Patchwork of Pride Barn quilt trail draws visitors, creates community connections.
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Smartphone Sessions
High schoolers teach digital tech and get an education in return.
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A Fund for Fallen Soldiers Veterans fund supports annual tribute to recognize honor, duty, sacrifice.
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2024-2025 Initiators Fellows
drive meaningful social, community change
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In 2021, returning to Central Minnesota for the interview that welcomed me to the Initiative Foundation, I arrived early to visit my ancestors.
Gravestones in the St. Lawrence Catholic Church cemetery in Duelm. Dad’s grandfather and kin. Down the road the homestead, now Stoney Brook Farms, the state’s largest corn maze, a connection I wasn’t aware of until well after my family spent a fall afternoon lost in dry-stalked twists and turns, our boots on soil that family hands once tilled.
In 2024, new to my president role, I spoke to supporters and leaders at the Wright County Historical Society. It was a few miles from where I attended high school in Buffalo, and just a few more miles from where I grew up in Montrose. I was surprised to see a prominent exhibit of Red’s Cafe, the hometown diner of my youth. History through one door, future through another. Small scenes from an unanticipated return. I left Montrose after high school. I didn’t know whether I’d be back, or where I’d call home.
I now know. I’ve stepped into my role as the Foundation’s third president with joy and gratitude for the invitation to steward this organization, forged in crisis and just as committed nearly four decades later to strengthening communities and economies.
To belong, in rural, is to build.
The Foundation’s creators knew it. So do today’s creators. Home and belonging are infused in this issue’s stories.
From Wreaths for the Fallen, honoring veterans in Morrison County and beyond, to our newest cohort of Initiators Fellows, we’re partnering with innovative, community-centered people to build for the future. That work is also on display in our story about Adrienne Benjamin, a Mille Lacs Band member leading a cultural reclamation, and in our story from Braham, where youth and seniors are using technology to connect instead of isolate.
One of my favorite experiences has been discovering these stories as I’ve traveled our region. Reach out. I welcome an invitation to visit. Thank you for your support of the Foundation, and of this place where you’re creating belonging and home. We have much to do. I look forward to working alongside you to build a strong and vibrant future for Central Minnesota.
Brian Voerding PRESIDENT
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The Continuous Improvement Cohort Program empowers nonprofits and local governments to identify and work towards efficiencies that help them serve central Minnesota communities. Proud to offer this program in partnership with the Initiative Foundation. mn.sourcewell.org
Scan to hear from past participant Jason Kempthorne on how the Continuous Improvement Program impacted operations at Salem West.
Questions? Contact Community Solutions Specialist, Tammy Filippi at 218-895-4206 or tammy.filippi@sourcewell-mn.gov
A capacity crowd of 70 joined Minnesota Public Radio’s Kerri Miller and the Initiative Foundation for an October 2023 town hall at the A.T. The Black & White in Little Falls. The topic: mental health and social isolation in rural areas. “It was a wonderful blend of life experience, anecdotes and valuable expertise,” Miller said. Thanks to the Otto Bremer Trust and Compeer Financial for sponsoring this crucial community conversation. Learn more at ruralvoice.org.
Rural entrepreneurs have an uphill climb when it comes to building a business. Add a language barrier and reaching your business dreams can be even more difficult. To make the path smoother, the Initiative Foundation in 2023 brought its Enterprise Academy program to Long Prairie. Through weekly classes, delivered in Spanish, students advanced their business ideas under the guidance of culturally adept trainers and educators. A new cohort launched this spring in Long Prairie.
Former military helicopter pilot and engineer Joe Loscheider has owned Loscheider Helicopter for five years and provides crop-spraying and aerial firefighting services for the Department of Natural Resources. When the Wadena resident wanted to expand and refine his business, he turned to the Initiative Foundation and Pine Country Bank for lending support. Loscheider will use the funds to make upgrades and to purchase a fuel truck and additional firefighting equipment.
Wild rice is sacred to the people of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and important to its economy. A $10,000 Initiative Foundation grant is planting the seeds for a wild rice processing plant, which would allow band members to harvest, package and distribute from one location rather than outsource the work. This project is supported by a host of partners, including the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.
Creating unforgettable learning experiences for students is one goal of the Pequot Lakes Patriot Foundation, an Initiative Foundation Partner Fund. A recent grant helped fifth-grade students learn a new hobby—knitting. The students all had a chance to knit during recess and before school. In addition to building skills and a new hobby, the experience provided students with the opportunity to craft new relationships. A group of students even knitted 15 hats for local veterans.
Backroad Meats has become a go-to stop in the Milaca area for ready-to-eat meats. Supported by an Initiative Foundation loan, the business, which has seen 300 percent growth since its founding in 2019, is purchasing retail space for the sale of its smoked, sliced and packaged products. With this expansion, Backroad Meats owner Rob Isaacson looks forward to serving farmers and customers in the Milaca area and beyond.
“COVID struck when our business was 1 year old. Our banker encouraged us to reach out to the Initiative Foundation for help. They are helping us to better manage the accounting side of the business, and their encouragement and positivity is just amazing.”
– Eric and Tamey DoBrava Market 12, Delano
A nearly 100-year-old building has a new life in east St. Cloud. Iron Street Distillery and event venue Harvester Square—a nod to original occupants International Harvester Company—opened in late 2023. The Harvester Square project received Minnesota Main Street Economic Revitalization funding administered by the Initiative Foundation. Both projects were chosen as 2024 project of the year by the Economic Development Association of Minnesota.
Neglected pets are getting a second chance through Princeton’s Ruff Start Rescue and the support of generous donors. During Give to the Max Day in November 2023, Ruff Start Rescue, an attendee at Initiative Foundation nonprofit development training events, raised nearly $225,000. The organization typically has 300 to 500 animals in its care, with about 600 active foster homes. Learn more at ruffstartrescue.org.
Grants administered by the Initiative Foundation are helping to inject more than $2 million into downtown Cold Spring. Through a partnership with the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, the Initiative Foundation delivered $505,750 in grants to 16 Cold Spring businesses. Businesses had to secure the remaining 70 percent of project costs. Quarry Cinema is using its funding for repairs and renovations while the local hardware store (The Wenner Company) is getting an updated exterior.
Wright County Community Action (WCCA) is filling an important gap for homeowners dealing with post-pandemic struggles. When the COVID-era HomeHelpMN program stopped taking applications in July 2023, WCCA stepped in to help. Supported by an Initiative Foundation grant, the organization added temporary staff to help at least five households avoid foreclosure. Another 14 homeowners received other forms of assistance.
More than 60 nonprofit and government staff joined the Initiative Foundation for an immersive grant writing training session at Lake Region EMS in North Branch. Led by expert grant writer Deneene Graham, attendees learned how to be ready to apply when grant opportunities present. Graham also reviewed the basic elements of a grant proposal and provided tips for building funder relationships. Thanks to the Chisago County Housing Redevelopment and Economic Development Authority and Chisago County for the partnership.
The Isanti County Child Care Leadership Team is making a splash along Highway 65 between Cambridge and McGregor with two billboards championing the need for childcare providers. With Initiative Foundation grant support, the childcare team is building awareness and closing gaps so children can have quality, affordable care while their parents work. The Isanti County childcare numbers are stark: Providers have 670 slots available yet the wider community has a need for 361 more.
Water tower or castle? That’s a question you might ask yourself when you see the historic Ogilvie water tower. Built in 1918 to resemble a European castle, the decommissioned water tower is on the National Register of Historic places and was among the first towers in Minnesota constructed from reinforced concrete. An Initiative Foundation grant is helping the Ogilvie Tower Museum Association raise funds and connect with supporters.
More Than Sprouts provides healthy, fresh food options to the Pine City community. The business is doing some growing of its own as it moves to a larger building and adds more food options. An Initiative Foundation loan is helping owner Heidi Carlson respond to customer demand as she provides groceries and daily deli items to an area that would otherwise lack grocery store access.
BENTON: Harvester Square hosts events of all sizes in the refurbished building.
Against the muted landscape of late winter and early spring, colorfully painted quilt blocks pop out like flowers throughout the community of Staples. A brilliant cardinal graces Mid Minnesota Federal Credit Union. A red-and-blue pinwheel adorns the Staples World newspaper office. At True Hardware, a multicolored geometric design hints at the number of paint colors inside.
Shape by shape, block by block, the patchwork patterns painted on wood have been multiplying each year since the idea for a Central Minnesota Barn Quilt Trail launched in 2015. The first quilt block was hung in 2016. Organizers are now up to 148 barn quilts, with 54 of them in Staples—the epicenter of this colorful, community-building movement.
“You’re taking something that’s normally found in the home and putting it outside,” said trail co-founder Lisa Kajer. “People love looking at quilts and all the different colors. They bring a smile to your face.”
