This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week.
Editor's Note: The Blandin Foundation is a grantor of KAXE and its newsroom.
The small town of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, has found itself in the headlines over the years due to its connection to Judy Garland and a certain pair of stolen ruby slippers.
That’s the kind of tale that big-city journalists, true-crime podcasters, and Hollywood screenwriters just can’t help themselves over, but, to no surprise of our readers, there’s way more to say and appreciate about Grand Rapids. Among these is that it is home to one of the only rural-based and rural-focused foundations in the whole U.S.
This is an area of particular interest to us, as captured in some of our prior interviews. I’m additionally excited to tell you about it because the Blandin Foundation is less than an hour away from my hometown and the communities where I grew up.
Jennifer Bevis is the senior rural advocacy manager at Blandin, and her experiences and perspectives concerning rural Minnesota were quite familiar and rang true to me. There may not be as much drama as a Hollywood caper, but her work brings with it some great stories too.
Enjoy our conversation about the charms of living in rural Minnesota, some of the unique challenges and opportunities of small-town philanthropy, and a big picture view on how we might reach a more prosperous future for rural people and places.
Adam Giorgi, The Daily Yonder: For those who are unfamiliar, tell us a little bit about the Blandin Foundation, its home territory, and the history there.
Jennifer Bevis: We’re one of the few rural-based, rural-serving private foundations in the country, and we’ve been supporting rural communities for over 80 years.
Our story goes back to Charles K. Blandin, who owned the paper mill in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and founded the foundation in 1941. His vision was to create a foundation that could adapt over time to meet changing needs, and that’s something we take seriously to this day.
Right now, we’re focused on building community wealth, rural placemaking, and strengthening the capacity of people and organizations in communities under 5,000 people. We also look at big challenges like rural inequities tied to place, race, and class.
Most of our work centers around Grand Rapids and Itasca County, where 60% of our funding stays, but we also support rural Minnesota communities statewide. At nearly 3,000 square miles, Itasca County is roughly the size of Yellowstone National Park, so it's no small task. It’s all about listening, learning, and responding to what rural people say they need—and helping bring those ideas to life.
DY: How did you come to your work in rural philanthropy and what’s your personal connection to the areas the foundation serves?
JB: I grew up as a “country kid,” surrounded by the joys of rural life. My mom, raised on a farm, wanted her family to experience the same, so my parents bought an old farmstead. While my dad, a plant pathologist, worked with crops and farmers in western Minnesota’s Red River Valley, my mom gardened, and my sisters and I cared for animals. I especially loved my chickens, the flaming prairie sunsets, and the retired farm couples who became like adopted grandparents—dropping by for coffee, asking about my track meets, and attending my band concerts.
Instead of heading to the city for college, I stayed rooted in rural Minnesota, attending a campus overlooking the Minnesota River Valley. Small-town life in St. Peter balanced perfectly with the broader perspectives I gained in class.
I took my first job in a new rural place – the deep woods and rugged rocks of northern Minnesota’s Iron Range. I loved telling the stories of people building businesses, schools, and towns. Their grit, ingenuity, and passion — whether running a café or conducting particle physics research in the Northwoods—showed me I’d made the right choice in embracing rural life.
Now, my family and I live in the Grand Rapids area along the Mississippi River, another rural community that’s welcomed me with open arms. Each of these communities has gifted me with special people and places. Like many who choose rural living, I’m drawn to the closeness to nature, the space for independence, and the deep sense of belonging that comes from being part of a close-knit community.
DY: As you noted, Blandin’s roots are in north central Minnesota, serving a collection of small towns not far from the Mississippi headwaters, but its programs and strategies also extend to rural Minnesota at large. Why is looking at rural Minnesota in this broader way important? And what’s the landscape look like in terms of philanthropic attention across rural Minnesota? I noticed in one of your recent grant announcements that rural areas in Minnesota receive less than 8% of philanthropic funding, a good deal smaller than their nearly 23% share of the state’s population.
JB: I’m stating the obvious here, but under-resourced rural communities are present all across America – not just in rural Minnesota. Food, transportation, medical and news deserts in rural America are the hallmarks of decades of outdated fiscal policies.
Broadening our view beyond our local giving area makes these impacts crystal clear, from northern Minnesota’s mining and forestlands to the farming, wind energy and manufacturing areas in the central and south of the state. Rural is NOT a monolith. Each community has its own unique identity and DNA. Yet we see and hear from rural people seeking to spark change and rebuild resilience that navigating most sources of support is complicated and time-consuming. Most funders assume applicants regularly work with grantwriters, and that communities can seek or raise significant matching funds. These types of parameters do not play to rural’s strengths of strong, trusted social connections, can-do attitude, and crafting community-specific solutions on a shoestring.
Yet we also know that rural places have significant philanthropic power. The University of Minnesota conducted an important study earlier this year chronicling what will be the largest generational transfer of wealth in the history of the country. Since rural communities skew older than urban areas, the transition is happening faster in rural places.
The study estimates that $61 billion in wealth will change hands in the next 10 years alone. If rural communities capture even a tiny portion of that – say 1-5% – for rural grantmaking and endowments - and apply these funds to local nonprofit and philanthropic use, we could significantly benefit local arts, recreation, crisis centers and other critical community needs.
If invested in new endowments over two decades, the captured pool could support grantmaking in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Nonprofits and their communities could leverage those dollars to support new workforce housing construction, develop major nonprofit capital projects and help lower-income residents launch new businesses.
