What if there were no PROP in Eden Prairie? No PROP Shop? No organizations like CHOICE Inc. or Chrestomathy or True Friends to serve our developmentally disabled residents? No one like Cornerstone to support victims of domestic abuse? No safety net at all?

It’s a scary thought, if you know and care about Eden Prairie, and even scarier if you’ve ever needed help from one of these organization, or any other nonprofit that serve this community.

That’s why an important part of the Eden Prairie Community Foundation’s mission is to support local nonprofits – by providing grants, bringing nonprofit leaders together for support and collaboration, and maintaining a close relationship so the Foundation knows and understands Eden Prairie’s most pressing needs.

The Foundation doesn’t provide services on its own. Instead, it’s here to sustain the nonprofit community and help it fill critical, unmet needs.
That word, “sustain,” and its twin, “sustainability,” are important to think about because they conjure the long-term health and well-being of Eden Prairie. Each and every day, our nonprofits struggle to cover basic overhead like office space, utilities, and salaries. By investing in our nonprofit partners, we help them continue to do good work.

Same with the Foundation: at age 36, it’s growing. But it takes overhead to make it happen.

Long-term, the Foundation would like to do more to ensure that it and its nonprofit partners will be here for many years to come. We’d like to offer more than a grant and a supportive relationship. We’d like to provide hands-on skills in leadership, fundraising, financial management, communications, and much more.

If you believe in the long-term sustainability of Eden Prairie’s nonprofit community, I invite you to think about how you can help. Providing an outright gift or leaving a legacy through your estate are just a few of the ways you can help supply multi-year operating funds and ensure that Eden Prairie continues to solve problems.

Today, we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us and created the many organizations – nonprofits and others – that make Eden Prairie great. Let’s make certain we, too, are leaving something great for those who follow us.