While it’s hard to numerically track the trail’s economic impact on the region, community leaders say it’s drawing new visitors, connecting
people in the towns and rural areas, and enticing travelers to slow down, take a closer look, and maybe stick around for a bite to eat while they plan for a return visit.
Vicki Chepulis, grants and program coordinator at Five Wings Arts Council, has met people in downtown Staples who have come from the Twin Cities to see the barn quilts. Even with COVID-era precautions stalling momentum, the trail has averaged roughly 18 new barn quilts each year since the project started.
“That’s a huge indicator of what it did for the communities here,” Chepulis said.
The concept of a barn quilt trail is believed to have begun in Ohio in 2001 and quickly caught on across the country, according to barn quilt expert Susie Parron, who tracks the nation’s trails at barnquiltinfo.com. Wisconsin’s Shawano County claims the country’s biggest barn quilt trail with more than 400 blocks–all 8x8 feet–along its roadways.
Minnesota boasts about eight barn quilt trails. Most stay within the footprint of one county, such as the Chisago Lakes trail with 72 barn quilts near the Twin Cities or the nearly 60 barn quilts in southeastern Minnesota’s Houston County.
“We are the largest geographically,” Kajer said. “We’re the only four-county trail.”
Cass, Todd, Morrison, and Wadena counties were chosen because they each overlap with the Staples-Motley School District, which has played a key role in the quilt trail.
The high school’s Future Farmers of America students put their geometry, drawing, taping and painting skills to work with the first group of barn quilts. After that, art classes took over and have made at least 50 quilts, many for nonprofit and community organizations.
While barns offer the most dramatic backdrop—especially historic red barns—quilt blocks from 2x2 feet to 8x8 feet have popped up everywhere: fire stations, libraries, schools, private homes and even fence posts.
“It’s a very unique opportunity,” said Jill Kneisl, a Staples-Motley art teacher who has guided students in telling a story and working as a team with each barn quilt design. “It’s fun when students come back from different communities and say they have seen their quilt. They are surprised there are so many and how far the trail goes.”
A surge of new barn quilts followed last summer when a $1,700 grant from the Staples-Motley Community Foundation was awarded to LEAP—a Staples-based community group that stands for Leadership, Engagement, Advocacy and Positiveness. The Initiative Foundation hosts the Staples-Motley fund alongside nearly 130 others, giving communities, organizations and individuals the ability to focus on making an impact with their local dollars without worrying about management and administration.
“The target for the project was to get at least six more barn quilts in downtown Staples, making it easier for tourists and residents to find them,” said Kajer. “The more barn quilts you have in an area, the more people you’ll have come to see them.”
Volunteers were able to rent space for five weeks at Faith Lutheran Church, and Kneisl was hired to assist with designs and color-mixing. Fifteen volunteers—more than double what they expected—worked full time for more than a month to create barn quilts while others pitched in with tasks such as delivering finished quilt blocks.
Their efforts amounted to more than $5,000 worth of labor and 11 new barn quilts—nearly double their goal. Visitors can now find a dozen barn quilts within a few blocks downtown and up to three dozen on a longer stroll through Staples.
The other goal of the grant was to make two dozen mini barn quilts that were tucked into city flower boxes. The mini quilts include scannable QR codes that link visitors to Central Minnesota Barn Quilt Trail maps. Marketing cards with maps were distributed to chambers of commerce and travel stops such as hotels.
Online maps help visitors seek favorite designs among the infinite possibilities. Geometric or freestyle patterns reflect businesses, places, or personal stories, making each stop—and each quilt trail—a one-ofa-kind experience.
Staples-Motley Elementary School has a little red schoolhouse design. Dower Lake Park features a fish pattern while Old Wadena Park and Campground on the Crow Wing River sports canoes and paddles. Churches incorporate crosses and rays of light, while eateries get playful. Staples’ Stomping Grounds café chose a quilt block with a cup of coffee while Tower Pizza turned triangles into pizza slices.
Barn quilts can be found in Wadena, Motley, Long Prairie, Sebeka, Bertha, Browerville, and other towns, as well as on barns and businesses on county and township roads. Kajer said they plan to keep adding barn quilts and expanding the trails, especially toward communities such as Little Falls, Pine River and Walker.
“We need to have barn quilts in each of the county seats,” she said. “That would be a goal of ours.”
When quilt trail leaders first sought an arts grant, they weren’t sure the American folk art qualified, said Mark Turner, executive director of Five Wings Arts Council, who considers the public art effort a success and a way to create a sense of place and unity.
“It’s been a bonding experience and a common framework,” he said. “It brings in community, it engages community and artists, and it brings out the artist in everyone.”
Most barn quilts are made from medium density overlay board or aluminum composite board. Outdoor paint will weather the best, but it’s also possible to use sample paints and seal them for outdoor weather.
Go to barnquiltsmn.org for more tips, info on upcoming workshops, commissioning an artist to make a barn quilt or to be included on the Central Minnesota Barn Quilt Trail. Barn quilts must be visible from public roads, and participants are asked to keep them on display for at least five years.
The pandemic made human connections more difficult, and more precious. Digital technology—smartphones, tablets, and video conferencing applications such as Zoom—provided some connectivity during lockdown. And it’s continuing to connect us now that COVID-19 has receded.
For the past couple of years, older residents in Braham and the surrounding area have been learning how to make digital connections with friends, family, and communities of interest. You could call it seniors helping seniors. “We just call it our smartphone class,” said Kelly Nelson, event coordinator for the Braham Event Center. During several evenings throughout the school year, students from Braham Area High School come to the event center to help older community residents master their electronic devices.
They’re making face-to-face, head-to-head and heart-to-heart connections. And everyone is benefitting.
The idea for the smartphone class originated several years ago with the committee that oversees the Alice Studt Library, which operates within the Braham Event Center. It is not a public library per se, though the 27-by-27-foot space operates much like one. It lends out books and provides workspace, including wi-fi, computer access, and digital printing. The public library’s outreach van visits once a week to pick up and return books and other borrowed resources.
As Hanson recalls, a committee member mentioned having difficulty mastering his smartphone. Other members quickly nodded in agreement: “All we do is sit around and talk about how we can’t figure out a QR code or how to send a text message,” he said.
The conversation reminded committee member Gary Skarsten of a story he read about high school students providing digital device training to older adults. “I thought, ‘I’m going to suggest that idea to the library committee,’” Skarsten said. The committee was quickly onboard, and so was the school superintendent. Then the pandemic hit, and the idea was idled until late 2022 when the globe-stalling virus appeared to finally be in retreat.
“The students are the best teachers. They are cell phone experts, and they are so good with adults—with senior citizens.”
– Gary Skarsten, Alice Studt Library committee member
As they revived the idea, committee members contacted Tammi Johnson, dean of students and Student Council advisor at Braham Area High School. “The Student Council has always been good about doing a variety of activities to support the community,” she said. Johnson took the idea to Student Council members, and they, too, responded enthusiastically.
The first class in October 2022 was attended by about a dozen older adults. “There’s no formal lecture,” Nelson said. “It’s just pairing up and saying, ‘Hi, do you have any questions about your iPad or your Android or your iPhone?’” Some attendees have specific questions. Others, Nelson noted, take a more resigned approach and simply say, “‘Show me how to work this thing.’”
The hour-long classes occur about four times during each school year with a break during the summer months. Attendees can stay for a full session, or they can get their questions answered and be in and out in under 30 minutes. On average, seven to eight people attend. “There are a few returnees who want to keep learning,” Nelson said. “And others are one and done—‘I got what I needed.’”
Madison Davis, a Braham Area High School senior and president of the Student Council, participated in her first smartphone class last October.
“I thought it would be a good opportunity to give back to the community,” Davis said. “A lot of the people who’ve signed up for these classes are people who also work at the community center, and they have always been good to me and supportive of my volunteering and my basketball.” (She’s a member of the girls varsity basketball team.) Davis fondly recalls one of her first students. “She had never used a smartphone before. I showed her basic things, like how to set up wi-fi, how to make a text message, how to send one, how to call
friends and family, how to leave voicemails, how to set up contact information.” Davis also showed her how to use the maps function for getting directions to the places where she needed to go.
“I like the feeling of using my skills to help others,” Davis said. And she found it satisfying and gratifying to see the relief on her student’s face “when she started to understand it—to see her succeed and be able to do it on her own. That was really fun for me.”
“The students are the best teachers,” Skarsten said. “They are cell phone experts, and they are so good with adults—with senior citizens.” So good, in fact, that some attendees return for additional sessions.
Cambridge resident Karen Anderson is one of those repeat attendees—and it’s not for the free cookies. A flip-phone user until a couple of years ago, Anderson’s upgraded to a smartphone and realized it came with a steep learning curve. The educational arc was complicated by several small strokes that left Anderson with some short-term memory challenges. Her student helpers, whom Anderson calls “lovely,” “marvelous” and “helpful,” accommodated her needs by writing out their instructions.
