A comprehensive effort to get minorities to contribute more to philanthropic causes launched eight years ago by the St. Paul Foundation is beginning to show results, the St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press reports.

The effort is based on an original $1 million grant from the Katherine B. Andersen Fund. The foundation's goal was to "remove institutional barriers" that stymied giving by minorities.

To help promote the effort, the St. Paul Foundation launched the Diversity Endowment Funds initiative, which is made up of a common fund and four other specific groups -- the Asian-Pacific Endowment for Community Development; the Pan African Community Endowment; El Fondo de Neustra Comunidad; and the Two Feathers Fund.

The diversity fund has seen solid growth in the past year, as overall funds increased from $5.5 million to $6.2 million in 1999, and grantmaking reached nearly $275,000 last year.

These efforts have focused on regional concerns, but a $150,000 grant from the W.F. Kellogg Foundation is being used to determine how to boost minority giving to help groups nationwide, the newspaper reports.

While the larger issue means involving both donors and nonprofit and foundation leaders, the hardest part of increased minority giving is targeting the donors themselves, St. Paul officials are discovering.

For example, each of the four separate groups in the diversity fund represents a community with "contrasting cultures, with differing traditions and belief systems," Norman Harrington -- the diversity fund's development director -- told the newspaper.

The effort will be worth it, however: the nation's future success depends on how well a wide variety of ethnic groups and communities can forge consensus.