Bush Foundation

September 28, 2018

The Foundation distributed nearly $2 million in funds to the area of Arts, Culture and Humanities in the most recently reported year. The most common award amount was $100,000. In 2015, there were only a handful of grantees in the Community Creativity program described below, suggesting it is a competitive process.

The Bush Foundation is focused on Minnesota, North Dakota, and the Native nations in those areas. They have four primary strategic initiatives: Community Creativity, Education, Nation Building, and Social Business Ventures.

Their Community Creativity initiative is particularly aligned with the idea of placemaking:

“Community Innovation Grants support communities to use problem-solving processes that lead to more effective, equitable and sustainable solutions. Think of it as a civic R&D, allowing communities to develop and test new solutions to community challenges.” 

Grants in this program area range from $10,000 to $200,000. The Foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals, apart from times when they issue a call for proposals. Although they do suggest for this program in particular setting up a phone call with one of their staff to discuss your project and offer a phone number and email to contact them. (That information is available here.)