“Without the cheat sheets these students created for me, I wouldn’t know how to use my new [phone],” Anderson said, keenly aware that the high school students “have been using technology since they were tiny. We senior citizens are the ‘newbies’ in this case.”
Working together, the high-schoolers and their smartphone students are bridging gaps in understanding while closing generational gaps and building new relationships. “Almost every person who has come has said that they’re going to come back when they get a new cell phone,” Skarsten said. “They say, ‘Please continue the class. It is so helpful.’”
Anderson couldn’t agree more. “You know, sometimes, we only see the negative,” she said, “but these kids are going to get ahead, because they are amazing.” Then she added with a delighted laugh, “Otherwise, they wouldn’t take the time to work with us old people.”
2024-25
Fellows are leveraging lived experiences to drive meaningful social change
The nine Greater Minnesotans selected for the 2024-2025 Initiators Fellowship are a rare breed: entrepreneurs who aspire to create businesses that bring positive social and environmental change to their communities and the state.
Greater Minnesota has its share of socially conscious entrepreneurs, said Christine Metzo, Initiators Fellowship program manager. With the Initiators Fellowship, it’s more about intentionality: Creating this kind of business or nonprofit takes special commitment, focus and resources. For rural social entrepreneurs willing to put everything on the line to start their enterprise, it can be a passion-fueled gamble.
“Small business owners know they have to put their heart and soul into their business to get it to take off—sometimes even foregoing a salary to get their dreams up and running,” Metzo said. “In rural areas, this can feel like a much bigger risk.”
Every other year, Metzo, her Initiative Foundation colleagues and representatives from three other Minnesota Initiative Foundations—Northwest Minnesota Foundation, Southwest Initiative Foundation and West Central Initiative—have the
challenge of finding the business- and nonprofit-builders across 53 counties and six Native nations who are best suited to participate in the two-year Initiators Fellowship program. While many apply—there were nearly 100 applicants during the recruitment period for the 2024-2025 class of Fellows—just nine from across the participating regions were selected.
While most business owners aim to create jobs, and many donate to charity, social entrepreneurs build their enterprise with social impact at the core of their business or nonprofit plan. The Fellowship’s two-year, $60,000 stipend, combined with specialized mentorship and cohort support, is designed to help social entrepreneurs put their dream-building within reach.
“When you are a social entrepreneur, it can be a bigger risk because your approach is different,” Metzo said. “These ventures are where profit and purpose meet. Through the Initiators Fellowship, we try to mitigate the risk by offering a stipend and wrap-around support that allows people to say, ‘I am throwing myself into this. I’m going to make it happen.’”
From a farmer bringing native African greens to the marketplace to an entrepreneur creating custom headwear to conceal monitoring wires while building epilepsy awareness, the field of nine for the 2024-2025 Initiators Fellowship cohort is passionately focused on solving problems they’ve seen up close.
Staci Allmaras was alarmed when she reviewed results from the most recent triennial Minnesota Student Survey reporting the attitudes, beliefs and challenges of middle-school and high-school kids. She saw that many young people feel disconnected from their communities and unsupported by adults. As a mom and lifelong educator in west central Minnesota, Allmaras wasn’t about to let that stand.
She started bringing together young people from Pelican Rapids in 2022 to see if the survey results aligned with their experiences. Allmaras also wanted to gauge their interest in working together on solutions. The overriding sentiment was that the teens felt disengaged from their hometown with few places to gather and call their own.
“When young people feel they have a voice and a place to go for belonging, everyone feels better,” Allmaras said. “Young people who feel valued and included increase their engagement in the community. In rural communities, you want folks to come back and build these communities. If young people don’t see themselves and have a voice in it now, how do they see themselves as adults in the community?”
Allmaras, an education specialist with the Lakes Country Service Cooperative in Fergus Falls, committed her free time to uniting youth who want to raise their voices in the community. By fall of 2022, the group had named themselves The Youths_PR (search The Youths_PR on Facebook) with the motto, “Nothing About Us Without Us.”
The teens began planning and hosting events to bring area youth together. They went bowling, held a movie night, helped out with crafts and activities at a fall festival, and more, gathering about 15 to 20 teens each time. Yet they didn’t have a place to call their own.
In 2023, The Youths_PR got good news when a church donated its centrally located building to the community. The structure, now named The Bridge Center, will need renovations. Allmaras hopes that by fall it will provide space for the group. It also will have a gathering place for seniors, other community rooms, and a commercial kitchen. The teens have big plans, including using their basement area for book clubs, live music, playing pingpong, or watching movies.
Allmaras also has been working to open doors for young people to engage in community leadership, including bringing teens to a City Council meeting. It exposed them to opportunities to make their voices heard, perhaps by starting a youth advisory group that shares input with the city, school board, or community groups. In addition, she took a group of students to a youth policy forum at the State Capitol, demonstrating how young people can use their voices to contribute to positive change.
Meanwhile, Allmaras reached out to Twin Cities nonprofits focused on youth development. Team members came to Pelican Rapids to share their knowledge and experience with The Youths_PR. Through the Initiators Fellowship, Allmaras aims to build out the infrastructure and support that will allow The Youths_PR to flourish far into the future.
“My hope and long-term vision is that we have this sustainable youth center and organization in Pelican Rapids with a physical space that is shared across generations and cultures,” Allmaras said. “Young people will have ownership in it and feel included. I want them to believe in themselves as leaders and the community to see them as leaders.”
Above all, Allmaras believes the organization will serve as a model for youth engagement and utilizing young people’s voices in community building and decisionmaking. Perhaps, she said, other rural cities and towns will look to Pelican Rapids as a model for supporting and encouraging teens. She added, “We’ve built a coalition of people who support this vision and young people who have come together to join the efforts.”
Pelican Rapids
Growing up in a small town in Washington State, Ben Cahill often felt isolated and alone.
“I grew up in a very conservative family in a very conservative, white town,” he said. Though his hometown was just 40 minutes outside of Seattle, it might as well have been light years away for the young, gay Black man adopted into a white family. “It seemed like there was no one like me anywhere nearby, and no one who wanted to support me,” he said. “I knew I needed to get away.”
Cahill’s decision to move in search of a more supportive community led him, in a roundabout way, to Fargo, N.D., and then eventually to Bemidji, where his then-partner relocated for a job.
“I was very reluctant to make the move,” Cahill said. “I thought, ‘Why would I move to the middle of nowhere?’” But his attitude soon changed. “After I was here for a time, I realized there is a tight-knit community of people who want to do better and be better.”
Cahill now calls Bemidji his home. After stints with several healthcare facilities as a community health worker, Cahill now applies his skills at a youth crisis shelter for the Red Lake Nation.
When Bemidji held its first Pride Festival, Cahill, a major booster, staffed a community support and information booth at the event. It didn’t take too long to realize that LGBTQIA2S+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and twospirit) people in the region needed more than he could offer. Many came to the booth with questions that Cahill and his colleagues simply couldn’t answer. “People were reaching out, looking for support,” he recalled. “We had no idea what to do. We didn’t know anything about what was out there.”
With his festival experience as his inspiration, Cahill put together something he calls Pride Support Network (pridesupportnetwork.org), an organization he hoped would offer information about every avenue of support that members of the region’s queer community could ever need.
Pride Support Network has since expanded to offer a range of services, including outreach, resource referrals and programming. Cahill also leverages his community health worker skills to help people navigate the healthcare system and get connected with affirming doctors and therapists.
“My goal with the Fellowship is to not only create infrastructure for my social enterprise,” Cahill said, “but also to deploy additional community health workers, specifically to work with LGBTQ2S+ community members.”
Pride Support Network shares space with other nonprofit organizations in the Rail River Folk School, which runs out of a former agricultural warehouse in Bemidji. Community members can gather for meals, events and movie nights. The organization’s presence at Rail River Folk School has brought visibility to the community. “It’s hard for individuals to feel like they have community if there isn’t a space for them to gather and be a community,” Cahill said.
As a member of the 2024-2025 Initiators Fellowship, Cahill looks forward to having the support of a group of social entrepreneur peers plus an experienced mentor to help him guide Pride Support Network into the future. And having some financial support won’t hurt, either.
“I’ve been doing this stuff for the last two years without getting compensated,” Cahill said. “That’s OK, because it is my dream. But this extra support will help make it a reality.”
“It’s hard for individuals to feel like they have community if there isn’t a space for them to gather and be a community.”
Let's see what we can do together. We see you solving tough problems and taking care of the people who count on you.
Call it mother’s intuition or the innate knowledge of a parent of five. Lisa Finck knew something was wrong with her 7-week-old infant when her daughter froze for about 10 seconds. In just a couple of days, Finck’s daughter Espen would be diagnosed with tuberous sclerosis complex, the leading genetic cause of epilepsy and autism.
