The Future is Bright!
Nate Franzen - Board Chairman
December 2024
The SD Ag Foundation is going places.
As Chairman of the Board, I’d like to share some updates. The Foundation has much to be proud of with our short history. We are still a very new Foundation accepting endowments for the benefit of South Dakota’s number one industry, agriculture. To date, we have built an endowment in excess of $3 million. This makes us viable for the long term. We thank all our investors and early supporters for helping make this happen. We also thank Chris Maxwell and the Maxwell Strategies team for helping us along the way.
In June, we announced the appointment of Kyle Holt as our first Chief Executive Officer. Kyle’s extensive background in agriculture, leadership, and advocacy makes him uniquely suited to lead the Foundation into a new era of growth and impact. Throughout his career, he has held key leadership positions, including Deputy Secretary at the South Dakota Department of Agriculture, Director at the South Dakota Secretary of State's office, and Senior Policy Advisor to the Commissioner of School and Public Lands. His roles have involved managing operations, fostering partnerships to advance the goals of the organizations, and coordinating legislative efforts for the organizations he has served.
The Board of Directors also took time to go through a comprehensive strategic planning process. This was time well spent! We have a much clearer plan and path for the future.
First, we refined our mission and vision which will help us more clearly communicate our activity this day forward. Our new mission is: Enriching Agriculture for generations to come. Our new vision statement is: To be the South Dakota Ag community’s trusted philanthropic partner.
We expanded the size of the Board and established several committees to help the Foundation make the most of our efforts and resources. These committees include the Asset Development Committee (fundraising), Asset Management Committee (fiduciary to assure proper investment of our funds), and Asset Distribution Committee (grant making). I’m excited about the new talent that has joined our Board to further leverage our strong existing Board member group.
Finally, we set a new goal for our endowment. We want to reach $6 million by the end of 2026 (6 by 26).
The Ag Foundation Board and staff have a new level of excitement as we move to our next phase. I’ve never been more confident we will reach new heights and be a growing asset to South Dakota’s Ag community. The future is definitely bright!