After college, Rapson was hired by
Arvonne Fraser, who ran her husband
Donald M. Fraser's offices in
Washington, D.C., when he served as a
United States representative from Minnesota. He worked as a liaison between Fraser's Washington office and his local district office in Minneapolis as well as contributing to the writing and passage of the
Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act of 1978 to protect the
Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota. Rapson then graduated from
Columbia Law School with a
J.D. and joined the law firm of Leonard, Street & Deinard. He became a partner at the firm and remained there from 1981 to 1988. He also served on the
Library Board, the Board of Estimates and Taxation, and the boards of 13 other organizations in the city during that period. Rapson ran in the 1993 Minneapolis mayoral elections against
Richard Jefferson, a member of the
Minnesota House of Representatives, and
Sharon Sayles-Belton, president of the city council. Rapson relied on a grassroots campaign, receiving only 4% of his funding from
political action committees. In 2006, Rapson was appointed CEO of
the Kresge Foundation, a foundation based in
Troy, Michigan, a suburb of
Detroit. Rapson helped organize a "grand bargain" as proposed by Judge Rosen, with other contributions from a number of foundations and the state of Michigan, to keep the art collection from being liquidated and help preserve pensions for city retirees, whose retirement funds were also at risk. and also spurred the development of the
QLine streetcar project in downtown Detroit. Rapson is a founding member on the board of directors of M-1 Rail, a non-profit organization which built, owns, and operates the QLine. He also serves on the Detroit board of directors of the
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. As CEO of the Kresge Foundation, as of 2017, Rapson manages the organization's $3.8 billion in assets and 105 full-time employees. == Personal life ==