Her daughter’s seizures and medical condition led to myriad hospital visits over the years, plus significant time spent undergoing electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring. EEG testing is a critical way to assess the type of seizures someone is having and where in the brain they are occurring. During the EEG, electrodes and wires are attached to the person’s head, often for hours and sometimes for days at a time. Finck often would playfully call the cluster of wires, covered with gauze and cloth, her daughter’s princess rainbow hair.
Sitting with Espen in the hospital, Finck had an idea. She could create and sell hats in different fun patterns for people of all ages to wear over their EEG wires. It would be a way for Finck to help support her family after she shifted from working in health care to being a stay-at-home mom.
“After seeing my daughter wear her hat and how happy she was, we want everyone to feel that way. I don’t want people to feel like they are defined by epilepsy or that it runs their life.”
Finck put her business plans on hold as she devoted herself to her daughter’s care. But in late 2022 she was ready to give it a go, launching Rainbow Hair Hats (rainbowhairhats.com) in Verndale. She ramped up with a fundraiser that would back her as she designed and created hats to donate to children’s hospitals. Requesting feedback from customers, she used their input and enthusiastic reviews to continue developing the hats.
To grow Rainbow Hair Hats, Finck plans to operate a model where her company supplies nonprofits and hospitals with the hats wholesale. They can then give hats to their clients or patients, or perhaps sell them in the gift shop. She appreciates receiving the Initiators Fellowship to help her with all of the business details and planning—areas that are entirely new to her.
While Rainbow Hair Hats works to solve one need for people undergoing neurological testing, it also will bring fun to sometimes stressful and scary medical situations. Such a gesture goes a long way toward supporting individuals and families through the tough days. “After seeing my daughter wear her hat and how happy she was, we want everyone to feel that way. I don’t want people to feel like they are defined by epilepsy or that it runs their life,” Finck said. “I really want to give families a way to breathe a little bit, even though things are hard and their loved one is struggling. This gives them a way to be a bit silly and make their child feel unique.”
Finck aims to forge new ground in other ways, too. She and her family experienced many dark days when they learned of Espen’s diagnosis and adjusted to her different path in life. But with support and resources, Finck eventually saw that their experience could be used for good. She plans to create community spaces and supports for families that have been touched by epilepsy. That might include raising awareness of the condition and teaching others how to help someone having a seizure.
“I couldn’t sit in the negative forever—I have not been given this situation for nothing. I had a feeling that there was a purpose for this,” Finck said. “I always say that your greatest quality isn’t fitting in, it’s being yourself. Because the world only has one you, and you can only offer what you have. And you can still change the world. I always said that about Espen—that she can change the world.”
Dawn Finn knows more than most about the devastation that can be wrought by addiction and mental illness. She struggled with substance abuse for years before finally becoming sober three decades ago. And then, in 2023, her own life was cracked apart when her son, who also fought addiction, died by suicide.
“What that did for me was really solidify and deepen my resolve to make something happen,” Finn said. “If he had peer support, had a place to talk to someone who had gotten off meth or whatever he was struggling with, he might have survived.”
Inspired by her personal tragedy, Finn, who was already working for Welcome Place, a church-based program that provided free meals and conversation for community members, deepened her resolve. She vowed to help people navigate social and healthcare systems and to provide even more peer support for mental health and addiction issues. The organization remade itself, and today operates as Community & Life Services (cl.services), an independent nonprofit.
“I don’t want other people to struggle with addiction like I did. I don’t want another son or daughter to kill themselves because of their use.”
The shift felt organic and needed, and was supported by all involved. “What they found was that more people needed mental health services than what a parish nurse can provide,” Finn said.
Addiction and mental illness are rampant in our communities—and across the nation. “Twenty-one million Americans suffer from an addiction,” Finn said, “but only a population the size of Duluth is getting and seeking help. The truth is, most people don’t know how to get help.”
She hopes her nonprofit will help people in her community and the wider region understand how to access the support they need to start their path to recovery. With the right kind of non-judgmental support, she said, many will be able to take that needed next step.
A central element of Community & Life Services is to provide peer recovery support services and to help others gain support specialist training and certification. Finn believes this unique approach—to provide one-on-one coaching and deep listening from an expanding pool of trained professionals with shared life experiences—can be a key part of an individual’s healing.
Though her organization is already up and running, Finn knows more work needs to be done to keep it healthy and active. And she’s relying on her time in the 2024-2025 Initiators Fellowship to mold and shape the organization’s path forward.
“The whole process really makes you think through it,” Finn said. “It is not, ‘You write the grant and you are accepted.’ You have an interview. You have to know what you are doing. I had to do a pitch. You really need to get clear, ‘Where am I going? What is the goal?’”
Finn appreciates the mentorship, the opportunity to deepen her community connections, and the annual stipend that the Fellowship provides. “I don’t have to worry about trying to make an income now,” Finn said. “Now I can really focus … and grow.”
Finn plans to harness the energy she gains from the Fellowship and its opportunities to support her burgeoning nonprofit and its clientele.
“If I could help another mother or father not have to feel what I am feeling, I want to be able to do that,” she said. “I don’t want other people to struggle with addiction like I did. I don’t want another son or daughter to kill themselves because of their use. I don’t want the pain of the death of a child to have to motivate other people.”
What is an incumbent worker?
An Incumbent Worker is a person who is currently employed and could benefit themselves and their employer by upgrading their skills through educational and training opportunities.
What is Incumbent Worker Training (IWT)?
Rural Minnesota CEP, Inc. will provide direct financial assistance to local employers to train current employees and improve the economic competitiveness of regional businesses. Incumbent worker training funding is available to help employers remain competitive by retaining a skilled workforce or to prevent layoffs by increasing the skills of their current workforce.
For generations, Native people have demanded the sole right to the artifacts, customs, land, language and ways that were stripped away as westward expansion overtook North America.
During her time in the Initiators Fellowship, Jill Greendeer, an enrolled member of Wisconsin’s Ho-chunk Nation who makes her home in St. Michael, wants to add Indigenous data sovereignty to the conversation by advocating for the authority to administer the collection, ownership and application of Native data.
“It is not just technology, what the white, mainstream perspective thinks about as data,” Greendeer said. “For us, it is so much more. It is our voice, our perspective, our history, our stories. It is our language, our artifacts, our cultural songs, our kinship stories, our shared experience through boarding schools.”
When Native people have full sovereignty over their data, Greendeer said, a reclamation of Native culture and heritage can be more fully realized. “Our narratives have been exploited and capitalized on by people who have no business doing what they are doing,” she said. “It is done from a perspective that is not our own. Our perspective on our history is the true perspective.”
Greendeer’s social enterprise venture, Indigenous Visions Research and Wellness, LLC, would guide the constraints of research on tribal lands through independent and Native-run review boards. The effort would include education, training, protocols, and ethical and diverse community considerations.
“My social justice enterprise is about finding empowerment and healing through Indigenous data sovereignty,” Greendeer explained. Through her advocacy work, she said, Native communities can assert their rights. “We are independent from the U.S. government. We have our own governance system, our own voting systems. This is ours, and those who want to study our history or our culture need to seek our permission first.”
Initiators Fellows are matched with mentors, experts with deep knowledge in their specific area of interest. Greendeer is enthusiastic about working with her mentor, Stephanie Russo Carroll, associate director of the University of Arizona Native Nations Institute.
“She is on the cutting edge,” Greendeer said. “She is not just empowering but also healing, too. She has a network established and she has been gracious in bringing me on.”
Along with growing Indigenous Visions Research and Wellness, LLC, Greendeer will use her time as a Fellow to focus on planning and contact building. The generous two-year stipend makes it possible for her to dedicate the time needed to turn her dream into a full-time reality.
“By the end of the two years, I will have enough contracts to pay for my living and get revenue coming into my business,” Greendeer said. “The rest will be about telling the real truth, and owning our Native realities so we can guide our healing, our empowerment and our stories.”
The two-year Initiators Fellowship provides wrap-around training, mentoring and guidance, plus an annual stipend to support Fellows and their social enterprise ideas to improve Greater Minnesota communities.
Learn more at fellows.greaterminnesota.net.
Fellows attend regular training and in-person events. The program provides each Fellow with a $5,000 allocation to fund professional development based on their unique needs.
Each Fellow is paired with an industry mentor and business coaching and consulting to support their personal, professional and enterprise growth. Through these connections, training initiatives and other signature events, Fellows accelerate a lifetime network of advocates, colleagues and friends.
It’s the expectation of the program that Fellows dedicate 20 hours per week to develop their vision. The Fellowship compensates each Fellow with an annual stipend of $30,000.
The Initiators Fellowship is made possible by generous funders, including Granite Partners, an original founding funder and partner, along with the Bush Foundation, the McKnight Foundation and Sourcewell.
