[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 154 (Thursday, November 6, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11861-S11862]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          SOUTH DAKOTA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION'S 10TH ANNIVERSARY

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I want to pay tribute to a key 
institution in my State, the South Dakota Community Foundation [SDCF], 
which celebrates its 10th anniversary on November 11, 1997. This 
statewide community foundation is a model of how private funds are 
raised within communities to support projects that enable those 
communities to enter the 21st century in a competitive position--people 
helping themselves.
  As with many success stories, the SDCF was launched by a group of 
people with the vision of raising and investing funds with the goal of 
creating an environment in which South Dakota communities can 
revitalize themselves. This vision was embraced by the critical early 
stage investors providing seed funding, yielding, as we do in our 
farmland, a rich harvest 10 years later.
  I must take my hat off to the vision and drive of then-South Dakota 
State senator and now SDCF executive director, Bernie Christenson, and 
the active support by our late Governor, George Mickelson. I regret 
George is not alive to see the legacy of his actions in 1987, but his 
spirit lives with us through this foundation and in every one of the 
communities it helps.
  That seed funding for the SDCF came from the 3M Foundation, McKnight 
Foundation and the South Dakota Legislature. I congratulate the leaders 
of those 3 institutions. The success of the SDCF is also a testament to 
former South Dakota native, former 3M CEO, and McKnight Foundation 
founder, William McKnight. We can all learn from William McKnight about 
the value of giving back to the community and institutions that helped 
shape our lives. The State of South Dakota and the 3M Foundation each 
contributed $2 million, and the McKnight Foundation committed up to $3 
million in a challenge grant. Less than 13 months later, Bernie and 
George had raised $3 million to meet that first challenge; the 
foundation was off and running with a $10 million fund.
  Ten years after its creation, the South Dakota Community Foundation 
has reached the $20 million mark and administers these funds through a 
wide range of unrestricted, designated and donor-advised funds. This 
has been accomplished over the years through the leadership, 
commitment, and hard work of Bernie Christenson, an administrative 
assistant, and countless board members, including the current board 
president, Paul Christen.
  I am pleased that the Northwest Area Foundation has joined its 
neighboring twin cities-based foundations, 3M and McKnight, in 
providing funds to the South Dakota Community Foundation. In a letter 
sent last year to northwest area president, Karl Stauber, I strongly 
urged support for the SDCF plan to challenge communities to join SDCF 
in raising capital to endow small community loan funds that would be 
used to help existing businesses expand and to assist entrepreneurs in 
starting new businesses, with the goal of long-term community 
revitalization. Bernie and my staff coordinated a short tour of South 
Dakota communities and projects for Karl late last year. It is 
important for foundations as well as federal agencies to get out from 
behind the desk and see close up the commitment and innovation 
flourishing in our communities. Just before closing down the foundation 
grantmaking for a year of strategic planning, Northwest Area Foundation 
committed its support to this project and 10 communities have now 
stepped up to the challenge and matched the foundation funds with their 
own.
  I am reminded of a letter President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent to 
South Dakota Governor Harlan Bushfield in 1939 on the occasion of South 
Dakota's 50th anniversary of its entry into the Union.
  President Roosevelt said, ``The 50 years that have elapsed since 
South Dakota became a State have witnessed the end of one period of 
pioneering and the ushering in of another.''
  Mr. President, nearly 60 years after Franklin Roosevelt wrote that 
letter, we in the Northern Great Plains are in a transition toward yet 
another era, confronted now by tremendous global economic forces and 
declining Federal support for key economic development activities and 
institutions.

[[Page S11862]]

  These public/private partnerships exemplified by the South Dakota 
Community Foundation--lean but effective in its management, guided by 
local development officials, and supported by individual, corporate, 
and foundation investors--are critical institutions in helping the 
Northern Great Plains make this transition.
  I pledge to lend my active support and encouragement to the South 
Dakota Community Foundation so we can return to Brookings, SD in 
another 10 years and celebrate continued community vitality.

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