Tuesday, June 30, 2026, McNamara Alumni Center, Minneapolis
On June 30, 9:00 am - 4:30 pm, we'll gather in Minneapolis for a day-long, in-person event, centered on narrative strategies, social change, and the belief that we need to cultivate a shared identity built on life, rather than on politics.
8:30 - 9:00 a.m. Registration and Coffee Connection
Sponsored by: Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation
9:00 - 10:15 a.m. Breakout Workshops I
Breakout information is subject to change.
From Dollars In to Dollars Out: How Finance, Development & Communications Work Together
Emily Scott, Director of Operations & Finance, Headwaters Foundation for Justice; Liz Skree, Senior Director, Communications and Brand Strategy, Greater Twin Cities United Way; Rebecca Petersen, Director of Development and Philanthropic Services, West Central Initiative
Finance, development, and communications are often treated as separate functions, yet their alignment is critical to organizational effectiveness. This session brings together a Director of Operations & Finance, a Director of Marketing & Communications, and a Director of Development and Philanthropic Services to explore how these roles work together, particularly in foundations that depend on fundraising. Panelists will share practical examples of cross-team collaboration, where misalignment can create challenges, and what all foundations can learn to strengthen internal alignment and organizational impact.
Giving Beyond the Grant: Capacity Building Partnerships
JoAnne Peters, Foundation Co-Director, Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation; Courtney Backen, Senior Director of Community Impact, GiveMN
Sponsored by: Propel Nonprofits
Trust-based philanthropy practices include “giving beyond the grant.” What promising practices have you seen that support grantees beyond the check? Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation will share its experiences providing cybersecurity, planned giving and financial leadership support through partnerships with technical assistance nonprofits. One partner, GiveMN, will share its own perspective and what it's hearing from nonprofits it supports. Participants will have the opportunity to share their own "beyond the grant" approaches to nonprofit capacity building. The target audience includes philanthropic trustees, leaders, program officers, consultants. As a result of this session, attendees will learn practical strategies for supporting grantees beyond the grant. They will learn about capacity building efforts from both a foundation and technical assistance partner's perspective. Attendees will also have the opportunity to share and learn from one another.
AI: A Useful Tool for Efficiency, Insights, and Impact
Joel Barker, President (Co-Founder), Brave North Technology; Ryan Petersen, President, Petersen Consultants
Imagine having a trusted, exceptionally knowledgeable advisor sitting next to you all day—ready to assist with research, answer questions, and offer insights to strengthen your grantmaking and community impact. That’s the promise of AI for philanthropic program officers and foundation leaders – a way to streamline workflows and make data-informed decisions. Along with the promises of AI comes many technological implementation questions, ethical questions, and policy questions. In this session, we’ll introduce AI in straightforward terms, covering what it is, how it works, and why it can be a valuable tool for tasks like grant management, program evaluation, research, strategy development, and all kinds of reporting. We’ll also address questions about data security and organizational considerations.
Community Driven Grant Design
Tiffany Kong, Director of Grantmaking, Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation; Kari Onyancha, Senior Director of Partnerships, Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation; Maryse Birr, Statewide Partnerships Manager, Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation
Sponsored by: Lathrop GPM
In this session, participants will explore how to shift from transactional grantmaking toward community-driven grant design—where community voice, decision-making, and leadership shape funding strategies, criteria, and processes. Drawing on real examples of participatory and competitive grant redesigns, the session will highlight practical lessons, tradeoffs, and successes from working in true partnership with communities. Participants will leave with concrete steps, tools, and guiding principles to reimagine their own programs in more inclusive, equitable, and locally grounded ways.