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Shannon Murray believes in fairness and equity and is convinced there’s a solution to live up to that ideal. Murray’s project, a nonprofit called Lead for Inclusion, will focus on increasing employment and social opportunities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
A proud Bemidji resident, Murray was inspired to start Lead for Inclusion following interactions with people throughout town, through their work as a substitute school teacher, and through connections with friends and family. “We have amazing young leaders in the Bemidji area who are successfully transforming their schools into communities of belonging where students of all abilities are true collaborators, advocates and friends,” said Murray, who uses they/them pronouns.
As students graduate and transition into the larger community, however, their opportunities for continued community connections are diminished.
“I’ve discovered there are so many awesome folks in my community who are really underestimated and whose needs aren’t being met,” Murray said. “Through personal relationships and caring about people who live in my community, through wanting them to have—like everybody else—a sense of being part of this community, I decided I wanted to start my nonprofit.”
“I think we can make life better for so many people. The ultimate goal is for inclusion to become the norm for everyone, everywhere in my community.”
Murray’s friend, John, exemplifies the Lead for Inclusion mission. Today, John is a paraprofessional at Bemidji High School. But finding work that connected with his skill set was fraught with obstacles. “He has low vision and had been trying to find meaningful work in town with not a lot of success,” Murray said. Low vision is vision loss that cannot be corrected with glasses, contacts or surgery. After working as an intern for an inclusive Bemidji High School physical education class, John landed his paraprofessional job. Because someone looked beyond his disability and offered him a position, John has been “able to showcase that he can do it,” they said. “He’s such a good para. It’s amazing!”
Murray’s nonprofit will work to create opportunities for young people so they can connect, contribute and shine, just like John has. “I’ve seen great things come out of that inclusive space,” they said. Outside of the school system, though, opportunities for young people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are limited. “I want to create inclusive youth development opportunities. I want to work with youth to build the bridge that elevates and supports young leaders of diverse abilities.”
Murray’s commitment to build the nonprofit in Bemidji will likely introduce challenges that may not be encountered in larger urban areas. “Transportation is a huge barrier,” Murray said. “If you live in a larger metropolitan area, there are a lot more ways to get around. If you are disabled and live in a more isolated space, it can be harder to get from point A to point B.”
Still, there are countless benefits to working in Greater Minnesota. “Smaller towns have strengths that translate into community-wide work,” Murray said. “People support each other. They want you to succeed.”
Murray’s nonprofit will focus on job-skills training, professional development, education and outreach, and building social opportunities for participants. “I think doing inclusive work that centers on youth is an important way to make social change,” Murray said. With a little work, they added, “I think we can make life better for so many people. The ultimate goal is for inclusion to become the norm for everyone, everywhere in my community.”
Donor-Advised Funds: A Smart, Simple Way to Give—Now, and in the Future.
planning your gift puts you in the driver’s seat.
contact us to invest in the future by starting your fund.
explore the ease and benefits of a donor-advised fund.
• Create a charitable fund to support nonprofit organizations and/or causes you believe in.
• Designate successors to make future grantmaking decisions.
A donor-advised fund is an easy-to-establish vehicle for giving charitably to the causes that matter most to you. They are a great alternative to a private foundation and create a simple, flexible and lasting resource for charitable good.
Donor-advised funds are invested with an eye toward the future. As the fund grows, the amount available for grants increases, too.
You’re in good hands with the Initiative Foundation. We’ll manage IRS requirements and legal compliance while you enjoy the fulfilling experience of supporting the causes you care about.
Funds can be created with gifts of cash, securities, real estate or other assets. To explore the benefits, contact our team or visit ifoundgiving.org
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As a student, Suree Sompamitwong found herself gravitating regularly to the art room at Minnesota West Community and Technical College. Spending time painting and sculpting provided her with a creative outlet and sense of community while putting her mind at ease. The experience—and her own struggles with bipolar disorder—gave Sompamitwong an idea: She wanted to help people of all ages and abilities thrive through creativity.
She started Creative Healing Space (search Creative Healing Space on Facebook) in late 2019. Sompamitwong strives to bring people together through creative expression while supporting their mental health and wellness. To get started, Sompamitwong sold her own artwork and held community fundraisers in her town of Worthington to generate seed money.
Creative Healing Space began holding events, including mask-making, painting, creative writing, and open mic sessions. But Sompamitwong had to pivot when the pandemic paused in-person events. She found new ways to bring art and healing to people in the Worthington area. The organization hired a Sioux Falls art therapist to offer virtual sessions and brought on instructors to teach various art forms. Before long, word spread online and people from around the world joined in.
Sompamitwong had plenty on her plate while getting Creative Healing Space off the ground. She finished her degree in sociology from Southwest Minnesota State University, then started a full-time job as an employment specialist advising youth. She was driven by her goal to provide opportunities for healing where people feel supported no matter what difficulties they face.
“When I would do art in college, I would hear from people how art has been a saving grace for them. I recognized my own journey and how art has really helped me,” said Sompamitwong, who was working in fashion in California when she got her bipolar diagnosis. She returned home to Worthington to tend to her health and be among family. “I thought it could be really beneficial for people. They might not realize it if they haven’t been exposed to art. I want to be able to offer that exposure.”
Creative Healing Space works to get people of all ages involved in the arts. It offers community events, such as comic book workshops, mural making, fashion shows, and family art nights. In addition, it regularly hosts workshops for people to engage in music, dance, drum circles, photography, sculpting, and collage—any creative outlet that nurtures the body, mind, and spirit.
Sompamitwong has been successful at securing grants that allow Creative Healing Space to provide events and classes for free. The backing also has given the organization freedom to evolve. Over time, it added play therapy for at-risk youth and often provides children’s creative activities tables at Worthington’s many festivals and events.
Its Destination Art program brings creativity to schools, senior centers, and organizations, while its Educator Wellness program helps educators connect and decompress through creative activities. “Right now, we’re learning what works and doing pilot programs,” Sompamitwong said. “We want to cater to their needs and do what we can.”
Long-term, Sompamitwong envisions that Creative Healing Space will foster a wellconnected community that thrives through the arts. Recently, the organization launched Creative Sparks Scholarships—three $4,000 awards that will allow people ages 16 to 24 living in the region to share their creativity and talents. It could be anything from music and mosaics to installations.
The Initiators Fellowship will help Sompamitwong continue scaling the organization’s existing programs and try new approaches. One idea is to offer creative healing workshops to companies as an employee benefit, which would bring in revenue while using the arts to promote wellness. “I’m trying to develop my business model and get connected with mentors to try to figure it all out,” she said. “That’s why this Fellowship is catalytic for me.”
Wanetta Thompson saw abundant and abiding pain in her community and wanted to do something to promote healing. Joining with her friend, Lana Oswaldson, and daughter, Laikora, Thompson developed the idea to forge connections between people with Indigenous art at the heart of her endeavor.
The trio is now providing cultural art education to all community members with a two-part mission: to address generational trauma affecting Native American people, and to ease tensions in the Mille Lacs area between tribal and county residents.
To further their goals, Thompson and her team successfully applied for and received a Blandin Foundation grant in late 2022. They’re now using the award to offer free classes called Maada’oonidiwag (meaning shared knowledge) and to pay master artisans to teach the courses.
“Our goal is to build connections and teach about our history and culture. I think that builds understanding,” Thompson said. “We have so much talent in our community—so many people who know how to do so many things. It was easy to find the talent to do what we needed to do. And everyone wanted to share their knowledge.”
In May 2023, the team launched its first round of classes at community centers in Hinckley, Onamia, and McGregor. Thompson, a Hinckley resident and member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, wasn’t sure if Maada’oonidiwag would be compelling. Yet demand was steady from the start for classes in making hand-painted leather belts and beaded earrings. As the year went on, instructors taught people to create ribbon skirts, pucker-toe moccasins, drums and drumsticks, nine-block blankets, and more.
With their early success, the team formed Bear Paws Cultural Art, a nonprofit based in Brook Park. Along with her adult daughters Laikora, Kyrah, and Tourrie, and her sister, Raenelle Weyaus, Thompson continues to develop the organization. It’s a family affair, with Thompson’s husband, Anton, hauling sewing machines and tools to classes and doing prep work. Kyrah Thompson, a chef, makes food to nourish students while they nurture their creativity.
Healing will continue to be Bear Paws’ focus, aiming to address the generational trauma that is still being felt from the boarding school era, when children were removed from their families, homes, and cultures. Thompson draws a direct line between those wounds and the opioid crisis that is deeply affecting the Native American community. She lost two sisters to complications of opioid abuse.
“We want to bring back the culture to heal our community,” Thompson said. “And then everyone who went to the class can teach other people, and that’s the ripple effect that I want to happen. I want this to be bigger than we are.”
Thompson also believes that art is a powerful way to build relationships and understanding. A goal of Bear Paws is to eliminate prejudice and discrimination by bringing communities together—especially those in Aitkin, Mille Lacs, and Pine Counties—to learn about Native American history and engage in artwork.
