These health philanthropy leaders emphasized the importance of addressing disparities in health access and outcomes. Gayle described Medtronic’s focus: “We are trying to enable greater access to healthcare for populations that otherwise have been left out.”

He added, “We always have to keep diversity in the fore of our minds as we do funding. If we find we are missing some segment of the population, we will reach out to partners for recommendations on how to address that.”

Both grantmakers expressed strongly that philanthropy’s role should not be to fill gaps in public sector funding. Oswald noted, “There is just no way one philanthropic organization or even a partnership could tackle healthcare costs covered by the public sector.”

Gayle commented, “Philanthropy is able to go into areas that are unproven. We can make longer-term and sustained commitments to grantees. And philanthropy has the flexibility to make mistakes and learn from them. It’s not the role of philanthropy to step in where others have grown weary of funding. It’s to play the innovative, out-of-the-box partner.”

Both Gayle and Oswald see grantmakers becoming even more strategic as they seek to leverage grant dollars for meaningful results. As funding stays flat, Oswald said, it’s important to stick to goals. “We are working diligently to assure our funding is very targeted and a really clear match for our priorities.”

Gayle noted that Medtronic Foundation is focused on developing and strengthening health systems. “Much of our funding is going toward overall policy articulation and advocacy, development of the health infrastructure, and strengthening of healthcare deliverers, as opposed to direct services,” he explained.

Nonprofits that find the current fundraising environment challenging can look for creative ways to finance their programs. Gayle suggested: “Think about nontraditional sources of funding — local companies, other service organizations, fraternities and sororities, or professional organizations can provide as much – or even more – support than local philanthropies.” He added that sometimes health causes are perceived as social services. So see if what you’re trying to fund is defined differently by different organizations.

When approaching grantmakers, nonprofits should do their homework, but be ready to have an open conversation. Oswald noted, “Be at your very best. Really clearly explain what you’re looking for and how that fits with our priorities. When the pieces all fall into place, we are absolutely willing to work with you, even if you are completely unfamiliar with the grantmaking process.”

And Gayle encouraged nonprofits, “Take a chance. Don’t let a ‘no’ ever stop you.”

Last Outlook Webinar to Focus on Arts, Culture and Humanities

The final Outlook webinar, taking place on February 7, will delve deeply into arts funding.  It will feature conversations with grantmakers from Minnesota Philanthropy Partners and The McKnight Foundation.

Register today to learn more about Minnesota’s funding landscape in 2012!

-Anne Bauers, MCF research manager

The forums brought together more than 400 city, county and school district leaders, including elected and appointed officials, to generate ideas about ways they could collaborate across jurisdictions for better public service delivery.

At the forums, some of Minnesota’s most innovative local leaders came together to share their experiences with redesign and to explore new opportunities to work together across jurisdictions. They shared stories of what’s working in their communities, and they shared their hopes for the future.

Three critical lessons, summarized here, came out of the forums. The report provides much more detail on each.

1. Redesign is facing some barriers to change. Changing the way services are managed or delivered is never easy, and it hasn’t been for our local leaders working to redesign services in their communities.

There’s the identity issue, there’s turf, and there’s ego, and there’s the fear of change. We’ve got to get people to understand that we’ve got to change to stay alive.
— JO CARLSON, MAYOR, CITY OF WHITE BEAR LAKE

2. Leaders agree that five essential elements are needed to redesign local governments. Barriers are not permanent obstacles, and many local leaders have moved past them.

There’s definitely a willingness among local units of government to work together. At the legislature, they need to know that there are people in local government that want to work together, and I think that message needs to go out to our stakeholders at the local level, too.
— KEVIN DONOVAN, MAHTOMEDI SCHOOL BOARD

3. Minnesota’s local governments are ready to innovate. In fact, they’re already doing it.

Right now we’re working with other school districts in Itasca County and the region in Deerwood, Nashwauk-Keewatin, Floodwood, Hill City, Greenway, and Northland Community School. We’re linking via technology and together we’re sharing teachers and courses. Our students are getting electives and opportunities that a lot of large school districts in the Metro don’t offer because we’ve worked together and used technology to do more with what we have.
— JOE SILKO, SUPERINTENDENT, GRAND RAPIDS

Learn more, follow the media coverage of the report and find additional resources on local government redesign on The Bush Foundation’s Redesigning Local Government web page.

