Fund Your Community Goals Through the Humanities

The Minnesota Humanities Center has a new partnership opportunity! The Community Partner Fund offers two years of funding and fosters collaboration between two or more neighborhood or community organizations to address community-identified goals and opportunities. The focus reflects two core beliefs:

1. Neighborhoods and community organizations often keep and carry cultures, histories, and heritages.
2. Effective partnerships have the power to build strong relationships, address community goals, and amplify stolen, erased, or misrepresented perspectives.

At MHC, we have learned that many community and neighborhood organizations employ the humanities to come together and solve complex problems. We have seen how communities address problems through ways of knowing – like culture, language, ethics, religion, law, history, and philosophy – and through ways of being – like reflecting, comparing, questioning, and challenging.

These are all humanities strategies! Indeed, the humanities are how we talk to each other about what it means to be human; how we live our lives together; how we relate to the non-human world; and how our pasts, present, and future relate. These approaches have a lot to offer as people unite to solve problems and meet goals.

MHC brings the humanities to bear through our four core values: build and strengthen relationships, recognize the power of story and the danger of absence, learn from and with multiple voices, and amplify community solutions for change. We’ve learned these values over time from many of our partners, and now we hope to support you and your partners through them as well! How could you apply these core values to a tough decision, a complex problem, or a powerful opportunity in your community?

Think about it and submit your letter of interest by April 28. If you have questions, please reach out at jennifer@mnhum.org or 651-772-4264.