Collaboration in a Time of Chaos
Dee Baskin, ED, LRAP MN; Amy Sample Ward, CEO, NTEN
In a time of uncertainty, collaboration can move us beyond challenges, confusion, and fear so we aren’t distracted from our missions. It is at times like these that collaboration becomes even more powerful - across communities and sectors. This session offers replicable examples of collaborative efforts with and between philanthropy, community, nonprofits and others, including community engagement and listening, knowledge and data sharing, as well as resource and capacity building. All three presenters represent organizations with deep experience in collaborative models for social impact and will share their experiences and lessons openly, along with invitations for participants in the room to share examples in discussion.
10:15 - 10:45 a.m. Networking Break
Sponsored by: Bush Foundation
10:45 - 11:45 a.m. Morning Keynote: We Win What We Narrate: Going From Stories to Action
Sponsored by: Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies
We know that solid narrative strategies create the environment for social change, but we don't always know how to go about it. Luckily, our own national and local histories offer supreme examples of peoples' movements and community institutions changing the values that guide our government and economy, as well as our culture. Rinku Sen will present important lessons about the ties between community building and civic action, the strategic pivots that movements made in the aftermaths of defeat or victory, the destructive role of jargon and how to unleash the creativity of the everyday storytellers who are deeply embedded in their communities. We will follow this with a longer than usual Q and A period, to dig into current challenges and choices together.
The morning and afternoon keynotes will be led by Rinku Sen, a writer and social justice strategist. She is formerly the Executive Director of Race Forward and was Publisher of their award-winning news site Colorlines. She serves on numerous boards, including the Women’s March, where she is Co-President and the Foundation for National Progress, publisher of Mother Jones magazine. In her current role leading Narrative Initiative, she is building a vision of true multiracial, pluralistic democracy, and helping organizers across movements learn how to saturate every story with their ideas. Read more here.
11:45 - 12:45 p.m. Networking Lunch
Sponsored by: Best Buy
1:00 - 2:00 Breakout Workshops II
Breakout information is subject to change.
Making a Bigger Impact Through “Impact-First” Investing
Jeff Ochs, CEO, Venn Foundation; Susan Hammel, Executive in Residence on Impact Investing, Minnesota Council on Foundations; Nikki Foster, Program Officer, Northwest Area Foundation; Brian Paulson, Vice President, Pohlad Family Foundation
Sponsored by: Medica Foundation
"Impact investing" is on the rise in philanthropy. Impact investing involves intentionally making investments with the goal of creating both (1) a financial return, and (2) a social or environmental impact that is actively measured. "Impact-first" investments are one category of impact investment that prioritizes impact goals over financial goals and typically accepts below-market financial terms. Some impact-first investing tools include recoverable grants, concessionary loans, and guarantees. Foundations often classify impact-first investments as "Program-Related Investments" or "PRIs." In this session, after an introduction to impact-first investing and PRIs, attendees will hear from three different MCF member foundations making PRIs. Each foundation will share the goals, strategy, and implementation model of their respective PRI programs, as well as highlight examples of actual impact-first investments. Attendees will be asked to consider how their foundations might add impact-first investments to their strategies and toolkits.
Youth-Led Grantmaking: The Investment That Transforms Philanthropy
Elly Kjeldbjerg, Project Manager – Programs, Carlson Family Foundation; E. Coco, Northside Funders Group Managing Consultant, Northside Funders Group; Darius Smith, Northside Youth Enrichment Fund Youth Grantmaker and 2025 NYEF Intern, Northside Funders Group; Salma Thompson, Youth Participatory Grantmaking Cohort Alum and Student at the University of St. Thomas
Sponsored by: Thrivent
This session explores the tangible and intangible benefits of participatory grantmaking, especially when youth are involved. We’ll share lessons from our two organizations’ cohorts - from the preparation necessary, to the program itself, to the long-term impacts on our youth grantmakers. Whether you’re interested in more community involvement in your grantmaking broadly or are refining an already existing program, this session will offer practical insights into the steps, challenges, and rewards of participatory grantmaking with a youth focus. Join us and a panel of former youth participants for a candid look under the hood.
