Emergency Grant

In response to the pandemic, student leaders decided to focus all of our fundraising efforts around raising money to support the new emergency grant. While we maintain the existing student scholarships that we award, we will focus our fundraising efforts around meeting students’ basic needs.

Thanks to the generosity of Mark M Welter Foundation we have already distributed $5,000 in emergency funds and will distribute $15,000 more in 2021.

“I am a mom going to school full-time and worked on campus as a work study before the school shut down last spring. I was out of a job, but still doing class work, having to pay daycare, buy wipes and diapers, and get groceries. I used the grant to keep my daughter healthy and happy while I struggled to find a job that worked with my school schedule. With the money I was able to pay for a month of daycare and other needs for my child.”

“The emergency grant helped me tremendously. I am unemployed due to COVID 19, and I am a single mother of an infant daughter who struggles with food insecurity to feed both me and my child. I used the money to buy groceries. I was able to buy shelf stable food that lasted me and my child quite a while, and we didn’t have to worry about our next meals for a month. It helped me stay in school because I was able to buy groceries with it instead of dropping out of college to get a different job right away. It brought me a bit of stress relief, and I was able to focus more on my classes.”

“This emergency funds helped me tremendously. I was able to pay some of my rent and buy some food and hygiene supplies for my family. Yes, the money helped with my decision of staying in school and not dropping out of the semester. This money was helpful and helped for the current month when received. Thank you.”

Student Scholarships

This past year LeadMN distributed $78,000 in student scholarships to support students. We also rolled out a new application that matches the applicant with all the scholarships for which they meet the criteria. Here are three student recipients:

Manuel Hernandez - Metropolitan State University "I chose to pave my way and can confidently say that I'm proud of my accomplishments and where I am today, which is on track to graduate in Summer of 2019 with a degree in law enforcement."

Linda Kalu - Hennepin Technical College "It is an honor to be a recipient of the McCormick Leadership Scholarship and LeadMN Leadership Scholarship. This means a lot to me because it has given me the opportunity to pursue my academics and career goal in Nursing."

Tamara Topley - Minneapolis College "This scholarship will help me achieve my dreams of becoming a welder and earning a college degree. "