Hello, I'm Dr. Eric Jolly, president & CEO of the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation.

And I'm here to just reflect a little bit on the year that just was. 2022 has been a year of incredible adaptation and resilience for everyone.

For our nonprofit sector, for our working sector, for our entire Community. We've pursued our learning and adaptability in so many different ways.

One is expanding the ways in which we give and support our community partners. We've changed the way in which we make grants, not simply using the earnings from our investments alone, but using our investments as a way to change our community for the better. We have joined with Minnesota's Department of Employment and Economic Development to create the East Metro Main Street Revitalization Program, investing in those parts of our communities that maybe haven't fully recovered from the civil unrest or from COVID and giving an opportunity to build jobs, employment, wealth, in the parts of our community that need it most so that as they emerge from COVID and from this year, they can thrive.

And we've adapted to the way in which we engage our donors, inviting them to think more broadly about their philanthropy to work with us in creative ways, sharing their gifts of stocks, business interests, property, cryptocurrency, even grain futures, to be able to create great gifts to change our community. And we're helping them give those gifts in broader ways than ever before, inviting them to join us in making no-interest loans to develop affordable housing opportunities, business and job programs in the most needed areas of our communities.

We have expanded the breadth of our investments to not only assure that the outcome creates an opportunity to do good, but the investments themselves do good. We have just been recognized as the only community foundation in the nation to be accepted as a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investing. We're expanding the way in which our programs represent responsible investment, upping the game on ESG while increasing our return to our community.

I've had the opportunity to travel across the state engaging with public safety officials, nonprofit leaders, community leaders, those interested in bringing change for education, safety, well-being, for all of the state. And we have adopted, as we promised, to recognize that it is in the community where the priorities are best set, the interventions are best developed, and the focus on solutions can be found. It is in local communities that we realize no one size or one type of intervention or one set of priorities fits everyone.

In short, it has been a year of incredible adaptation and resiliency. Our nonprofit sector has emerged differently, and in some cases stronger than ever before. We are serving unique and new needs that we never had and meeting communities in different ways than they had ever asked for. We're building economic and social resiliency.

A lot has changed in 2022.

And a lot of us have found that we need to adapt and do things differently, but one thing hasn't changed. We continue to know that when we do things together, we are going to thrive. Our goal will continue to be building a just, equitable and vibrant Minnesota in which all communities in individuals thrive.