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The Foundation's new investment portfolios are creating opportunities for investors and strengthening communities across the state.

By Chris M. Garner, Communications Specialist

The Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation has a history of innovative investing; one that started with our partner foundation, F. R. Bigelow Foundation and has extended to our own mission-driven investment work.

“F. R. Bigelow Foundation is truly one of the most innovative private foundations in the country when it comes to impact investing,” said Director of Community and Impact Investing Casey Shultz. “In 2018, their board voted to carve off 10% of its corpus for its mission-related impact investment portfolio, which was about $16.5 million at the time.”

In addition to its grantmaking, F. R. Bigelow was able to make market-rate investments to help generate positive social impact in Minnesota with an emphasis on the East Metro, supporting various organizations. Since then, the financial returns from the investments have grown the portfolio from $16.5 million to $27 million.

The results of this work inspired the Foundation to explore offering its own impact investment opportunities that allow both institutional investors and Foundation donor advised fundholders the ability to invest in the future of Minnesota.

Our Future Ready portfolio is an impact-first, below-market-rate investment targeting a one percent net return, while our Momentum Minnesota portfolio is a market-rate portfolio targeting an eight to 12 percent annual net return. These portfolios are grounded in the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) and managed by our Investments team.

“As the state’s largest community foundation that works statewide, we are uniquely positioned to create a platform that allows any type of investor to come in and pool their capital and then use our systems and our relationships to deploy it,” Casey said. “When we started this work back in 2022, we looked around the country and were honestly shocked that no other community foundations had these types of investment portfolios that anybody could invest in. We found out that was an opportunity for us to be a bit of trailblazers.”

So far, the Foundation has raised $25 million across both portfolios and plans to raise $75 million more to meet our goal of $100 million.

Two of the organizations we have supported through this new work include Claros Technologies and Green Acres Milling.

“My vision for Future Ready and Momentum Minnesota portfolios is to prove that [place-based] impact investing is accessible and it’s highly impactful,” said Casey. “I hope that we can be a beacon for other community foundations around the United States to create their own impact investing portfolios that are place-based because we know that for every dollar that’s invested, that money moves from Wall Street to Main Street.”

“I hope that we can be a beacon for other community foundations around the United States to create their own impact investing portfolios that are place-based because we know that for every dollar that’s invested, that money moves from Wall Street to Main Street.”

Casey Shultz

To learn more about our new investment portfolios, contact a member of our Philanthropic Services team.

About the Author

As communications specialist, Chris Garner supports the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation’s work by showcasing it to the community through words, photo, video and other media. Chris has a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from Alabama State University and a Master of Science in Journalism from Northwestern University.

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