Women’s Foundation Awards $175,000 for Wealth-Building Initiatives

Women’s Foundation of Minnesota (WFM) announced $175,000 in community investments through its We Thrive fund to support wealth-building through education and entrepreneurship.

The grants to current We Thrive education partners support community outreach for student recruitment. In December, WFM announced $1.1 million in We Thrive community investments to support wealth-building through education. These grants support women obtaining certificates, associate’s, and bachelor’s degrees in programs that often lead to jobs in high demand, which offer high wages, such as welding, information technology, auto mechanics, engineering, robotics, architecture, and other STEM-related fields. WFM awarded grants to organizations that demonstrated their ability to apply an intersectional lens to their programming and considered how the intersection of gender, race, class, and place affects their students.

In addition to supporting higher education institutions, WFM awarded $100,000 to support women entrepreneurs at the Neighborhood Development Center (NDC).

The We Thrive fund focuses on wealth-building to seed, nurture, and champion asset-building solutions for economic justice. Within WFM’s impact area of economic justice, the fund offers multi-year grants to help organizations with planning, building stability, and general operations for community-sustaining programs.

Grantee-Partners:

Bemidji State University Alumni & Foundation (Bemidji) | $12,500 — To support a bootcamp designed to empower women entering the construction trades. This program introduces students to the construction trades, offering hands-on experience and industry-recognized certifications to help women build successful careers in the construction industry.

Dunwoody College of Technology (Minneapolis) | $12,500 — To support recruitment efforts by providing site visits to career and technology education (CTE) classes in high schools, visits to after-school programs at alternative and other schools, through workforce center presentations, at on- and off-campus events co-hosted with nonprofit partners, at monthly Dunwoody Open Houses, and other events.

Friends of Saint Paul College (St. Paul) | $12,500 — To maintain the coordinator position, which plays a vital role in attracting students and offering holistic support aimed at enhancing retention, persistence, and completion rates. The support services in recruitment include basic needs assistance, cohort advising, scholarship funding, leadership development, mentoring, and culturally relevant programming — all designed to redefine success for students.

Minneapolis College (Minneapolis) | $12,500 — To support outreach and recruitment efforts attracting women to participate in the Trades Pilot Program by using the College App platform to identify individuals that meet the targeted criteria for outreach, developing a recruitment video, which will highlight the Women in the Trades program, and act as a landing page for interested student prospects.

Minnesota North College (Hibbing) | $12,500 — To support the Women in the Workforce event, which brings awareness of nontraditional, high-wage, high-demand programs and careers. The day will include a panel discussion, current students, vendor employment opportunity booths with industry partners, and tours of Minnesota North College campus programs.

Minnesota State Community and Technical College (Fergus Falls) | $12,500 — To support the digital marketing campaign focused on recruiting women into nontraditional career paths, including agribusiness, powersports technology, design and engineering, and diesel technology. Additionally, recruiting efforts will be enhanced to include more career opportunities such as cybersecurity, entrepreneurship, surgical technology, HVACR, and automotive technology.

Neighborhood Development Center (St. Paul) | $100,000 — To provide entrepreneur training programs for women, including financial coaching and consulting, as well as financial assistance to access software and technology hardware that will help with their businesses.