- Susan Stehling, communications associate

Seventy percent of grantmakers anticipate that their funding priorities will remain constant in 2012, which is almost a 10-point increase over what they predicted for 2011.

MCF’s 2012 Outlook Report is based on an October/November 2011 survey of 100 foundations and corporate giving programs that represent 76 percent (or about $1 billion) of all Minnesota annual grantmaking.

Subject-Area Funding
For the first time in its annual Outlook survey, MCF asked grantmakers to estimate changes in giving to the specific subject areas they support. While most respondents plan no changes to 2012 subject-area giving, one third of education funders forecast giving more to education in 2012.

Arts, culture, and humanities is the only subject area to which more grantmakers said they expect to decrease rather than increase funding. Although the respondents represent a small part of the Outlook survey sample, this finding appears to be consistent with a trend toward less arts funding as reported in MCF’s latest Giving in Minnesota report.

Learn More
To learn more about what the report findings mean for Minnesota’s nonprofit and philanthropic communities, check out the full report online and register today for one or all four of the subject-specific webinars hosted by MCF.

Webinar topics and dates are:

• Education, January 18;
• Human Services, January 24;
• Health, February 1; and
• Arts, February 7.

At each webinar, in addition to a broad overview of 2012’s giving outlook, a panel of funders will dive more deeply into subject-specific funding and answer questions like the following:

• What are the current trends in funding for education, human services, health or arts?
• Will funding for the area be up or down in 2012?
• What should nonprofits be aware of as they prepare to seek funds in 2012?

We promise you’ll come away from them more knowledgeable and informed about 2012’s funding landscape in Minnesota!

The council presented the award at its Annual Forum in Minneapolis on June 21. Every year at the forum, the Community Leadership Award is given to an organization that has demonstrated a significant effort toward advancing the issues of nonprofit accountability and transparency.

The Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation initiative that did not go unnoticed is “Healthy Together: Creating Community with New Americans.”  This project was created to reduce health inequities for immigrants in the U.S. while improving the health and vitality of the community as a whole. For this initiative, the foundation partnered with the Charities Review Council to build the capacity of the project’s grantees.

The collaboration gave the Charities Review Council an opportunity to experience working in immigrant and refugee communities – an area that is becoming increasingly important to their work.

Another positive result of the partnership was the development of the Council’s Accountability Standards, which will be used as a prototype to provide capacity-building services for other funders’ grantees.

The Accountability Standards encompass 27 standards the council encourages organizations to uphold, in order to earn and build public trust in charities and nonprofits – a priority it holds close to heart.

Don’t we all want to know that our donations and efforts are being put to the best use?

These standards set a high bar of accountability that strengthens nonprofits and allows them to continue making a positive difference in their communities.

“We are delighted to recognize the innovative leadership of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation. Consistent with its upstream problem-solving focus, the foundation recognizes the capacity-building value of the council’s new Accountability Standards and how the council’s hands-on, technical assistance to grantees directly contributes to funders’ programming priorities.”

-Rich Cowles, executive director of the Charities Review Council

Congratulations to the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation and to the many nonprofits leading by example with high standards of accountability and transparency.

- McKenzie Mackintosh, MCF communications intern

Learn More: Transparency and accountability are values that Minnesota Council on Foundations grantmaker members cherish highly in their own work, not just in the nonprofits they fund. Learn more about how foundations and corporate givers are also committing to, and striving towards transparency and accountability in the way their organizations operate.

The George Family Foundation, the Minnesota Community Foundation and The Saint Paul Foundation, The Minneapolis Foundation, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation  organized the briefings to explore how funders can more effectively impact health outcomes for Minnesotans at three levels:

• Institutions: Social and economic factors play a large role in the health of the general population, but much of the public discourse focuses on treating the sick and the cost of doing so. Philanthropy can help shift the orientation and understanding of health care from paying for illness to promoting health.
• Communities: Communities have the power to maintain and sustain the well-being of their members. People live integrated lives. Integrated systems serve the whole person and the community as a whole. An integrated model of health focuses on primary care and the social determinants of health.
• Individuals: Individuals have great responsibility for their health and wellness. Health reform is not a legislative issue – it is a personal issue. Payment reform is a legislative issue. We also need to invest in caregivers, as when we do, we invest in those they care for.

