Community questions

All our revenue comes from what we earn from investing the assets left by Archie Bush. We don’t fundraise or earn money in any other way. We know that, as an institution that came from wealth and grew its wealth over decades, we have benefited within an economy that excluded and harmed others. This was part of our motivation to redistribute $100 million of Bush’s  wealth in 2022-2023 to Black and Native individuals in our region, as a reparative action. We are intentional about investing our assets in ways that align with our mission and values.

The communities we serve are involved in our work in many ways. For example, we include past Fellows and other community leaders in selecting Bush Fellows. We also ensure that a broad range of community perspectives informs our grantmaking—from working with advisors to develop program strategies to getting community references about individual grants. We regularly survey people who directly experience our programs—including both applicants and people who help with selection—and make changes based on their feedback.

Yes! In the last three years (2022-2024), we made 45 grants and/or PRIs to organizations we hadn’t funded before. Our community grant partners made grants to even more organizations across the region that we had not funded before. We know great ideas can come from any person or organization in the region, so we focus on making opportunities available to anyone. Learn more about our efforts to be more radically open through open-process grantmaking.

Yes! We believe organizations of all types and sizes can lead and support transformational change. Of our last three years (2022-2024) of grants and PRIs:

• about 14% of grants awarded were to organizations with annual expenses of under $500,000, with grant awards making up about 9% of all total granted funds
• about 10% of grants awarded were to organizations that incorporated within three years prior to our investment, with grant awards making up about 9% of all total granted funds
• about 7% of grants awarded were to support projects or initiatives working through a fiscal sponsor, with grant awards making up about 7% of total granted funds

*”% of grants” is how many grants of all grants; “% of granted funds” is how much of all grant funding

Yes! We know that flexible operating support is the most valuable kind of support for organizations. We offer two operating grant opportunities: (1) Ecosystem grants, which support the organizations that others tell us are the most valuable in supporting problem solving in the region and (2) the Bush Prize, which returned in 2023 to provide creative capital to organizations that have a track record of making good ideas happen. More than $7.5 million was paid out through these two programs in 2024.

There are way more great ideas and talented leaders than we can fund. We say no a lot more than we get to say yes. Applications can be time consuming, so we do webinars and offer 1-on-1 conversations to help people figure out if our programs are a good fit. We also try to make our initial application processes simple to minimize effort.

• In 2024, 20 of the 202 Community Innovation proposals we reviewed were funded (about 10%). This percentage changes year-to-year based on the number of applications we receive and awards we make.
• In the most recent cycle, 30 of the 983 Bush Fellowship applicants (about 3%) were selected. This percentage changes year-to-year based on the number of applications we receive and Fellowships we award (up to 30 each year).

We consider a variety of things in serving the region equitably, including access to philanthropy and other factors. In 2024 we invested about $63.8M in the region through grants, Bush Fellowships and program-related investments (PRIs). Of this:

• North Dakota received about 16% of our total funding, which is about $13 per capit
• South Dakota received about 19% or about $14 per capita
• Minnesota received about 65% or about $7 per capita

*These calculations include giving to Native people and Native nations—learn more on our performance scorecard.

In 2024, about 14% of our grants focused specifically on ideas and initiatives in rural communities. Part of how we’re working to increase connections in rural places is through partnerships. We have community grant partners that have relationships throughout our region and we provide Bush funding to them to operate the Bush Prize and an open grant program for the communities they serve.

Bush Fellows have a wide range of backgrounds. Everyone in the region over the age of 25 is eligible and we actively promote the Fellowship to attract applicants from across the whole region. We encourage people who represent a variety of roles, backgrounds, skills, organizations and issues to apply. We publish information about Bush Fellowship recipients every year and you can see them in the database on our website. Here are some statistics on recent Bush Fellows, based on questions we often get:

• 2020-2024 Fellows by areas in which they work: academic – 18%; business –13 %; nonprofit – 39%; public – 30%
• 2020-2024 Fellows by geography: MN – 75%; ND – 11%; SD – 14%

As part of our “more good every year” operating value, we routinely make community-informed improvements across all our programs through reviewing applicant surveys and other feedback. We also do deeper program strategy reviews of our main programs every five years.

In a recent Bush Fellowship program review, we connected with community, staff and others to listen and be more informed about what would help serve leaders in the region better. We used this learning to adjust the program in multiple ways, including raising the number of Fellowships awarded per year to up to 30 and increasing awarded funds from $100K to $150K.