The Saint Paul Foundation Provides Local Capital & Endowment Funding

The Saint Paul Foundation provided capital and endowment support to several local organizations as part of its November 2004 grants.

The foundation contributed $250,000 to the capital campaign for the Young Women's Christian Association of St. Paul. This grant will help realize the goals of the YWCA's capital campaign, which include the purchase of a building adjacent to its current location in the Selby-Dale neighborhood and the renovation of its existing facilities to make them more suitable for child care programs, youth programs and administrative offices.

Peta Wakan Tipi received $25,000 from the foundation for its Dream of Wild Health Capital Campaign, to help purchase a 10-acre farm in Washington County where traditional plants will be grown. Dream of Wild Health, which manages four gardens each year, is a holistic program created to encourage health in the American Indian community by expanding knowledge of, and access to, healthy indigenous foods and medicines. Peta Wakan Tipi issued a call for traditional food and medicine plants six years ago, resulting in a collection of more than 400 heirloom indigenous seeds. These seeds represent a tremendous responsibility and potential to increase health and nutrition in the American Indian community.

The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra Society received a $350,000 foundation grant for its Fund for Artistic and Institutional Advancement. Founded in 1959, the orchestra is the nation's only full-time professional chamber orchestra, presenting more than 150 concerts annually. The organization's current fundraising campaign includes the Fund for Artistic and Institutional Advancement, which will serve as a five-year bridge to move the orchestra toward financial robustness while maintaining artistic quality.

The foundation also awarded $100,000 to the Central Community Housing Trust to help fund CCHT's first development in St. Paul, the Crane Ordway building, for affordable housing. This building will contain 67 affordable rental units of housing, 53 efficiency apartments, 15 one-bedroom apartments and a first-floor community room. The units will be rented to individuals and couples living at 30 percent of median income (34 units) and 50 percent of median income (33 units). A special effort will be made to promote these apartments to seniors, and 20 percent of the units will be set aside for homeless adults. Construction is scheduled to begin in the spring of 2005 and will be completed by the end of 2006.

In total, The Saint Paul Foundation board of directors approved 449 grants totaling $3,978,783 at its November 2004 meeting. For a complete list of grants approved in November (PDF, 11 pages), visit the foundation's Web site.

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