Vital Statistics
Purpose: Enhance economic viability of rural communities in Minnesota
Started: 1941
2005 Net Assets: $384 million
Funds Distributed: $281 million since 1941
In May 2006, the Blandin Foundation sponsored a conference as part of its Vital Forests/Vital Communities initiative on “Family Forest Stewardship: Getting to the Next Million Acres”. Over 70 private forestland owners, forestry professionals and others attended. The outcome resulted in a set of initiatives to increase the total acreage of family forest land with Forest Stewardship Management Plans from 1.3 million acres in place today to 2.3 million acres by 2015.
Bernadine Joselyn, Director of Public Policy and Engagement, first became aware of CDS in 2003 at a meeting during the beginning of the Foundation’s Vital Forests/Vital Communities initiative. The Foundation had convened “call-to-action” conferences including various segments of the community, government and other professionals. The purpose of these conferences were to identify opportunities and challenges in Minnesota to improve the competitiveness of the forest products industry, the sustainability and ecological health of the state’s forests, and to improve the economies of forest-dependent communities.
CDS Executive Director, Kevin Edberg, was an active participant. “I didn’t know CDS had a forestry component,” Joselyn says, noting that people usually think of cooperatives as agriculturally based. “Kevin is an original thinker with insightful ways of framing issues and the ability to see the larger context.”
Edberg participated on an action team to look at ways to improve how the Foundation was engaging family forest landowners in stewardship and provided strategic counseling to develop ideas for a co-op for harvesters for specialty products. “He volunteered his time and provided some grant support helping our ‘Goods from the Woods’ project which works to strengthen specialty forest products and cottage industries in Northern Minnesota.”
Although that particular effort went no further, the Foundation then hired CDS to deliver a study identifying best practices around the world for communicating with and providing outreach support to family forest landowners, which was done by CDS consultant E.G. Nadeau. At the same time, the Foundation was working with the University of Minnesota on a similar effort, and they brought CDS in to collaborate.
CDS worked with the Foundation to develop the conference, prepare materials, and also to present information. “CDS work was an absolutely critical centerpiece for the May conference,” Joselyn says. “We wouldn’t have been able to deliver specific policy recommendations and an action plan that we did without their very substantive contributions.”
The Blandin Foundation, headquartered in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, was founded in 1941 by Charles K. Blandin to aid and promote the well being of that city and surrounding rural communities. Since its inception, the foundation has awarded over $281 million in grants in support of its mission.
CDS Project Consultants
Kevin Edberg – Consulting, conference planning
E.G. Nadeau – Research study, conference planning, conference speaker
See more Forestry & Sustainability Management projects.