The pandemic, social unrest, and economic turmoil have left an indelible mark on the past two years. Against this backdrop, the JRT Foundation’s Board of Directors spent 2021 listening and learning with an aim to strengthen our own work as a family foundation.

As a result, the Foundation has decided to make changes that will serve to sharpen our application process, reduce application time, and increase our grantees’ abilities to focus on their work rather than prepping for the next grant cycle.

Changes that affect our grant applicants and grantee partners include:

• • Updating our senior and youth guidelines (found here) to better clarify our funding priorities so that the grantee community can more easily decide whether an application meets our priorities;
  • Clarifying that our geographic focus is on Minneapolis and its first and second ring suburbs; and
  • Shifting to a two-year grant schedule to provide grantees with more funding stability.
  • More information about these changes can be found here

Other highlights include:

• • Committing to ongoing learning about the dynamics affecting the people our grantees serve;
  • Forming grant vetting committees composed of board members to deepen our collective understanding about those organizations serving youth and seniors in our community; and
  • Creating a board committee to plan for engaging our next generation of family members.
  • Bidding farewell to board member Richard Thorpe with gratitude for his service to the Foundation.

We look forward to continuing our learning in the year ahead and wish our nonprofit community every success as they work to build greater opportunities for those they serve.

Tim Thorpe
President
December 2021