Star Tribune
Meet the leader who’s helped hundreds of Minnesota nonprofits with financial advice
Kate Barr, one of Minnesota’s foremost experts on nonprofits and philanthropy, is retiring in January as CEO of Propel Nonprofits after a 23-year career leading the Minneapolis organization.
In that time, Propel has become a critical resource for hundreds of nonprofits each year, providing training, financial consulting and loans ranging from $20,000 to $1 million. Barr, a longtime St. Paul resident, has also mentored hundreds of nonprofit leaders in Minnesota, which she calls a “nonprofit nirvana” owing to the above average generosity of the state’s individuals and foundations.
She “accidentally” fell into nonprofit work, she says, when she landed a job at a dance company. She went on to a 20-year career in commercial banking before combining her interests in nonprofits and finance in 2000 to run the Nonprofits Assistance Fund, overseeing a $3 million capital loan fund.
The organization was renamed Propel after it merged in 2017 with MAP for Nonprofits. Today it has 35 employees and a capital loan fund of $45 million, providing financial services, consulting and training, and administering grants.
“It’s like we’re three things in one,” Barr said, adding that there are no community development financial institutions like Propel in other states.
Propel recently announced that Henry Jiménez, CEO of the Latino Economic Development Center in St. Paul, will succeed Barr in February. But Barr plans to stay connected to the nonprofit sector in retirement by teaching at the University of Minnesota, serving on boards and mentoring leaders. She’s also looking forward to spending more time with her two adult children and grandchild.
Barr sat down with the Star Tribune to reflect on her career and an ever-changing landscape for the more than 15,000 nonprofits in the state. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: In 2000, you left a career as one of the few high-ranking women in Minnesota banking to lead what is now Propel. What drew you to this work?
A: When I had my interview for this job they asked me, “What gives you the greatest satisfaction?” And I remember saying I love driving down the street and seeing businesses that I helped. But I didn’t love banking. I’ve always loved nonprofits. I’ve always been interested in things that make a difference in the community.
Q: What do you think your legacy will be in the sector?
A: I think we have been able to really help change the conversation around nonprofit finance. Being broke all the time is not a virtue. We’ve helped change the conversation, in particular around capital coming to nonprofits. But I think that probably the greatest legacy is [mentoring and training] nonprofit leaders.
Q: You’ve said you’ve been thinking of retiring for several years. Why is now the right time, and what’s next for Propel?
A: You have to be personally ready. And you have to make sure the organization is ready. It was the middle of a pandemic when I started thinking about it, so not a good time. We serve the whole state and I know one of the hopes of the new leader is they be even more involved in relationships around the state, and just continue to deepen the work.
Q: You’re part of a generational shift of longtime nonprofit leaders retiring. What’s your advice to other organizations who are losing baby boomer leaders?
A: Everyone should adjust their expectations to prepare for something different. Leadership looks different now. Be ready for change and be adaptable.
Q: The last three years have challenged nonprofits in new ways — from the financial pressures of the pandemic to staffing shortages, and the increased scrutiny due to the Feeding Our Future scandal. What do you think is the future for Minnesota’s nonprofit sector?
A: During the pandemic and then after George Floyd’s murder and the response to it, who was at the front of the line helping people? Nonprofits. Nonprofit organizations, many of them quite small, became very visible in their communities. And the community started to see how much they needed those nonprofits.
And because of that, it has both increased the demand for what nonprofits do [and] it has also increased the expectations. [But because pandemic government aid is ending and] costs have gone up, it’s just more expensive to do the work. Many nonprofits are finding they have to find new sources [of revenue].
Nonprofits have become more representative of the people they serve. And I think that is probably the most powerful change in the sector: The people who are making decisions at nonprofits actually have the experience of the people they serve.
Q: What do you think the public should know about nonprofits?
A: There is still a lot of distrust of nonprofits — that they know how to spend their money, that they know how to run their business, that their overhead is too high — when that is not a question that we ever ask of Target. There is still a misperception that, if you’re a nonprofit, the money just automatically comes, and that people at nonprofits somehow shouldn’t be paid what the market is.
Q: What are you looking forward to in retirement?
A: Just having a different pace. That phrase that people after they retire say — they’re busier than they’ve ever been — that’s not the goal.
