Nexus Community Partners

06/12/2026

Have Open Road Fund questions or simply need a space to process? We got you. This summer, join us:

🗓️ June 23 @ 6 pm CT: Community Care Call (registration link coming soon!)
🗓️ July 7 @ noon CT: ORF Info Session (sign up now at https://buff.ly/agpzvn8)

The 2026 Open Road Fund launches in one week! Get ready at buff.ly/OfS8YFs

06/10/2026

Our Open Road Fund team uses a random-selection process to award funds each year. Why? Because we know that, historically, grantmaking and grant writing aren’t a fair playing field. People who have more education, connections, and funding win grants most often. As a result, many people with brilliant ideas get left behind.

Our program focuses on addressing historic and ongoing economic violence, inequality, and injustices against Black people. We felt it was more fair to randomly select from an eligible pool of applicants, as we believe that all Black folks in this region are deserving of the opportunity to build wealth.

Learn more at nexuscp.org/program/open-road-fund

06/09/2026

Please join us in congratulating Danielle Mkali, our Vice President of Programs & Strategies, on her 2026 Bush Fellowship! 🎉 Danielle has been sharing her talent and leadership with Nexus for 13 years, and we are so proud to see her work uplifted by the Bush Foundation. Learn more below!

Danielle is advancing new models of wealth grounded in culture, care and collective power. At Nexus Community Partners, she has played a central role in launching and scaling some of the region’s most innovative community wealth-building initiatives. She co-founded our North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship, where she helped build cooperative businesses and shared economic opportunity in Black communities. Danielle later led the creation of the Open Road Fund, a first-of-its-kind initiative providing direct financial resources to Black individuals and families to support homeownership, entrepreneurship and education.

Danielle wants to transform how Black women define, create and sustain wealth — personally, organizationally and across generations. With her Fellowship, she will expand her mentor and peer network and work to align her vision, wellness practices and strategy in service of creating an enduring movement for Black women’s wealth.

We are snapping, clapping and jumping up and down today as we congratulate the 2026 Bush Fellows! 🎉

Each year, it is an absolute privilege and joy to celebrate 30 amazing leaders from communities all across the region who are bold thinkers working on bold solutions like improving crisis response in rural areas; making healthcare work better for more people; preserving languages and cultural practices for future generations; and finding innovative solutions in economics, housing, media and civic engagement.

Phew! And those are just the highlights! Help us celebrate and spread the word about each of these amazing individuals and their big ideas for making our region work better for everyone: https://bit.ly/4x68UzP

And check back here regularly, because we'll be introducing each individual Fellow over the next several weeks!

06/08/2026

Did you know you can apply for the Open Road Fund as a group? 👥

To build Black wealth that endures, folks can apply together to work on a wealth-building project that could benefit Black communities in our region. If selected, all members of the group receive an award that they pool together to resource their project.

Learn more at nexuscp.org/program/open-road-fund

06/08/2026

From all of us at Nexus, we hope your Pride Month is off to a joyful start! 🏳️‍🌈 🫶🏽

Pride remains both a celebration and an act of resistance. Q***r joy is resistance. In June and year-round, we uplift q***r joy, abundance, community, creativity, and brilliance!

06/05/2026

Open Road Fund applications reopen on Juneteenth! For the fourth year, 100 Black folks from Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota will be awarded $50,000 gifts to use for wealth-building projects related to:

✨ Financial Well-being
✨ Economic Power
✨ Health & Healing
✨ Housing
✨ Education

Get ready to apply by visiting https://nexuscp.org/program/open-road-fund/

06/03/2026

Nexus' Open Road Fund redistributes resources to present-day descendants of the Transatlantic Slave Trade to catalyze intergenerational Black wealth building in our region. ✊🏾

Planning to apply this summer? ☀️ Here's what you need to know! Learn more at https://nexuscp.org/program/open-road-fund/

06/01/2026

It’s June, so you know what that means—the countdown to the Open Road Fund (ORF) begins!

ORF is a community fund giving $50,000 wealth-building gifts to 100 Black folks a year to create tangible pathways to liberation, prosperity, and healing on our own terms.

Who’s eligible? Descendants of the Transatlantic Slave Trade who are 14 and older and live in Minnesota, North Dakota, or South Dakota. Learn more at www.nexuscp.org, and stay tuned for ORF announcements throughout the month!

05/28/2026

Get ready: Open Road Fund 2026 launches on Juneteenth! Learn all about the application and get your questions answered at our virtual info session on June 11 at 6 pm CT.

We'll introduce the Open Road Fund and our team, show you how to apply, explain how we select grantees, and cover what wealth-building gifts can be used for. Sign up at https://nexuscp.org/2026-orf-info-sessions/

05/26/2026

Cooperatives are entities—like businesses, companies, or houses—that are owned by the people who use them and are created to meet shared needs. All co-ops are democratically and collectively owned, locally controlled, and designed to cultivate and share prosperity with their communities.

If this sounds right up your alley, join our friends at CoMinnesota for their Co-op 101 session next week!

Join CoMinnesota for a virtual Co-ops 101 session over the lunch hour on Wednesday, June 3rd. This is a space for the co-op curious to learn more about what cooperatives are all about, their tie to the broader cooperative movement, and how they have the unique power and potential to meet this moment. We’ll leave time for discussion at the end of the hour so bring your questions or ideas to this session!

Register for free today 👉https://www.cominnesota.coop/eventbrite/