How Minnesota Became a National Model for Investing in Rural Communities

On their 40th anniversary, it’s worth looking at what the Minnesota Initiative Foundations have built in greater Minnesota — and why they still matter.

A billboard on Interstate 35 in the early 1980s said: “Will the last one leaving Duluth please turn out the light?” 

By then, rural Minnesota had taken a decade of blows — the collapse of mining and manufacturing, the farm crisis and a steady exodus of young people struggling to see a future there. 

When I look at greater Minnesota today — and rural communities across this country — I hear an unmistakable echo of those challenges: farmers being squeezed, manufacturing that hasn’t rebounded, local news disappearing and populations stagnating. And layered on top are newer forces at play: private equity hollowing out local ownership, artificial intelligence reshaping the labor market and national political divisions separating neighbors. 

Forty years ago, against a similarly challenging backdrop, the McKnight Foundation did something rare. Read the full piece by McKnight Foundation President Tonya Allen, in the Minnesota Star Tribune.

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