The lead pastor of Lakes Area Vineyard Church in Detroit Lakes said that a missionary was killed in an act of violence Friday in Angola, Africa.
Beau Shroyer moved there in 2021 with his wife, Jackie, and five children. They were working with the missionary organization SIM USA, founded in 1893 in Charlotte, N.C. SIM USA president Randy Fairman shared in a message to the Lakes Area Vineyard congregation that the Shroyers were one of the first families to move to Angola after pandemic lockdowns eased.
Fairman said many details are still unknown about Shroyer’s death. He said he got a call Friday “informing me that Beau Shroyer was killed while serving Jesus in Angola and is now with his Savior.”
“It is my belief that from his vantage point, he can see how his family will be cared for, and it is not hard for him to trust our good Father,” Fairman wrote. “From our perspective and the perspective of Jackie and the kids, we now must trust Jesus in a season that we never imagined. We must trust Him without requiring Him to give us an understanding of why He allowed this. It is difficult and stretches our faith.”
Troy Easton, lead pastor of Lakes Area Vineyard Church, said in a message to congregants that “Moments like these create so many unanswerable questions for us and it adds to the pain to know that we may never understand why our Father has allowed something like this to happen.”
“As more details became available regarding what’s next for the family, what arrangements are being made to celebrate and honor Beau’s life, and practical ways you can love and serve them, we will be certain to share them with you.
Along with his wife, Shroyer, 44, a former Detroit Lakes police officer and real estate agent, leaves behind children Bella, Avery, Oakley, Iva and Eden.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
This year, its jump-scares and lore landed it on Forbes’ list of “7 of the World’s Scariest Haunted Houses” alongside a 160-room mansion in California filled with “occult oddities,” a house built on an old cemetery near Chicago, and a haunted theme park in New Zealand built on the grounds of an old psychiatric hospital. The Haunted Ship, as the Irvin is known in October, is open just one more night — from 6:30 to 10 p.m. on Halloween.
“But this isn’t just a manufactured scare factory,” according to Forbes’ scare scouts, who reportedly visited the ship and had the VIP experience — which includes controlling the dialogue of a disembodied skull as visitors stream past. “In 1964, a sailor died on the ship during a boiler room accident, prompting the Duluth Paranormal Society to investigate the ship. Employees have reported seeing unexplained shadows, hearing phantom footsteps, and had objects thrown at them while doing maintenance work.”
The pilot house of the William A. Irvin is covered in cobwebs during October, a stop on the VIP tour of the seasonal Haunted Ship. (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
The tour twists through the ship’s nooks, crannies and areas specific to its life on the Great Lakes — like a few gruesome dining areas where bloodied limbs are scattered about. There are creepy clowns and Victorian-era beings who stare wordlessly. A sink runs with bloody-colored water and a skeleton sits in a muddied bathtub surrounded by its innards.
The VIP experience offers a chance to roam through the ship’s living quarters alongside an ethereal character in the role of Irvin’s second wife. She sashays through the space with tales from the past, then allows you entry into private spaces where a saw blade rests in a sink and a body meant for the morgue vibrates with electrical waves on a bed. It offers a chance to dip into the pilot house, where wheels and gears are draped in cobwebs, offset in the opposite direction by a fresh perspective on the Aerial Lift Bridge.
The view from the Haunted Ship offers a new perspective on the Aerial Lift Bridge. (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
There are countless dark corners for jump scares, strobe lights and tight spaces with hidden exits. There is a place designed to trigger claustrophobia. And there are mind-bending questions: Is that a person in that chair or isn’t it? Who is making that growling-moaning sound? What is that smell?
The final question is answered at the exit of the ship, where there is a running tally of how many people haven’t been able to finish the tour (90 as of Friday night) and how many have wet their pants (35).
How many people have opted out of the Haunted Ship? (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Police said they will be releasing details Monday about the shooting death of a 23-year-old man last week in New Hope.
Carnell Mark Johnson Jr., of Bloomington, was shot in the chest Thursday in the 7300 block of Bass Lake Road and died that same day at North Memorial Health Hospital, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office said.
A police official said more information will be released about the shooting later Monday. No arrests have been announced.
