Rip Rapson

Rip Rapson is president and CEO of The Kresge Foundation. An attorney and expert in urban policy, Rapson assumed leadership on July 1, 2006, and quickly initiated a multi-year transition to expand and recalibrate Kresge’s grantmaking.

Strategically focused programs – in arts and culture, community development, education, environment, health, and human services – seek to influence the quality of life for future generations by creating access and opportunity in underserved communities; improving the health of low-income people; supporting artist expression; increasing college achievement; assisting in the revitalization of Detroit; and advancing methods for dealing with climate change.

To facilitate this work, Rapson has put into practice the use of multiple, flexible funding methods, including operating support, project support, and program-related investments. These new tools complement Kresge’s historic, and formerly exclusive, use of the facilities-capital challenge grant. In 2010, the foundation's Board of Trustees approved 481 awards totaling $158 million; $134 million was paid out to grantees over the course of the year.

Prior to joining Kresge, Rapson was president of the McKnight Foundation in Minneapolis. Under Rapson’s leadership, McKnight received the Council on Foundations' inaugural Paul Ylvisaker Award for Public Policy, developed a far-reaching regional growth program, championed a statewide effort to advance early childhood development opportunities, launched a business-led partnership to promote a metropolitan civic agenda, and expanded its support for alternative energy and the protection of the Mississippi River.

Rapson previously has served as a Senior Fellow at the University of Minnesota where he led a multi-disciplinary project focused on the challenges faced by aging, inner-ring suburban communities address the challenges posed by declining tax revenues, changing economic and social demographics, and shifting political forces.

Before joining the University faculty, he served for four years as Deputy Mayor of Minneapolis, where he was the architect of the Minneapolis Neighborhood Revitalization Plan, a $400 million, twenty-year plan to invest in the building blocks of Minneapolis neighborhoods. He came to the Mayor's office after spending eight years in private law practice at the Minneapolis firm of Leonard Street and Deinard, where he was a partner in the litigation and intellectual property divisions. He received his law degree from Columbia Law School, serving as the writing and research editor of the Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems. Before entering Columbia, he served for four years as a Legislative Assistant for U.S. Representative Donald M. Fraser, helping Fraser shape and pass the landmark Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act of 1978.

Rapson is the author of two books: Troubled Waters (an account of the Boundary Waters legislative battle) and Ralph Rapson (a biography of his father, the architect).