Sauer Family Foundation Grant

The Sauer Family Foundation is a private philanthropic organization based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Its mission is rooted in improving outcomes for children in the state of Minnesota, particularly those who are at-risk due to experiences of abuse, neglect, toxic stress, trauma, or academic challenges. The foundation focuses its work on ensuring that children are nurtured, supported, and safe, promoting emotional and educational well-being, and fostering resilience in school, family, and community environments. It has a planned sunset in 2028, which shapes its current grantmaking toward short-term, high-impact projects with sustainability beyond the funding term. The foundation prioritizes grantmaking in the seven-county metropolitan area of Minnesota but funds projects statewide. It provides support across a variety of sectors, including schools, non-profits, research institutions, government agencies, collaboratives, and networks. Its grant priorities focus on four main areas: building strong family relationships through prevention and intervention in child welfare; building supportive environments that promote emotional safety for children and youth; enhancing educational success through literacy and learning disability supports; and workforce development focused on racially equitable pathways, though the latter no longer accepts unsolicited applications. For its family-focused grants, the foundation supports projects such as whole-family approaches to preventing abuse and neglect, support services to keep children safely at home, and programs aimed at improving permanency and reducing foster care exits to homelessness. Additionally, it funds initiatives that elevate foster youth voices and improve public awareness of their experiences. Emotional safety funding includes school-based interventions, grief support groups, trauma-informed professional development, and family-focused mental health literacy tools. On the educational front, grants support structured literacy programs and science-of-reading based interventions, as well as improved access to learning disability screening and intervention. Notably, while the foundation has historically invested in workforce development that reflects the diversity of Minnesota’s children, it is now limiting this to current grantees only. Unsolicited applications for that category are no longer accepted to allow the foundation to focus investments on existing successful programs. In 2025, the Sauer Family Foundation will hold three grant rounds with submission deadlines on February 21, May 16, and September 26. Prospective applicants must email the relevant program contact to discuss project fit before receiving credentials to access the online application system. There are three points of contact depending on the grant area: Sheri Hixon (Sheri@sauerff.org) for family relationships; and Emma Mogendorff (Emma@sauerff.org) for emotional safety and education. The foundation does not fund individual treatment, political activities, endowments, debt reduction, advertising, or fundraising. Applicants must comply with all federal, state, and local non-discrimination laws. The foundation's funding is best used for time-bound projects that lead to sustainable systems change. All applicants are encouraged to ensure alignment with the foundation’s stated funding areas before reaching out for application access.