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Our Grantmaking

Our grantmaking reflects our values and Margaret Cargill’s guiding principles and is always directed toward our mission and core purposes.

We expect our grantmaking to have these characteristics:

  • We lead with our values, internally and externally.
  • We partner with capable organizations that have demonstrated their ability to work successfully in our interest areas and in a manner consistent with our values. We look to our grantees as partners and co-learners.
  • We provide meaningful support to strategic grantees.
  • We support work in and with communities toward sustainable solutions.
  • We pay special attention to underserved or low-attention areas, populations, or issues.
  • We value and affirm the integration of all functions of the Philanthropies in our grantmaking.
  • We make measurable impact on focused goals.
  • We evaluate our work, reshape our approaches as we learnshare and apply our learning to future grantmaking.

All this we do, not to bring recognition to ourselves, but to support our grantees in the work they do to provide meaningful assistance and support to society, the arts, and the environment, in a manner consistent with our founder’s wishes and intent. Done well, this will distinguish us.

Our Domains

We support organizations working in communities across seven program areas that we call domains.