Fund for An Open Society

Building integrated schools, integrated neighborhoods and opportunity in the Twin Cities through community organizing for social change.

James Farmer founded Fund for an OPEN Society in 1965, true to his passion for civil rights Farmer believed that people living together could grow together. He developed an innovative mortgage incentive program that encouraged whites and blacks to live next to eachother. Since 1965 OPEN has been developing innovative solutions to segregation and inequality. Today in Minnesota OPEN brings school administrators and local civic leaders together with parents and communities to change the face of education and housing, spaces that are too often segregated and unequal. Too often we expect schools to solve our society's most entrenched social problems, but schools can't solve those burdens alone. An entire community, cities, counties and individual citizens must work together to bridge the opportunity gap. Charity alone is not enough to change our world. We need organizing and action to ensure fudamental reform happens. OPEN MN is facilitating that action by brining stakeholders together to promote integrated lives through equalizing opportunity. Mother Theresa said, "If we have no peace it is because we have forgotten that we belong to eachother" and Dr. Martin Luther King said, "Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice." Fund for an OPEN Society/OPEN MN combines these powerful sentiments in its work to equalize opportunity by promoting integrated communities.