By Jim Rendon, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, April 29, 2021
The Bush Foundation in St. Paul is putting $100 million toward increasing the wealth of Black and Native American people who lag far behind white people when it comes to individual financial worth — one of the largest such efforts in the United States. The remarkable move is not a traditional grant program. The foundation wants to find two groups to distribute the money to bolster wealth among Blacks and Native Americans in Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and the 23 tribal areas in those states. And the foundation doesn’t want much to do with how its money is distributed.
“The idea at its most fundamental is we are giving this money to the Native community and the Black community,” says foundation president Jen Ford Reedy. “It really goes back to harm caused to those communities from before we were even a nation, particularly around taking land and from slavery. There’s a whole history of policies that either caused harm to those communities or benefited white Americans.”
The foundation began work on the $100 million social-impact bond offering in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in nearby Minneapolis. The board and staff had been working on equity and inclusion for many years, so it was well prepared to act.
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