Reduce racial wealth gaps

Why it’s important to us

Wealth matters a lot. Wealth makes a huge difference in a person’s ability to weather challenges and take advantage of opportunities. That’s why wealth is such a big factor in predicting a child’s life outcomes.

We also know that it’s easier to build wealth when your family already has it. And we know that historical injustices have enormous, lasting effects on many people, particularly our Native American and Black communities.

How we’re doing

In 2020, we raised $100 million through social impact bonds to create two community trust funds ($50 million each), designed and operated by two steward organizations — Nexus Community Partners and NDN Collective.

We announced in 2021 that we would commit another $50 million through our regular grantmaking programs to help reduce racial wealth gaps. That commitment originally was planned to be a five-year goal (by 2025) — and we achieved it in two. We are currently at $68 million. You can read more about these commitments here.

Examples of the grants we made include Akiptan, working to transform agricultural lending in Native communities, and the Northside Economic Opportunity Network’s (NEON) efforts to establish the Northside Food Business Incubator, to support food entrepreneurs in north Minneapolis.

What’s next

We reached our milestone but are still looking to support transformative ideas that will help remove barriers and change systems so that everyone can thrive and build generational wealth.

We are also working to encourage other funders to do more to address racial and ethnic wealth gaps — including spreading the concept of reparative action and sharing how we used social impact bonds to give more away sooner.