Home Stories: Philanthropy’s Role in Narrative Change
Carla Godwin, Project Manager, John and Denise Graves Foundation; Nate Dorr, Senior Program Manager - Rural and Tribal Capacity Building, Greater Minnesota Housing Fund; Jenny Jones, Director of Communications, Minnesota Housing Partnership
Narrative change is a strategic investment in how we build public will and advance our mission. Home Stories is a statewide initiative that centers values-based messaging and storytelling to build public understanding and support for housing as a foundation for thriving communities. This session will explore how philanthropy can play a unique role in shaping and sustaining narrative infrastructure—supporting the connective tissue that links research, lived experience, advocacy, and cultural change. Presenters will share insights from Home Stories, including its research-backed messaging framework, story collection efforts, and statewide network-building strategy.
Using Evidence to Strengthen Grant Decisions
Cooper Hanning, Managing Director of Grantmaking, The Constellation Fund; Jose Diaz, Chief Economist, The Constellation Fund; Karisa Johnson, Program Officer, The Constellation Fund
Foundations use different kinds of evidence in their grantmaking. This session explores how the Constellation Fund uses evidence to compare how different poverty-fighting organizations improve health and increase wealth for low-income Twin Cities residents. Participants will discuss how their organizations currently use evidence and hear how Constellation and other foundations incorporate published research and local datasets to inform funding priorities. The session is designed for foundation staff and trustees seeking to strengthen evidence-informed grantmaking, regardless of current practice level. As a result of this session, attendees will be able to identify different types of evidence available for grantmaking decisions and apply a structured framework for evaluating program outcomes beyond participation metrics.
Collaboration and Laughter: Skills for Bridging Across Difference
Improv Artists from Danger Boat Productions
This workshop focuses on collaboration and bringing people together across difference. Our facilitators, from Danger Boat Productions, bring people together through laughter, creativity, and shared experience. Using accessible, low-pressure improv exercises, participants practice critical collaboration skills: active listening, building on each other's ideas, adapting to the unexpected, and supporting people in the moment. No performance experience is needed — just a willingness to try, laugh, and learn alongside peers. The workshop creates a positive, playful environment where participants can step outside of routines, break down barriers, and learn about the process of building trust. It’s an energizing, meaningful way to build skills for stronger relationships, improve communication, and identify shared values.
2:15 - 3:30 p.m. Afternoon Keynote: Care Is the Basis for the Bigger We: A New Cross-Cutting Narrative to Unify Us
Sponsored by: The Minneapolis Foundation
During our afternoon keynote, we'll continue the conversation with Rinku Sen, who will be joined on stage by a cast of skilled improvisers from Danger Boat Productions. Plan for a deeply thoughtful and serious conversation embedded within a live comedy performance. Real conversations, real-time comedy!
The Setting: Danger Boat Productions will transform this timely conversation into lively, original theater. The keynote will begin with a live interview with Rinku Sen, followed by improvisers who bring the ideas to life with smart, surprising comedy. It will be a one-of-a-kind experience that blends civic dialogue, creativity, and laughter in real time. Plan to learn something and laugh a lot.
The Theme: Rinku's theme for the afternoon will be around building a shared narrative for paving a collective path forward. In the face of so many deep threats, many social justice movements and organizations have adopted solidarity or democracy as their primary narrative frameworks. These are worthy frames, but Narrative Initiative, led by Rinku Sen, has come to believe that, because most people experience solidarity or democracy sporadically, we need to build a shared identity built on life, rather than on politics. Narrative Initiative has developed Take Good Care, a framework to build a shared identity from the place where all people exercise the most action and agency - taking care of self, family, community and environment. Human beings are ingenious and collective about care for both practical and moral reasons. This commonality, even if we choose different solution pathways, can open the flaps to the big tent we know we need. Before Narrative Initiative takes the framework public, participants will workshop Take Good Care, play with its resonance and potential applications, and provide critical feedback to Rinku.
3:30 - 4:30 Social Hour
Sponsored by: Old National Bank