Here are some key take-aways for funders interested in promoting wellness:

• Fund community organizing as a form of prevention.
• Broaden policy influence to include changing behaviors.
• Review your grant investments in a cultural wellness framework. How are they aligned?
• Invest in the infrastructure of small, new and innovative nonprofits doing interesting work.

More advice to funders is included in a summary of the briefings. You can also find the presentations from the speakers on MCF’s website, as well as links to other health related news and resources.

Image CC Olle Svensson

- Stephanie Jacobs, MCF

Cycle 1 Grants: Letters of Inquiry Accepted March 1-Apirl 8, 2011

• Behavioral Health
  This funding priority seeks programs that focus on developing capabilities or changing processes related to the continuum of behavioral health care service interventions, accessibility and sustainability.
• Reducing Inappropriate Emergency Room Utilization
  This funding priority encourages programs that support collaboration among stakeholders (hospitals, clinics, community and advocacy organizations, health plans and consumers) to reduce inappropriate emergency room (ER) utilization.

CYCLE 2 Grants: Letters of Inquiry accepted May 2-27, 2011

• Early Childhood Health
  This funding priority area seeks programs that focus on the social and emotional health of young children and optimal growth and development.
• Organizational Core Mission Support
  This funding priority provides small grants to organizations in the regional and rural areas of Medica’s service area (refer to the Medica Foundation Giving Guidelines for geographic details).

For more information on Medica’s 2011 funding priorities, check out medicafoundation.org.

Buettner might take issue with that claim, as unlike a fountain that instantly restores youth to anyone who drinks from its waters, his Blue Zones — hotzones of human health and vitality — are populated by people doing the right things, day after day, every day of their long lives.

He and researchers from the National Institutes of Health and National Geographic have discovered five small populations that claim the world’s longest disability-free life spans. Residents of the zones, from Sardinia, Italy, to Okinawa, Japan, to Loma Linda, California, live to be 100 at a rate that is 10 times the rate of the general U.S. population.

Working with a second team of scientists, he has isolated the common denominators that explain the extraordinary longevity. While there is no “magic bullet,” Buettner’s Blue Zone prescription is surprisingly simple. Sorry, I’m not going to give it to you here.

Have you ever asked questions like these:

• What is the optimal diet for making it to a healthy age 90?
• Should you be running marathons or doing yoga?
• What dietary supplements work?
• Does stress really shorten your life?

If so, you don’t want to miss Buettner’s Opening Keynote Blue Zones: Secrets of a Long Life at MCF’s Community/Public Foundation Conference March 17-18, 2011, in St. Cloud.

Buettner will debunk the most common age-related quality-of-life myths and offer a science-backed blue print that the average American can use to live another 12 quality years.

Conference and hotel rates rise a week from Tuesday, so register today!

- Susan Stehling, MCF

We all know the status quo is not acceptable and things need to change. Yet, how can we create the change we need (or “be the change we want to see” – to borrow from Gandhi) when change is so hard?

At the closing plenary of MCF’s 2010 Annual Convening last fall, Chip Heath (yes, that’s him in the photo), co-author of Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, engaged grantmakers in a lively illustration of the dynamics of change – featuring a logical, rational rider atop a massive elephant, which symbolized the power of our emotions. If we humans can balance logic and emotion, then the chance for change is good.

In directing the rider, Heath says, seek out the bright spots: Look for what’s working and do more of that. Even if the bright spots seem small, they represent positive, incremental change. Bright spots are different than best practices, which often mean “be more like them.” Strategy is about fit, he emphasizes, and highlighting bright spots is a call to “be more like me when I’m at my best.” His challenge to Minnesota: Can you scale your bright spots?

