with its own board of directors and appointed board of advisors. It will be led and managed by an executive director whose primary job will be to manage the effort’s operating partnerships and promote active use by donors and nonprofit organizations. It will save staffing and overhead costs by being housed with the Foundation and will receive human resources, finance, IT, development and marketing support as needed from Foundation staff.

It is recommended that the board approve a grant of $150,000 to Minnesota Community Foundation to help finance the start-up budget of GiveMN.