ST PAUL, Minn. — Black descendants of slaves in Minnesota and the Dakotas will soon be able to apply for a first-of-its-kind grant program designed to help them build wealth on their own terms.
The Bush Foundation has committed $50 million over the next eight years to make the Open Road Fund a reality.
"With that money, the Open Road Fund will award $50,000 grants to at least 800 Black residents in the region through 2031," said Danielle Mkali, senior director of Nexus Community Partners, which is handling the application process and distribution of the grants. "The name, the open road fund comes from this idea that when you're about to do something significant our ancestors will clear the road and make an open road for you to be able to achieve your goals with as few barriers and obstacles as possible."
Applicants must meet the following requirements to be eligible to apply:
- 14 years of age or older
- Resident of Minnesota, North Dakota or South Dakota.
- Descendant of the Atlantic slave trade, including the Caribbean, North, Central, and South America. Descendants of formerly enslaved people who repatriated to Africa are also eligible.
"We're looking for those who have vision, have a dream for their family," said Tyesha Mitchell, one of the community advisors who worked with Nexus on the application process for the Open Road Fund. "Whether that's through wealth building, through entrepreneurship, debt elimination, education, healing, economic justice, the possibilities are endless."
The Open Road Fund will select 100 recipients each year for the next eight years. The 2023 application window will open on Juneteenth — June 19, 2023 — and it will close on July 28, 2023.
All applicants must complete the application process by identifying their project or intent for the $50,000 grant to be considered.
"That first application will be fairly short," Mkali said. "We want people to identify their project or intent for the $50,000 grant. They should be able to fill it out thoughtfully, but it shouldn't be too cumbersome for anyone to be able to complete."
The applications will then be reviewed and the identities of descendants will be verified by Nexus and its community advisors.
"For me, being able to do it locally, and with members of the community is so impactful," Mitchell said. "It's not outside sources coming and telling or dictating the process. It's those within the community, for the community and the community will benefit from it."
Though the group will be reviewing eligibility, it won't be directly choosing the 100 recipients each year.
"We're assuming it's going to be a pretty big pool of folks from Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota," Mkali said. "We'll take that and make sure those submissions look great, and then we've created a tool to randomize the selection, and we'll select 100 folks from there."
Mkali says that the final pool of 100 recipients will then be invited to fill out another application detailing the wealth-building plan that they envision.
"It is a grant which is going to go towards healing and restoration and us defining what that means on our own terms," Mitchell said.
"If someone wants to start a barber shop or someone wants to build an addition on to their home to make more room for an aging family member, those are both really valuable wealth-building strategies," Mkali said. "And so we're not going to vet them against one another."
Though the fund offers a rare opportunity to begin building generational wealth, it is not intended as a replacement for reparations.
"We know that 100 grants a year for eight years doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of all the slave descendants in our region," Mkali said. "Not everyone that applies, unfortunately, will get one. But if they don't get one, you are certainly welcome to apply every single year until hopefully, you do receive one."
"It's been a rough couple of years with COVID and civil unrest and George Floyd," Mitchell said. "I just hope people are hopeful and are able to take advantage."
Watch more Breaking The News:
Watch all of the latest stories from Breaking The News in our YouTube playlist: