Community Innovation Grants

The Community Innovation Grants, funded by the Bush Foundation, aim to support transformative ideas that enhance the lives of people in Minnesota and surrounding areas. These grants foster collaboration among organizations and leaders to develop and spread effective solutions to community challenges. By removing funding caps and focusing on the needs of communities, the program empowers individuals and organizations to create lasting change, ensuring that innovative ideas reach their full potential.

Background
The Community Innovation program invests in great ideas and the people who power them across our region.
CI grants and program-related investments (PRIs) fund ideas that have the potential to make our region better for everyone. The idea can be related to any issue that a community believes is important. Through this program, we aim to:
Develop, test and spread great ideas: CI grants support efforts to develop and test ideas to solve problems and create opportunities, then spread the best ideas across communities.Inspire, equip and connect leaders: Great ideas spread through people. CI grants invest in efforts to inspire, equip and connect leaders to more effectively lead change.
The potential for ideas to spread is a key aspect of this program. If an idea works, we want to understand if that idea could spread to other organizations or communities or issues. We also provide funds to help you understand and evaluate those lessons learned.
What We Fund
We fund the development and spread of great ideas. We make grants for ideas as varied as reimagining agricultural finance, Indigenizing tourism and adapting telehealth for people experiencing homelessness. We removed funding caps on our biggest grantmaking program, Community Innovation, and make large commitments to ensure that great ideas get the support needed for success. We tripled our grantmaking through community grant partners to make sure programs are designed with the communities served.
We invest in individuals through our Bush Fellowship program and by supporting amazing programs that help entrepreneurs thrive in rural areas and grows the next generation of Native leaders and leadership approaches. We also funded the creation of programs that help build generational wealth and support sabbaticals for leaders who are creating and nurturing community change.
We support organizations that support problem solvers. We offer flexible funding to organizations that we hear are the most highly valued by problem solvers in the region. We know we can directly fund only a small fraction of the great efforts happening in our region. And yet we can be even more helpful by supporting the work of organizations that others turn to for help in their own problem-solving efforts. We do this through Ecosystem grants and the Bush Prizes that are operated by our community grant partners.

Eligibility

Organizations that are based in or support efforts in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota or the 23 Native nations that share the same geography.
501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations or government entities, including schools; OR coalitions or collaboratives (only one organization may receive the grant); OR organizations working with a fiscal sponsor that has 501(c)(3) status; OR in very rare exceptions, other types of organizations.