Our History
Collective Impact
Since 2008, the Northside Funders Group has brought together funders with investments in North Minneapolis to collectively learn and share resources to increase everyone’s impact. In 2012, building on our original series of successful collaborations, we embarked on a process to elevate our work in order to do even more together. This groundwork helped us to accelerate our momentum and achieve true collective impact and sustainable results for the community. In 2013, we hired our first executive director and adopted our first Blueprint for Action. We outlined opportunities for impact in five priority focus areas, convened the community and defined our approach to the work through four levers for change: learn, leverage, influence and invest. Our evolution has and continues to lay the groundwork for a more effective, integrated model of philanthropic impact.
Our Mission
Northside Funders Group exists to align public and private investments to create solutions to advance and achieve racial equity, up-lift and include community voice, and advance social, educational, and economic opportunities in North Minneapolis.
Our Vision
Northside Funders Group envisions a new approach to philanthropy that redistributes wealth, decentralizes power and shifts it to community, and puts economic control back in the hands of the North Minneapolis community in a way that is transformational and healing.
Commitment to North Minneapolis
As a place-based collaborative, we actively engage in understanding how racial, social, and economic disparities have disproportionately affected North Minneapolis and actively seek to do our part to dismantle systems of oppression and support innovative community-based solutions.
Sharing Risk to Achieve Collective Success
We commit to being bold in our collective decisions and use the collaborative as a place to step outside our comfort zone to make investments, influence policy, and advocate for community needs.
Commitment to Racial, Social, and Economic Equity
We know that race plays a key role in access to community resources and opportunities that are on par with white peers. We also recognize that race intersects with many other identities and community challenges and we actively work to uplift this issue to ensure that we advance equity and create inclusive opportunities.
Collaborative Spirit
We recognize that our work cannot be done without partners from all sectors (corporate, government, non-profit, and philanthropy) to make significant community changes. We actively seek individuals and organizations that are committed to creative community solutions that lead to positive impact.
Active Learning
We ensure that we create a learning environment where we provide opportunities for knowledge exchange, space to challenge internalized racism and systems of oppression, and use this knowledge to inform and make bold, radical, transformative decisions.
What We Fund
Northside Funders Group has two key priorities: Education and Wealth Building and Prosperity. With a race equity lens across our funding areas, we make it a priority to fund organizations and/or projects that are BIPOC-led and primarily serve BIPOC communities.
Joel Luedtke
Board Chair
Joel Luedtke is a Program Director at The Minneapolis Foundation focusing on K-12 education. In this position he principally supports the grantmaking efforts of the Jay and Rose Phillips Family Foundation of Minnesota, which is a strategic partner of The Minneapolis Foundation. Joel is deeply engaged in the Phillips Foundation’s community-led grant making process and facilitates its North Minneapolis Education Advisory Committee. From 2011 to 2016, Joel managed the Phillips Foundation’s strategic investments in adult workforce development while also serving as a member and founding Co-Chair of the Minneapolis/St. Paul Workforce Innovation Network. Prior to joining the Foundation, Joel served as the Director of a Minneapolis-based refugee resettlement program where he supervised a multi-ethnic staff of 14 that provided a range of services to new refugee arrivals. Joel earned a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Pittsburgh and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Gustavus Adolphus College.
E. Coco
Consultant
Coco comes to this role after five years of experience leading grantmaking efforts in North Minneapolis on behalf of The Jay and Rose Phillips Family Foundation of Minnesota. Her deep knowledge of reparative economic development strategies, community-led decision-making, and group facilitation give Coco an exceptional background for advancing NFG’s current and future efforts. Coco serves as Board Co-Chair for Headwaters Foundation For Justice and Advisory Board Secretary for The Commercial Land Trust Initiative. She is an Intercultural Development Inventory Qualified Administrator and recipient of the national PLACES Fellowship hosted by The Funders Network. Coco earned her BA from Gustavus Adolphus College in Religion and Women Studies.
Please reach out to Coco at [email protected] or 612-834-2657
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