05/26/2026
📰Tonya Allen, president of the McKnight Foundation, wrote an article for The Minnesota Star Tribune sharing how Minnesota became a national model for investing in rural communities. Alongside her piece, leaders of the Minnesota Initiative Foundations, including SMIF President Benya Kraus, also contributed an article about their regions' biggest challenges.
McKnight Foundation president Tonya Allen has a great piece in Star Tribune: “How Minnesota became a national model for investing in rural communities” all about the Minnesota Initiative Foundations, what they have built in greater Minnesota, and why they still matter.
You might be asking, what are the Minnesota Initiative Foundations? That's a great reason to read her op-ed.
The MIFs, as we like to call them, emerged from a period of crisis for rural Minnesota. By the mid-1980s, farms were foreclosing, mining and manufacturing jobs were disappearing, and young people were leaving in droves.
Our response at McKnight was to listen first. Then-Board chair Virginia McKnight Binger and then-CEO Russ Ewald spent a year traveling the state. The result? Six independent regional foundations, each with a mission shaped by the communities they serve.
Forty years later, the MIFs have become a national model for investing in local communities and have helped strengthen every region of our state. The lessons we can learn feel particularly urgent today as Greater Minnesota and rural communities across the country face similar and new, emerging challenges.
Alongside Tonya’s perspective, the presidents of each of the six MIFs highlight place-based solutions they’re finding to issues facing people in their regions:
💬 Brian Voerding with Initiative Foundation on building trust and relationships with social capital in Central Minnesota
👩🍼 Tony Sertich with Northland Foundation on solving for Northeast Minnesota’s deep shortage of child care providers
🏘️ Karen White with Northwest Minnesota Foundation on finding safe, stable housing for struggling families
📍 Benya Kraus with Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation on how they’re addressing rural resource gaps for small town vitality
💸 Scott Marquardt with Southwest Initiative Foundation on how they’re partnering to expanding business loans for local entrepreneurs
☀️ Anna Wasescha with West Central Initiative on their efforts to bring cities together to reduce their energy costs through solar
🔗 Read more from Tonya about how this 40th anniversary can be equal parts retrospective and roadmap: https://www.startribune.com/rural-minnesota-duluth-economics-charitable-giving/601846098
🔗 Read the six Minnesota Initiative Foundations presidents’ reflections on important local issues and their solutions: https://www.startribune.com/rural-mn-economics-housing-child-care-agriculture/601846167