People from across the region have attended classes, including a non-Native family who had a ball making drums, and a mother and daughter who bonded over creating ribbon skirts. “It’s not just the Native community that is benefitting,” Thompson said. “It’s about building connections and building understanding.”
Bear Paws has a long list of art forms to highlight. Community members and elders came up with 60 practices that people want to learn or enhance. “What’s most important is sharing the knowledge,” Thompson said. “That builds understanding and ensures that our culture continues.”
“We want to bring back the culture to heal our community. I want this to be bigger than we are.”
Cravings for a taste of home led Funwi Tita to start growing African vegetables on his Minnesota land. Soon friends, family, and community members caught wind of his delicious bounty and demonstrated that they would travel far and wide to buy the organic produce.
Tita and his wife, Jennet, started growing vegetables in 2008. They quickly developed a market for produce like water leaf, bitter leaf, and garden eggs that are staples of many African cuisines. In 2016, they formed the company Better Greens, LLC, to build on their passion for growing food from home, paired with a deeper purpose. Not only would Better Greens provide reliable access to culturally relevant produce, it also would contribute to efforts to reduce hunger. Visit bettergreensllc.com to learn more.
“I’d like to see Better Greens become a leader in growing, processing and distributing ethnic African vegetables. We want to make these vegetables a household, consumable vegetable not just for Africans but for everybody,” Tita said. “A big part of our business model will be education to create information and awareness about these very delicious, nutritious vegetables we’re growing and to be at the forefront of getting these products around the country.”
“People really love their food, and we came to realize that this is how we maintain and grow our culture.”
Originally from Cameroon, Tita came to the United States for college and embarked on a career in business administration. Yet his agricultural roots run deep. Tita grew up on a dairy farm, where he helped his parents tend to large vegetable crops and a 40-head herd. Working alongside his family, being in the fields, and growing life-sustaining food all were passions that Tita wanted to import to Minnesota and share with his children. “Farming shaped me, my character, and my values that are guiding me now,” he said.
Over time, Better Greens expanded to the Titas’ four-acre property plus another eight acres that they farm nearby. There is enough demand for the company to farm 15 to 20 acres, but it’s challenging to find enough land. Eventually Tita would like to buy more acreage where Better Greens could have greenhouses and other structures to help the company expand its capacity.
The greenhouses are key to raising African produce in Minnesota, where the growing season is shorter. Currently, Better Greens pays other farmers to germinate seeds during the off-season so that the crops are ready to transplant in the spring. The company sells directly to consumers who come to the farm for pick-up. They also deliver large orders, and freeze and ship vegetables across the country.
In 2023, Tita helped start the Minnesota African Immigrant Farmers Association, uniting farmers to give them a collective voice, support, information and opportunity. Together, these farmers worked to help feed the community by selling crops wholesale to organizations like The Good Acre and the hunger-relief nonprofit Second Harvest Heartland.
Eventually Tita wants Better Greens to branch into processing and packaging its produce in a commercial facility. That will take capital and efforts to secure regulatory certifications. He aims to use the Initiators Fellowship to develop leadership skills and connect with resources and partners that he hopes will work alongside Better Greens to help it thrive.
“This all started because we wanted to eat what we ate growing up,” Tita says. “We saw the opportunity to solve a great need in the community. People really love their food, and we came to realize that this is how we maintain and grow our culture. It’s not just about food and preservation of our culture and heritage—it’s how people can remember that, and then pass it on to the next generations.”
1) New Initiators Fellows Staci Allmaras and Suree Sompamitwong connect during the opening convening for the 2024-2025 cohort. (Learn more about the Initiators Fellows on page 14.)
2) The Initiative Foundation hosted the Little Falls Chamber of Commerce’s monthly Lunchtime on Location in January. Nearly 40 people attended to network and learn more about the Foundation’s array of work across the region. Pictured are team members (left to right) Zach Tabatt, Kerie Thoma, Britt Poser, Deb Kurowski, Brenda Gugglberger and Brian Voerding.
3) In December, the Initiative Foundation welcomed board members, emeritus trustees, staff and guests to the Little Falls office for an annual luncheon. A special thanks to
Susan and Dr. Phil Prosapio for sharing about the Minnesota Main Street Economic Revitalization funding they used to lovingly restore the art deco Falls Theatre in downtown Little Falls.
4) Trustee Jessica Bitz and Initiative Foundation team members Kerie Thoma and Carie Verley enjoyed a September visit to Chisago City during the Foundation’s annual impact tour. Staff and board members also visited Foley and Lindstrom.
5) Mateo Mackbee, Foundation trustee, and Erin Lucas, co-owners of Krewe and Flour & Flower, visited the Initiative Foundation in October to judge a chili cookoff contest. Several staff members cranked out their favorite chili recipes while others served as taste-testers.
Photography by Paul Middlestaedt
Incoming President Brian Voerding shares the Initiative Foundation’s vision for building community through solutionsbased programs, engaged conversation and responsive grantmaking
As a reporter and editor in a small town newsroom, Brian Voerding was a frequent practitioner of what he calls “grocery store journalism”—the certain knowledge that anything he printed in the Winona Daily News would soon be called to account by local readers who recognized him in the aisles of the frozen food section.
“The experience taught me how to listen to a community,” says Voerding, who was named president at the Initiative Foundation in November 2023. “Learning how to listen in a patient and welcoming way has served me well. If you talk to enough people, and listen really hard, you start to find out what a community’s needs are, what their concerns are, and I would say that’s a powerful part of the work we do at the Initiative Foundation.”
David Monroy, chair for the Initiative Foundation’s Board of Trustees, says Voerding’s capacity for engaged listening and asking the right questions helped him emerge as the top choice among a nationwide search of candidates to succeed former Foundation president Matt Varilek, who was appointed by Gov. Tim Walz in June 2023 to lead the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. “Since its start, the Initiative Foundation’s leadership has seen a continuity of excellent communicators, and those skills are evident with Brian,” says Monroy. “The work of the Initiative Foundation is easy to get your head and heart around, but when Brian talks about what’s possible for Central Minnesota, the passion really comes through.”
Raised in Montrose, a small community in Wright County, Voerding earned degrees in behavioral psychology and music from Hamline University, where he edited the weekly newspaper, The Oracle, by day, and hung out at local jazz clubs by night. After a few years as a Twin Cities freelance writer, Voerding moved to Winona, a Mississippi riverfront community of 25,000, to be with his now-wife Mollee Sheehan Voerding and two sons. He worked as a journalist, earned a master’s degree in organizational leadership at St. Mary’s University, and went on to launch Engage Winona, a nonprofit social-change and economic development organization serving the greater Winona area.
Voerding’s shift from newspapers to nonprofits got its start in a community-based leadership training session sponsored by the Blandin Foundation—a program not unlike some of the Initiative Foundation’s past and current community-building work. “That experience really unlocked my world,” Voerding says. “That experience unlocked my passion for empowering rural residents to engage with and envision the futures of their communities.”
Returning to his roots in Central Minnesota, Voerding joined the Initiative Foundation in June 2021 as its vice president for inclusive entrepreneurship, where he played a central role in two of the Initiative Foundation’s largest-ever grantmaking programs. He oversaw the 2021-2022 distribution of $8.8 million in COVID-era relief grants to 800 Central Minnesota small businesses. Voerding also helped to secure and implement a multi-million dollar effort supported by the Otto Bremer Trust that drove $1.1 million in transformative funding to nonprofits and an additional $700,000-plus to rural small and minority-owned businesses.
Seeing the impact of the Initiative Foundation’s work on multiple fronts during the pandemic—from supporting new childcare solutions to activating Central Minnesota’s increasingly diverse workforce to enhancing the leadership capacity of the region’s next generation of leaders—reinforced the value of the Minnesota Initiative Foundation model, a unique fusion of community lending, capacity building, and philanthropy found only in Minnesota. “I see the Initiative Foundation as a backbone support organization,
walking alongside communities as they build the futures they want for themselves,” he says. “It requires a lot of listening, brainstorming, and consensus-building. But there’s a lot of joy in those conversations, too, because it’s all about building really vital and viable rural communities where people want to live, work and play, and contribute to lasting prosperity.”
: With an election year on the horizon, we’re bound to hear more about the so-called “urban-rural divide.” As someone who grew up in Montrose, worked in the metro area, and is now living in St. Cloud, does that narrative make sense anymore?
Voerding: I think the urban-rural divide is an incomplete construct. The size or location of your community sometimes is not very descriptive for defining the kinds of issues we need to work on, or the kinds of conversations we need to move forward, not just in urban or rural areas, but as a state.
