What Minnesota Nonprofits Should Know About the Blandin Foundation

Grand rapids, Minnesota. photo: Jacob Boomsma/shutterstock

Editor's note: This article was revised and updated on 9/21/2021.

The Grand Rapids, Minnesota-based Blandin Foundation is all about supporting local nonprofits and especially the rural areas throughout the state. Despite its focus on small places, this is one of the biggest funders to know in the Upper Midwest region and an important one to watch right now during the foundation’s time of transition.

Dating back to 1941, the Blandin Foundation has been aiding and promoting the town of Grand Rapids, Minnesota and the surrounding area. It is the legacy of Charles Blandin, who was a teacher, newspaperman, and industrialist in the region. What sets this foundation apart from many of the others in Minnesota is Blandin’s dedication to rural areas. More specifically, Blandin prioritizes the communities of Bigfork, Blackduck, Bovey, Calumet, Coleraine, Deer River, Grand Rapids, Hill City, Keewatin, Marble, Nashwauk, Northome, and Taconite.

In a past round of giving, for example, the funder awarded 53 grants totaling over $3.2 million, which is on par with what Blandin typically awards in its cycles. These grants ranged from as low as $500 to as high as $2.1 million. Overall, big priorities for this funder are consistent with building vibrant communities and boosting community leadership, which extends to grantmaking for many issue different areas, such as arts and culture, mental health, healthy food, and immigration.

Yet one of the most noticeable interest areas this time around was early childhood education, a topic that received $2.1 million in ongoing support. Other high-need local issues that are high on Blandin’s radar are youth workforce training and the needs of local veterans.

A few years ago, the Blandin Foundation launched a national CEO search due to the retirement of Dr. Kathleen Annette in 2020. Annette had been the foundation’s president and CEO since 2011. Today, Tuleah Palmer is the foundation’s president and CEO. She is a lifelong rural Minnesota resident and has been very involved with work in racial equity and Native community development, previously serving as executive director of Northwest Indian Community Development Center.

Blandin is a local funder with a very specific mission and target demographic, so we don’t expect to see an overwhelming number of changes made internally through these leadership shifts. However, these types of transitional times after often when grantmaking strategies are tweaked and processes refined.

Nonprofits that serve rural Minnesota communities of 35,000 residents or less should definitely sign up for the funder’s e-newsletter, if they haven’t already, to be among the first to know about new changes and be aware of the upcoming deadlines. This is actually pretty easy to keep track of since applications for Itasca Area grants of $100 to $1,000, short timeline grants of $1,001 to $10,000, small project grants of $10,001 to $50,000, and Blandin Leadership Program grants are accepted all throughout the year. The exception is large-scale projects that receive over $50,000 grants, as these have application deadlines four times per year on the 15th of March, June, September, and December.

To learn more about recent Blandin giving in Minnesota, check out the lists of past grants by year.