|
|
|
 |
Winter 2007
Paul Ylvisaker Award for Public Policy Engagement
Two Minnesota Winners: The McKnight Foundation (2002) and
Blandin Foundation (2006)
|
"We are still indulging in the make-believe of two separate worlds: public on the one hand and private on the other. The facts and necessities are otherwise. One blends into the other; one withers without the other."
— Paul Ylvisaker, 1963, Citizens Conference on Community Planning, Indianapolis
|
|
The Paul Ylvisaker Award for Public Policy Engagement, launched in 2002 by the national Council on Foundations, celebrates Paul Ylvisaker's passion to actively embrace philanthropy's role to help "set the agenda for public consideration and debate." The award is presented at the COF annual conference.
Paul Ylvisaker was a courageous, often lone voice on a range of issues from urban affairs and community engagement to civil rights, the environment and philanthropy. Lured from the Council on Intergovernment Relations in Blue Earth County, Minnesota, to Harvard in 1944, Ylvisaker spent 10 years in academia before working for the mayor of Philadelphia and then the Ford Foundation. As the creator of the Gray Areas Program at the Ford Foundation, Ylvisaker oversaw the allocation of more than $200 million in grants that altered the lives of citizens in cities throughout the United States.
The McKnight Foundation: Minnesota Welfare-to-Work Partnerships Initiative
The McKnight Foundation has long recognized that direct grantmaking support of programs and services is one of several valuable philanthropic strategies. In dealing with issues that are inherently complex and often systemic, policy-related advocacy is also a critical tool. In 2005, the foundation board formally restated its ongoing mission to include "grantmaking, coalition-building and encouragement of strategic policy reform."
McKnight won an Ylvisaker Award for Public Policy Engagement in 2002, the first year of the awards, for its groundbreaking work in welfare reform. At the heart of this work are 22 multi-community partnerships covering 86 of Minnesota's 87 counties. With McKnight's continued support, the partnerships have designed and tested ways to help families get off or stay off welfare and move out of poverty.
McKnight has committed $27 million to help welfare reform succeed in Minnesota since 1997. This funding — the largest foundation commitment to direct service for welfare recipients in the nation — aimed to fill gaps left by sweeping federal and state reforms that require most welfare recipients to find jobs. To increase chances for welfare-reform success, McKnight encouraged employers, governments, nonprofits and others to jointly develop education, training, childcare, transportation and mentoring strategies to support these new workers.
Research by the Wilder Foundation showed that McKnight funding helped providers offer new services, expand old ones and test the effectiveness of different approaches to welfare-to-work. The effort also helped providers strengthen existing relationships and develop new ones among the organizations within communities.
McKnight advocacy efforts include the Embrace Open Space public awareness campaign; the statewide Early Childhood Initiative with the Minnesota Initiative Foundations; a water quality collaborative working collectively toward a cleaner and healthier Mississippi River basin; arts research reports New Angle, You Are Here and Bright Stars, providing opportunities for artists, the public and decision-makers around the state to discuss the impact of the arts on economies and development; and a partnership with the University of Minnesota's Center for Urban and Rural Affairs on the Edge Project, helping to compile lessons learned and best practices related to development in the Twin Cities' outer-ring suburbs.
Blandin Foundation: Vital Forests/Vital
Communities Initiative
|
Blandin Foundation focuses public policy engagement on forest resource management to enhance the environment and vitality of rural Minnesota.
Photo courtesy of Blandin Foundation.
|
Blandin Foundation won the Ylvisaker award for its leadership in the public policy arena to improve forest resource management through systemic change that will enhance the environment and vitality of Minnesota. The award recognizes Blandin's third-party "forest certification effort for privately owned forestlands and a partnership, principally with the Nature Conservancy, to use conservation easements to protect large-scale working forest landscapes."
Vital Forests/Vital Communities focuses on forests as one of Minnesota's key economic advantages. This initiative champions the reciprocal relationship between healthy communities and healthy forest ecosystems, and helps communities optimize the forest's many values as a sustainable resource for the future. In addition, this work has been instrumental in propagating the successful special initiative Goods from the Woods.
As part of the forest initiative, Blandin issued a $6-million challenge grant to purchase conservation easements on industrial forest lands and has committed to help raise private foundation funding and matching state bonding dollars.
Blandin's overall public policy and engagement program brings research, people and organizations together to address opportunities to strengthen rural Minnesota. The approach encourages informed citizen action to assure that rural perspectives are well represented in public discourse.
Besides forest resources, Blandin is working actively to establish broadband technology throughout rural Minnesota. Blandin Broadband Initiative: Keeping Communities Competitive focuses on broadband telecommunications as a key to keeping communities competitive and thriving in a global economy. The broadband initiative began in 2003 with a review of broadband utilization and deployment in Minnesota's rural communities.
Blandin then launched the Get Broadband Community Grant Program, which supports locally led education and outreach efforts aimed at bringing the benefits of broadband to rural households and businesses. Blandin's efforts have turned to promoting a vision for Minnesota's broadband future. The goal is to take this vision to citizens and leaders across the state to help ensure that Minnesota will have the telecommunications skills and infrastructure to be a global competitor.
More
Information from the
Winter 2007 Edition of Giving Forum
|
Thank you to the sponsor of this issue of Giving Forum:
|
| $1,000 Supporter |
The Minneapolis Foundation
|
|
© Copyright 2007 Minnesota Council on
Foundations
Reproduction in any form without the written permission of the publisher
is prohibited.
|
|