When I was growing up, Montrose had a population of just 600 people. My parents worked in public schools their entire careers, and there was a lot of freedom and an enjoyable lack of supervision. In a lot of ways, it was the idyllic stereotype, but that’s not the only story. There’s a danger in thinking that small means unchallenged, or small means simple, because in fact, it can be a very complicated experience living in rural areas. They’re richly diverse in terms of politics, culture, geography, and social economics. All of these variables that communities are constructed around are often just as diverse as they would be in a larger community.
At the same time, there are very distinct challenges and economic disparities when it comes to access and the equitable distribution of resources in rural places—the kinds of things that folks in other places may take for granted. Access to good, quality childcare is one of those challenges; an available workforce is another. I think our challenge in the rural areas and the more urban communities in Central Minnesota is to think about ways in which we can bring people more fully into relationships with each other so we can move forward collectively.
“ I’d been increasingly interested in what’s now called solutionsbased storytelling, and exploring community narratives that don’t just highlight conflict, but also explore ways to create solutions together. ”
: For many years, the Initiative Foundation has been exploring how to build a strong succession plan for Central Minnesota’s leaders, passing the baton from generation to generation. As the first millennial leader of the Foundation, what do you think the region needs to do to retain talent and promote opportunities for younger people?
Voerding: There used to be a narrative that to live in rural Minnesota meant making some kind of sacrifice—whether that’s arts and entertainment, access to diverse cultures and experiences, good restaurants, and interesting things to do. We used to have to tell these explicit narratives about how cool rural really is, but I think the pandemic tore that up, and I’m glad to see it. When I look at the huge assets we have to promote alongside all of the great cultural and quality of life experiences we have—affordable housing, easy transportation, access to the outdoors—living in a rural community is the very opposite of making a sacrifice.
That said, it’s critical that we keep investing in the creativity, innovation and brain power of the people living in this region, which is one of the things the Initiative Foundation does really well.
: During the pandemic, the Initiative Foundation delivered an incredible amount of resources to communities, including more than $16 million in relief grants to more than 1,500 businesses across Central Minnesota—almost a five-fold increase in the Foundation’s typical grantmaking volume. What lessons did you take away from that challenging time?
Voerding: The pandemic forced us to immediately elevate our game as a resource management and distribution channel for our region, as an intermediary for bringing lots of resources into the region, and as an administrator in effectively and equitably distributing dollars across our region. But at its core, it was all about moving resources to communities that really needed them—at the very moment they needed them—and that’s the work the Initiative Foundation has done for decades. You would never want to ask for a crisis of that scale, but what the pandemic revealed was the strength of the relationships and the working connections that the Initiative Foundation has developed over the years. While that level of grantmaking is a role that’s come and gone for us now that the pandemic has waned, there’s still a lot of power in recognizing our ability to do that work when it matters most, in a moment of crisis.
: With programs for community building, philanthropy, nonprofit support, childcare and workforce solutions, along with entrepreneurship, the Initiative Foundation wears a lot of hats. How do you see the Foundation’s role in the region, and what challenges and opportunities do you see ahead?
Voerding: I like to say we’re unapologetically complicated. We have an expansive mission built around economy, community and generosity, which I think is a really nice framework for how to build vital rural communities.
The Minnesota Initiative Foundations got their start nearly 40 years ago, in the wake of a rural economic crisis, and we’re designed to be incredibly responsive to the communities we serve. Our aim is to deliver the right resources at the right time and to support communities that are creating the futures they want. That means embracing complexity and figuring out what we need to build for ourselves as an organization to really best serve our communities. Right now, our entrepreneurship program is growing and well regarded; our lending program is growing; our nonprofit development work is relatively unmatched at the local and even state level; and our Partner Fund program is viewed as the place where local people can join with us to create charitable funds that keep wealth local to support the health and prosperity of the region. We aren’t just one thing. We have to be diverse, because there are so many different needs to fill.
I see the Initiative Foundation as a resource magnet, striving for and being a strong advocate for state and federal dollars and philanthropic investments, delivering equitable resources that can help relieve some of the inequities we see in rural communities, and welcoming those resources back to Central Minnesota. I think this is strong positioning for the Initiative Foundation. The stronger the player and partner we can be in this space, through nonpartisan advocacy and facilitating conversations, the more successful we’ll be in fulfilling our mission to empower people throughout Central Minnesota to build a thriving economy, vibrant communities, and a lasting culture of generosity.
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If you talk to enough people, and listen really hard, you start to find out what a community’s needs are, what their concerns are, and I would say that’s a powerful part of the work we do at the Initiative Foundation.”
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Put hope within reach of every Minnesotan.
CDFI lending bridges gaps so borrowers like the Rainbow Wellness Collective can serve and thrive
By Kevin Allenspach
Seal Dwyer can barely believe the view.
Looking over downtown St. Cloud from a second-floor window on a recent sundrenched afternoon, the sight was almost too good to be true.
Dwyer used to have a basement office up the street and around the corner, but this—the historic 1887 Lahr Block Building at 601 W. St. Germain St.—is a space Dwyer could scarcely dream about less than a year ago. Extensively renovated in 2004 when it was home to GeoComm, the building is now a monument in more ways than can fit on the small brass plaque affixed to the exterior of the building certifying its place on the National Register of Historic Places.
In addition to Seal Dwyer Counseling, a licensed marriage and family therapy practice that focuses on people who identify as queer or who are dealing with trauma, other offices in the building include EveryBODY Wellness, OutFront Minnesota, Queerspace Collective, and St. Cloud Pride. They’re all tenants along with the Rainbow Wellness Collective, the only LGBTQIA2S+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and two-spirit) community center in the state.
Dwyer believes the transition to this anchor location in downtown St. Cloud was a fortunate convergence of the right people being in the right place at the right time. That includes a think-big real estate agent, a generous and willing seller, and a loan package supported by MinnWest Bank and the Initiative Foundation, one of the region’s only Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) certified by the U.S. Department of Treasury.
The Initiative Foundation is one of nearly three dozen Minnesota CDFIs and one of just two serving Central Minnesota. (Leech Lake Financial Services also is a CDFI.) It’s a designation the Foundation has proudly held since 1997. The organization re-upped its commitment in 2023 when it created the Impact Fund, a subsidiary organization that will be home to the Foundation’s lending and support services programs. By providing access to capital and serving as a resource magnet to support borrowers who may face barriers, CDFIs like the Initiative Foundation help to create opportunities for economic growth and empowerment in disadvantaged areas.
“Through the Impact Fund and our status as a CDFI, we can be more aggressive than a traditional lender,” said Doug Adams, Impact Fund finance manager for the Initiative Foundation. “It means we can support emerging businesses more fully with the additional backing we receive from the U.S. Department of Treasury. We don’t try to take on the business of traditional banks but, rather, we complement their efforts. Our goal is to support businesses that need help to grow and gain a stable position so they can graduate to traditional lending sources.”
CDFIs support underserved entrepreneurs and community-focused economic development in several ways:
One of the things that kept coming up in conversations with people was how they need community.
• Access to Capital: CDFIs provide access to affordable credit and financial services for individuals, small businesses, and organizations in underserved communities. They offer loans, microloans, and other financial products that may not be available through traditional banks or lenders.
• Flexible Lending: CDFIs have more flexible lending criteria than traditional financial institutions, allowing them to serve borrowers who may not qualify for conventional loans due to factors such as low income, lack of credit history, or past financial challenges.
• Technical Assistance and Financial Education: Many CDFIs, the Initiative Foundation included, offer technical assistance to increase the success rate of small businesses and entrepreneurs. Training and financial education programs help borrowers build their financial literacy, improve their creditworthiness, and develop business management skills.
• Targeted Investment: CDFIs target their investments in projects and businesses that have the potential to generate positive social and economic impacts in underserved communities.
• Community Development Initiatives: CDFIs often collaborate with local community organizations, government agencies, and other stakeholders to support broader community development initiatives. This may involve participating in workforce development programs, or investing in projects that address specific community needs.
“Our goal is to deploy more lending capital in low-income areas and in diverse communities across Central Minnesota,” Adams
said. “We’re also reaching out to the wider economic development community to say, ‘Hey, how can we help new businesses get started in your communities?’ The outreach effort is augmented by our entrepreneurship programs that offer a spectrum of support to emerging business owners.
“The people we want to help are still working to get banks to see them as viable customers. Some don’t have a whole lot of credit history or a lot of collateral to go on. But they can provide services to large numbers of people who need them,” Adams said. “In some cases, there are language barriers. We offer technical assistance—training, business planning—and we educate our clients about what banks are looking for so they will eventually become bankable customers. Our goal is for them to eventually move into the traditional lending system so we can keep turning our dollars to help new people.”
Dwyer and members of the Rainbow Wellness Collective toured buildings all over downtown St. Cloud, never bothering to consider the Lahr, which had an original price tag of $1.7 million. Commercial real estate agent Eric O’Brien convinced them to look. And Devin Larson, vice president and senior commercial banker at Minnwest Bank, who serves on the Initiative Foundation’s Business Finance Committee, also wanted to help. He brought the project to the Initiative Foundation, and through a combination of lending and generosity by the sellers, Tom and Janet Grones, the Lahr Block Building located in a CDFI investment zone went from out-ofbounds to home.
