McKnight@60: The Minnesota Initiative Foundations
To celebrate McKnight's 60th anniversary this year, we've launched a year-long series of Impact Stories looking at McKnight's origins, history, and program strategies through the years.
Check back for a new story each month!
Check back for a new story each month!
McKnight’s founder, William L. McKnight, was born in a farmhouse in South Dakota. He moved to Minnesota as a young man and eventually became an early leader at the 3M Corporation. McKnight built a successful corporation around his own philosophy of business management, chiefly to "delegate responsibility and encourage men and women to exercise their initiative." McKnight sought — in his own words — to "discover and extract untapped potential in ideas, people, and markets, initiating and leading change while stimulating ongoing improvement and growth.”
In 1986, The McKnight Foundation put William McKnight’s business philosophy to work by establishing funds across Greater Minnesota to support economic growth. By the mid-1980s, rapidly declining demands for farming, mining, and lumber led to the disappearance of entire economic markets in Greater Minnesota. The McKnight Foundation had previously funded limited programs to support families and communities statewide—but McKnight's board of directors was becoming increasingly aware that citizens in rural Minnesota were facing unprecedented challenges. McKnight's board visited small towns and confirmed that the people of rural Minnesota held the capacity and resilience to most effectively address their own economic and community challenges, given appropriate resources.
The result was the Minnesota Initiative Foundations (MIFs). Each of the six foundations was to be independent, with its own specific geographic scope, board of directors, and distinct identity. Initially, the foundations set out to help individuals and families cope with poverty. Each surveyed its own community to identify pressing social needs and strategies for solutions.
Today, the MIFs work in partnership with McKnight to extend broad limbs of support across our region. Beneath them all lie deep Minnesotan roots and a fundamental philosophy of self-determination. Over the past 27 years, the MIFs have become enormously powerful and valuable regional institutions. By adapting local support to each of their own communities, the foundations foster growth and vitality in their regions while bolstering the economic health of our entire state.
The MIFs' inherent spirit of innovation and self-determination is a fitting legacy to William McKnight's distinctive business philosophies. William McKnight passed away in 1978, before the MIFs were established in the 1986, but it’s likely he would recognize in them his own trust that good people with appropriate resources will make the best decisions to serve themselves. The MIFs remain one of Minnesota's most powerful success stories, and the tens of thousands of Minnesotans they have served continue to strengthen our state.