General Overview and Retrospect Marty Sieve, Vice President for Programs especially hard-hit by the recession, NMF actually found the means to create a completely new grant program unforeseen by our current strategic plan – the Community Connections Program, which now awards grants to nonprofits for joint ventures and mergers that increase efficiency and effectiveness of services. Our STAR Program went from strength to strength, reaffirming itself as one of the country’s outstanding leadership programs for youth. The number of college scholarships from our educational funds rose to more than 160, compared to an annual average of 100 in previous years. Contributions to our Community Funds increased by 260 percent from FY 08, while those to our Public Service Funds increased by 285 percent.
Fiscal Year 2009 marked the start of our new five-year plan. It also saw the most precipitous economic decline in recent American history. Needless to say, the philanthropic world was not left unscathed by the consequent downturn in charitable giving and investment earnings. NMF was hardly unique in witnessing declines in the number and size of contributions to some of its component funds and in seeing an erosion of its endowment. Nevertheless, thanks to wise stewardship of its resources, farsighted investment policies and the watchful oversight of a dedicated board of diCertainly the past year was not rectors, the foundation has weathered altogether smooth sailing for NMF, the storm remarkably well. nor can it be denied that some of As markets plummeted by more our programs were adversely affectthan 50 percent last winter, the val- ed by internal and external financial ue of NMF’s endowment portfolio conditions (our fee-based training declined by less than one-third, and programs for nonprofits suffered we’ve since recovered nearly half of from a lack of demand), but stakeholders in the region would never that loss. have thought for an instant that our No staff were laid off, no programs vigor and influence had suffered were eliminated, and grantmaking rethe slightest decline. The followmained robust. Lending activity in the Business Finance and Entrepreneur Development Programs reached near-record levels. Our Early Childhood Initiative continued to grow in scope and impact, contributions to our Early Childhood Coalition Funds far exceeded expectations, and grants from those funds outstripped projections. With local nonprofits being
ing pages with highlights of the year provide a snapshot of what was accomplished. It cannot be overstated how much NMF’s ongoing vitality is due to the careful stewarding of resources. The mission of the foundation is to invest resources, create opportunities and promote philanthropy to make the region a better place to live and work. This is our pledge to the people of Northwest Minnesota as well as to the McKnight Foundation. In the conscientious investment of resources (where a balance must be struck between caution and risk), our board has taken to heart one of its most crucial responsibilities. Fiduciary oversight and sound investment policies are not often the stuff of exciting annual reports, but in FY 09 they told much of the story for NMF.
2009 Annual Report
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