So, amidst the gloom of the current budget crisis, take a look at the bright spots we’ve highlighted in the Winter 2011 issue of Giving Forum:

• Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation: Reaches Beyond Health Care to Reduce Health Inequities
• Blandin Foundation: Leaders Expand Opportunities, Enhance Community
• Frey Foundation: Collaborating to End Homelessness
• Miller-Dwan: Spearheads Campaign for Mental Health Center
• Stevens Square: Seeds Innovation in Elder Issues
• Northwest Minnesota Foundation: Bands with Executives on Economic Drivers
• Grand Rapids Area Community Foundation: Eyes Workforce Needs
• Wells Fargo: Employees Coach and Mentor to Combat Disparities
• Sauer Children’s Renew Foundation: Strives to Break Cycle of Child Abuse

- Chris Murakami Noonan, MCF communications associate

Why the coverage this week? The United Nations is hosting a high-level meeting of 140 government and private sector leaders to assess progress made so far toward the MDGs and to accelerate progress to reach the goals by their 2015 target date.  There are eight goals that include slashing poverty, combating disease, fighting hunger, protecting the environment and boosting education.

Complex global strategies are being launched and recommitted to, but the coverage I heard this week focused on the seemingly simple idea of clean cookstoves. Worldwide current methods of cooking over open fires, or on inefficient clay stoves, pose daily risks to hundreds of millions of women and children. In fact, health officials attribute more than 2 million deaths annually to women’s exposure to smoke and toxins from cooking fires. Smoke is also a major cause of pneumonia in infants — a leading factor in high infant-mortality rates in the world’s poorest countries.

The cookstove initiative, announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is a partnership of governments, nongovernmental groups and private companies. The idea is not to flood poor countries with a one-size-fits-all cooking alternative, but instead to consult local cooks and use local markets to develop and distribute different cookstoves for different regions and cultures. The objective: create cleaner, healthier, environmentally sound and locally adapted stoves that women will want.

The project caught my attention because it seems so simple yet so necessary. Years ago while traveling in Thailand, I stayed with a family that cooked on an open fire in their small home. A hole in the ceiling was meant to attract smoke, but the walls and ceiling were still covered with oily black soot. While cooking and tending the fire, the women also worked to ensure toddlers didn’t topple toward the flames. I believe those women and millions like them would love to make use of a solution that made cooking easier and safer for themselves and their families.

The meeting in New York ends today, but watch for updates on progress toward the MDGs on the United Nation’s site.

- Susan Stehling, MCF

Photo CC United Nations Media

According to the report, women are shortchanged in four critical areas — economics, safety, health and leadership.  And, while all women and girls in Minnesota suffer inequalities, even greater disparities exist for women of color, rural women and older women in Minnesota.

Here are just a few of the findings:

• Economics: Because of the gender wage gap, a Minnesota woman (and her family)  earns an average of $11,000 less per year, or $1 million less over a lifetime. White, African American and Latina women earn 76, 61, and 56 cents on the dollar, respectively, compared to white men.
• Safety: By mid-life, one-third of Minnesota women have experienced a rape crime.  Violence at home is the second leading cause of homelessness among Minnesota women.
• Health: Native American women in Minnesota are 10% more likely to be diagnosed with cancer than their white counterparts, but 58% more likely to die from it.  While African-American women are 8% less likely than white women to get cancer, they are 15% more likely to die from the disease.
• Leadership: Only 34% of Minnesota state legislators are women, and the number of women candidates is declining.  No women lead any of the Fortune 500 companies in the state.

What Can You Do?
The full report, “Status of Women & Girls in Minnesota,” contains much more detail, including “What You Can Do In 30 Minutes or Less” recommendations for individuals to take action to address inequities.

In releasing the report today, Lee Roper-Batker, president and CEO of the foundation,  encouraged women, girls and all community members to use the findings to jump-start social change.  She emphasized:  ”Research without action is pointless.”

Next week Women’s Foundation staff members will launch the 2010 “Road to Equality Tour,” sharing the research and obtaining community input in Warroad, Moorhead, Grand Rapids, Duluth, Willmar, St. Cloud and Rochester.

Research and writing for the report was conducted by the University of MN Humphrey Institute’s Center on Women & Public Partnership.  More than 100 experts from academia, government, nonprofit and private sectors, elected bodies and philanthropy participated in working groups to review data, identify key issues and proffer solutions.