Our Brainerd Lakes Day of Caring 2023 reflects the loving support the Brainerd Lakes area has for its neighbors. Donations made last December 14 were matched with funds from Cub Foods, Mills Automotive Group, and private citizens, and are used to assist our neighbors in need in the Brainerd Lakes community. We’d like to extend our thanks to all our donors and partners.
“Maybe you’re starting a business or need help expanding. If so, we’re here to help you make an impact.”
Doug Adams, Initiative Foundation
“They knocked a million dollars off the price,” Dwyer said, “so we got into this beautiful, huge, old building for $650,000.”
Tom and Janet Grones are thrilled to know the building, and their careful renovation efforts, will be put to continued good use. The couple sold their interest in GeoComm a decade ago to Granite Partners, a private investment and holding company—and crucial Initiative Foundation partner—based in St. Cloud. They retained ownership of the building and continued to lease it back to GeoComm until COVID-19 ushered in fully remote work.
When the lease expired in May 2023, the couple listed the property only to realize that office buildings had lost value during the pandemic. “It was self-serving to some extent, but both my wife and I had invested a great deal of money in those restorations and, after we met with Seal and some of her staff, we were pleased it was going to go to someone who could appreciate its history and function. We were interested in anything that was going to bring folks downtown, and we were interested in seeing a nonprofit move in.”
One of the Collective’s first big events was Queer Year’s Eve on Dec. 31. A few days prior, two people from St. Cloud Pride built a stage and Anthony Schrock from GREAT Theatre scavenged some lighting. Dwyer said it’s just another example of how everything has fallen into place. And while the Collective intends to serve people within a 50-mile radius, response is coming from further away, too.
“Everyone associated with this did so much and I’m so in awe of having stewardship of this building,” Dwyer said. “It’s utterly perfect for our use, and there’s no better place downtown. We’re half a block from a parking ramp. We’ve got a huge open sidewalk across the street. We have a big enough community to support this place. But we’re a small enough community that we can fit in this space. The Twin Cities can’t pull this off.”
The Collective will seek additional tenants as of Jan. 1, 2025, and Tom and Janet Grones are happy to see what the Lahr Block Building has become.
“All people deserve a space where they can go and be themselves,” Tom Grones said. “The businesses are working together to serve a need in our community. My wife and I believe everyone has a right to try and make their life better, and that’s what we see happening there.”
To Dwyer, the prominent downtown presence represents visibility and safety.
“As a therapist, I’ve watched people have PTSD symptoms from the laws that have been getting passed in states that aren’t Minnesota, which is one of a few beacon-of-hope states for queer folks,” she said. “People smash on St. Cloud all the time, but I love this town. I grew up here. And I want to make it the best I can.”
• Clayton’s Auto Repair, Brainerd
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To learn more about the Initiative Foundation's lending program, or to see if your project is a fit, visit ifound.org and select “Business Services” in the navigation.
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• Bridges of Hope, Brainerd and Crosslake
• ILT Studios, St. Cloud
• Senor Elote Y Mas, Melrose
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Initiative Foundation fund supports annual tribute to recognize honor, duty, sacrifice
Each December, volunteers gather with reverence to lay nearly 6,000 honor wreaths at the headstones of those interred at the 39-acre Minnesota State Veterans Cemetery in Little Falls.
The event is organized by Wreaths for the Fallen, a Baxterbased nonprofit that partnered with the Initiative Foundation in 2023 to be the permanent home for its Wreaths for the Fallen Memorial Endowed Fund. “Through this agreement, donations made to the Wreaths for the Fallen endowment will be stewarded long into the future to ensure that our fallen veterans and their families can be appropriately honored,” said Zach Tabatt, community philanthropy manager at the Initiative Foundation. In addition to Little Falls, wreaths are placed on headstones at Minnesota’s three other State Veterans Cemeteries in Duluth, Preston and Redwood Falls.
Photography by Zack Swanson
The Initiative Foundation is proud to host a variety of Partner Funds for families, businesses, nonprofits and volunteer-led groups. Contact us today to create a fund that supports the causes that matter most to you. Gain tax advantages, benefit from local expertise and support while aligning your generosity with community initiatives.
VISIT ifound.org/ways-to-give/start-a-fund or EMAIL: funds@ifound.org
Left: An honor guard pays tribute to fallen soldiers and their family members during opening ceremonies. Above: Volunteer and Brainerd resident Justin Doerfler, who served in Afghanistan, takes a moment to honor the fallen.Anishinaabe artist, equity advocate, cultural educator
“I have a hard time thinking about my work as a business,” said Adrienne Benjamin, Anishinaabe artist, equity advocate and cultural educator. “My work is my art, it’s my thoughts. It’s all the values, trust and stories the elders instilled in me … I feel lucky doing the work I do and calling it a business.”
Benjamin, a member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, designs and creates ribbon skirts, beaded fedoras, earrings and other forms of art. She is especially renowned for her jingle dress creations worn by indigenous dancers throughout the United States and Canada.
Jingle dresses are an essential element of the Jingle Dress Dance and are believed to have originated with the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe in the early 1900s. A generations-old story says that when a girl fell sick, her father had a vision of a dance and a dress that would cure her. The dress was adorned with hundreds of metal cones that jingled when the wearer danced; the father taught the daughter the sacred dance from his vision, and the girl recovered.
Today, Jingle Dress Dances take place across the continent and on the competitive powwow circuit, including at the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Grand Celebration Powwow in Hinckley. The dance, though it has several variations, is associated with the healing of the body, mind and community.
Scan the QR code to learn about Benjamin’s advocacy work as a Native reconciliation advisor for Minnesotabased Minnetonka and other businesses.
1. Jingle dresses are sacred ceremonial items. “When I get an order, I ask respectfully about the person’s use for it and their experience as a dancer,” Benjamin explained. Hats, earrings, shirts, and some skirts may be sold to the public, though certain pieces aren’t for everyone.
2. Benjamin made her first jingle dress when she was 13. She cut up her grandfather’s shirt to study how the garment was constructed. “One of the first jingle dresses I made had a collar because my grandpa’s shirt did!” laughed Benjamin.
3. Growing up around sewers, Benjamin was mentored by a woman who owned a sewing business. “She gave me a crash course in three days on how to make an applique for a jingle dress. I drew it, I sewed it, and it was a ‘wow’ moment for me.”
4. As her talent grew, Benjamin received requests for blankets and dresses. It was still a side hustle, however; at the time, Benjamin was a full-time educator, shaping children’s arts programs focused on the reclamation of native culture and language.
5. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, her work in the schools was put on hold. “We grow up thinking art can’t be a full-time focus, but the pandemic was when I decided to see if my art could support me full time.”
6. Today, jingle dresses are about 80 percent of Benjamin’s work, with beaded fedoras about 15 percent and assorted items, such as earrings, making up the rest.
7. Benjamin’s jingle dresses are commonly made from calico or bridal satin. She creates both traditional jingle dresses and contemporary ones that might have sequins or neon colors.
8. “I work with the dancer on the type of materials, look and color they have in mind. But I keep my own artistic concept,” she explained. “I use a pattern book as my base, get the dancer’s measurements, and tune the dress to that person.”
9. Originally, jingles were snuff tin tops rolled into a cone shape with pliers or a machine. Today, material and rolling methods vary. Benjamin prefers pre-rolled cones ordered in bulk. “I’d say my dresses have 250 to 300 jingles on average, but it’s whatever looks good. The most time-consuming part is attaching them to the dress.”
10. Benjamin employs her teenage daughter and mother. Her daughter helps with sewing the ribbon lines and crimping jingles, while her mother finishes dresses or ribbon skirts with pockets and details. “I spend a weekend or two with my mom designing, then [she and my daughter] take it from there. I create jingle dresses order-by-order, but I’ll also do a drop of 12-15 ribbon skirts on social media and they sell out immediately.”
When asked about her plans for the future, Benjamin said: “I’m riding this wave! I’m living in the top-tier of jingle dress makers right now. National powwow champions request my creations. That is the Super Bowl version of my work!”
Send your best guess to IQ@ifound.org by May 31, 2024.
Three winners will be chosen, at random, to receive a $25 credit to apply toward their favorite Initiative Foundation-hosted Partner Fund.
HINT: This peaceful stop along Interstate Highway 35 is known as the gateway to Minnesota’s Arrowhead Region. The historical marker calls the region a “tourist mecca.”
Congratulations to everyone who correctly identified Annandale’s Minnesota Pioneer Park in the fall 2023 edition. Readers Jim Gruenke, Jennifer Nash and Connie Wold were the lucky winners of the “Where’s IQ” contest.
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