Carleen Rhodes, the long-time president of the Minnesota Philanthropy Partners network, said today that she’ll step down from the post in May.
She said she’s not retiring, but embarking on the “next chapter of meaningful engagement for me, which will include new directions for work, service and learning.”
Minnesota Philanthropy Partners is the network of charitable foundations that includes the Saint Paul Foundation, the Minnesota Community Foundation, F. R. Bigelow Foundation, Mardag Foundation and others.
The organization said that during her tenure, the assets at the network increased from $800 million to $1.2 billion, grants were made totaling more than $700 million, and contributions to the Saint Paul Foundation and Minnesota Community Foundation exceeded $700 million.
The organization will conduct a national search for her successor.
Mark Wilson, Partners board chair, said:
“The many accomplishments under her leadership include the creation of the Arts Partnership that built stronger working relationships between the Ordway and its resident arts organizations, the formation with other funders of the Central Corridors Funders Collaborative to assure everyone on the corridor would benefit from the investment in light rail, efforts to prevent and end homelessness including Heading Home Minnesota and the revisioning for the Dorothy Day Center, making racial equity a key focus for the foundations, the creation of GiveMN as a new tool for donors to give and thousands of Minnesota nonprofits to raise money on-line and engagement of more than 84,000 Minnesotans in four Minnesota Idea Challenges, including the recent Saint Paul Million Dollar Challenge.”
Rhodes had been president of the Minnesota Children’s Museum before being named president of the Saint Paul Foundation in 2003, when she succeeded Paul Verret, who’d been its president for 28 years.
The Saint Paul Foundation and the Minnesota Community Foundation aligned in 2007, and Rhodes became president and CEO of both; the organization adopted the Minnesota Philanthropy Partners name in 2011.