Rural areas in Minnesota receive less than 8% of philanthropic funding in the state despite holding nearly 23% of the population. (Photo courtesy of the Blandin Foundation.) DY: What are some of the unique challenges – and opportunities – for foundations serving rural communities? And what might they teach us about trying to build more momentum for rural philanthropy?
JB: One of the biggest challenges is the continual flow of requests for support that exceeds our available resources, money and time. We know we never have everything we would need to fulfill every ask.
Challenges we see in rural people and places hit even harder. We know from local studies that demand for rural leadership is three times higher in the nonprofit sector and 25 times higher in government than in urban areas. The "role fatigue" of people stretched thin in leadership can dent our spirits and make us wary of volunteering. But with just a little help, the per capita impact of change in a small community can be greatly amplified. Yet those multilayered responsibilities also spur rural people to take on new roles, because they realize that they ARE “the someone” who gets things done for their community.
Around the office, we call it “for us, by us” philanthropy. It’s community-informed. Community-centered. Community-specific. We’re continually amazed by the practical, workable, effective solutions shared with us. They come from a place of wisdom about the family contexts, economic realities and closely-held dreams people have to make their community a place where people can live with dignity and feel welcome – no matter how small your community. The power and poignancy of seeing that work happen every day, right where you live and work, gives rural philanthropy an immediacy, relevance – momentum –that’s hard to top.
DY: Blandin recently rolled out a round of grants helping Minnesota’s smallest communities — with populations under 5,000 people — address a wide variety of local needs. What was the inspiration behind that program and what are some of the community projects it has supported? The announcement noted that something as simple as installing a door for a municipal office could make a big difference in these places.
JB: During the pandemic, we were overwhelmed with responses to grants targeted to communities with populations under 3,000. We expected up to 100 requests totaling $1 million. We fielded 324 requests for $24 million.
It was good insight into the incredible need in our small communities and also their dreams and innovation.
Informed by that overwhelming response and new data that showed a profound disparity in rural philanthropy, our leadership and trustees have staked out new priorities for the Blandin Foundation in the areas of Small Communities and Rural Placemaking. Small communities often do not have the resources or staff to search for and apply for grants, so we made the system as simple as possible.
The grant application we received from Richville – population 78 – was just like small towns are: plain spoken and conveyed with a can-do attitude. Leslie Lee, Richville’s city clerk, wrote this in her grant application.
“Our goal is very simple. We wish to build a wall with a door. The goal of this project is to give the city an office space. This will make us more available to the community and enable us to safeguard the city’s business in a designated place.”
This is not a request for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It did not take a team of people or consultants to submit it. But this small and seemingly simple request – for a door and some basic office equipment – gives the city of Richville something that pound for pound is just as important as some of our biggest grants: it gives them the power to design their own future.
We have learned that with a modest amount of money and a little support, towns like Richville can do incredible things. The key is respecting their own unique identity. It means meeting communities where they are at, rather than imposing someone else’s ideas and structure on them.
It also helps fight the narrative of “rural decline” and brings visible change and enhances community engagement.
As a staff, we can’t talk about Richville and the 71 other communities awarded grants through the Small Communities and Rural Placemaking program without breaking into grins, and tears. It’s the type of community-based philanthropy we’re convinced works. We’re also excited that since 2022 our grant funds have reached more than 100 new communities. Their requests provide insight into the needs and dreams of small-town Minnesota, like a digital literacy hub, new grandstands and speakers at pow-wow grounds, and updating a community center’s stove, tables and chairs and adding space for a food pantry. Having a functioning stove might seem insignificant from a conventional philanthropic perspective. But that equipment allows a community center—likely one of the town’s few civic institutions—to host the functions and events that bring community members together to address the challenges they face. Our grants staff considers these types of multiplier factors in their grant review, and program evaluation. We need to measure not just what gets completed but also the things that the community then uses that project to do in the future.
DY: Your title is Senior Rural Advocacy Manager, so I want to give you a chance to do some advocating, to give voice to your rural people. With the soapbox and the megaphone at hand, what are your hopes for rural places in 2025 and beyond? Taking the big picture view, what will it take to get to the vibrant, sustainable, equitable rural futures envisioned by Blandin and other advocates?
JB: I want rural places to be confident in what and who they are. Clear-eyed and honest about the challenges right under our noses. To unapologetically claim the valuable natural and social resources we have, and put them to work to our advantage. To resist the momentum of the many stereotypes that aim to box us into spaces that don’t fit, and hinder our ability to see ourselves accurately and act in our best interests. To have courage through change, and the seeds of hope for the future.
Reaching toward the future we envision will take mutual respect, at all levels. Among people in each community, so we’re clear on where we’re headed and why, who’s good at what, and how together we move forward. Between communities, so we see the patterns that link us, share a view of a collective future and build a strong sense of regionalism to guide our future decisions. And across the alleged rural/urban divide, so the regions of our state contribute their all, in service to a Minnesota that is more than the sum of its parts.
As one of the guardians of Blandin Foundation’s voice, I love that I get to recognize and surface the mosaic of rural life, to bridge gaps and shed light on issues that often go unnoticed – particularly at the intersection of race, place and class. If I’ve helped make something invisible visible, and shared stories that aren’t just heard, but understood and acted on – it’s been a good week.
This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.