Our donor, Margaret Cargill, found great joy and meaning in supporting organizations that serve society, the arts, and the environment. During her lifetime, Margaret made significant, but usually anonymous, donations to organizations working around the world, across the nation, and in her local community.
Margaret gave generously, and humbly. Rejecting acclaim or recognition, she redirected focus to people doing the important work that made a difference. Margaret defied expectations in her giving, supporting causes close to her heart and those that had personal meaning for her. This included supporting causes that had often been overlooked, helping individuals and communities gain better access to opportunity, and focusing on relieving human suffering – what she called “the work that needs to be done.”
At Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies (MACP), we are proud to carry on Margaret’s legacy of humble giving.
In addition to direction from our donor, we are guided by our values of respect, learning, integrity, excellence, and humility to make a meaningful difference in a world that is facing uncertainty and new challenges. MACP doesn’t often make public statements. We are transparent about our work, but we choose to express our mission and values in the ways Margaret Cargill envisioned – through our giving, through the work of our grantee partners, and through the difference their work makes in communities.
Our grantee partners and the critical community organizations they support face new uncertainties: funding changes, emerging technologies, and increasing demands for services, to name a few. MACP is proud to support our grantee partners with funding and flexibility to help them succeed, innovate, and keep serving the public good. We remain committed to focusing on underserved causes, expanding access and opportunities for all individuals in our grantmaking programs, and supporting a culture that embraces different viewpoints, cultivates respectful collaboration, and promotes fair treatment.
At MACP, everything we do is a reflection of our responsibility to give in the way our donor directed, and we are grateful to be able to make a difference through our support for organizations that serve society, the arts, and the environment.
We believe in our grantee partners and their ability to make a difference in and with the communities they serve. We also believe in the important, transformative, and sometimes life-saving work of the broader nonprofit sector. MACP is proud to be part of a generous American philanthropic tradition, and we are thankful for a vibrant charitable community: a constellation of different perspectives, priorities, and approaches that leads us toward generosity, belonging, and community service. A constellation that will help all of us navigate turbulence and find hope and inspiration in a changing world.
We recognize that in philanthropy we have different philosophies and take varied approaches to our work. And yet, in this moment of great need, it is more important than ever that we unite in honoring our responsibility to our grantee partners and the communities they support.
In adopting Margaret’s spirit of humility, we often use her words, “it’s not about us.” And it’s not. It’s about all of us. We stand together with our grantee partners and the philanthropic and nonprofit community. Together, we can unite in meeting the challenges that face us and continue creating opportunity and a brighter future for all.
