Category

Nexus Community Partners Announces $50 Million Open Road Fund for Black Minnesotans and Dakotans

Fred

On Juneteenth, applications for the fund will be available to Black residents in North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota

ST. PAUL, Minn. June 5, 2023 / PRNewswire / Nexus Community Partners, a leading organization creating pathways to equity for communities of color in the Twin Cities and beyond, announced the $50 million Open Road Fund, a wealth-building community resource for descendants of the Atlantic Slave Trade living in Minnesota and the Dakotas. Resourced by the Bush Foundation, eligible Black residents will have access to apply for the fund starting June 19th, also known as Juneteenth.

This $50 million resource is seen as one way to help the Black community cultivate wealth and prosperity.

Though not labeled as reparations because the Fund’s resources cannot correct all of the harm done to Black people over the last 400 years, this $50 million resource is seen as one way to help the Black community cultivate wealth and prosperity.

“Through this $50 million Open Road Fund, Nexus has a chance to provide a return on the investment Black folks have long made to this country and create Black wealth. To us, Black wealth-building is about creating spaces and opportunities that help all Black people to thrive,” said Repa Mekha, president and CEO of Nexus Community Partners. “When we have access to an abundance of resources, we can cultivate healing, safety, care and liberation on our own terms.”

There are no income caps or minimums and Black people, age 14 and up, especially formerly incarcerated people, single parents, senior citizens, those living with disabilities, LGBTQ+ are encouraged to apply.

Over the next eight years, the Fund will award $50,000 grants to at least 800 eligible applicants to be used for several wealth-building projects, including housing, education, financial well-being, healing and economic justice. Applicants will need to identify the area of focus that best suits their path to building Black wealth and will be judged by a diverse panel of community leaders across the Dakotas and Minnesota. Applicants can apply for the grants individually, but groups are encouraged to apply in hopes of building long-term Black wealth and increasing their community impact.

The opening of the application process will be celebrated with an invite-only Juneteenth event for those connected with Nexus, the creation of the Open Road Fund, community leaders and media.

Those eligible to apply should visit The Open Road Fund. The Open Road application closes July 28th.

About Nexus Community Partners

In who we are and through what we do, Nexus Community Partners builds engaged and powerful communities so that each and every person can flourish in a joyful and abundant life. We hold central that, for this to be possible, we must usher out the rigged rules, attitudes, and practices that concentrate wealth and power in ever fewer and ever whiter hands, and usher in ways of living, working, and making decisions together that nourish communities for this generation and generations to come.

Media Contact

Danielle Mkali
dmkali@nexuscp.org

Repa Mekha, President & CEO of Nexus Community Partners, sat down with Chanda Smith Baker, Chief Impact Officer and Senior Vice President of The Minneapolis Foundation, to share his journey and work in a powerful conversation. Their discussion recently aired again on KMOJ 89.9 FM.

If you missed it, you can listen to it now here!

This request for proposal (RFP) is to contract for legal retainership in which an attorney will act as legal counsel and advisor to Nexus Community Partners. Read the full RFP here. Proposals must be submitted no later than 5:00pm (CST) on Wednesday, March 31st.

Nexus Community Partners is a 501c3 non-profit whose mission is to build more engaged and powerful communities of color. Through our work, we work to create a world where each and every person can flourish in a joyful and abundant life. For this to be possible, we must usher out the rigged rules, attitudes, and practices that concentrate wealth and power in fewer and whiter hands, and usher in ways of living, working, and making decisions together that nourish communities for this generation and generations to come.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Q: Are joint proposals acceptable?
    • A: Yes, Nexus will accept and review joint proposals. If a joint proposal is selected, Nexus may wish to go into contract with only one entity.

 

  • Q: Will you accept proposals from attorneys/firms that cannot start by May 1, 2023?
    • A: Yes, Nexus will accept and review proposals from attorneys and firms with start dates later than May 1st, The start date will be considered during the evaluation of proposals.

 

  • Q: Will proposals from firms located outside of Minnesota be accepted?
    • A: Yes, Nexus will accept and review proposals from attorneys and firms located outside of Minnesota. Should Nexus need counsel licensed in the state of MN, Nexus would expect the selected attorney or firm to identify the appropriate local and licensed representation.

 

  • Q: What is the current organizational budget? Specifically, are you able to share the budget that has been set aside for the legal retainership? 
    • A: Our 2023 budget is $12, 640,052 with over $6 million of that being regranted to local organizations and individual community members. Proposals in the range of $45,000 to $60,000 are preferred, although there may be some flexibility if the scope expands, or additional services are needed.

 

  • Q: Understanding that this RFP is for a 4-year contract, our firm rates increase annually. Is it acceptable that our “price” section reflects the rate change? 
    • A: Yes. Submitted proposals should reflect your price structures.

 

  • Q: Are we able to suggest additional legal services that may not be called out in the RFP, but based on our experience working with similar organizations, will ensure overall organizational effectiveness and protection? 
    • A: Yes. If you have recommendations on additional legal services, please include them in the proposal.

 

 

 

Introducing our newest cohort from the Neighborhood Leadership Program! These thoughtful folks will walk alongside one another for 7 months in deep self-reflection. They will build self-awareness, practice working across difference, and engage in values-based action. Read their bios here!

Check out these incredible cooperators! These fellows are brilliant and imaginative and kind. You don’t want to miss them. You can get a preview below, and read all about them here.

House of Culture

Jayanthi RaJaSa, Yonci Peaceful Jameson, Kenna-Camara Cottman

House of Culture is a cooperative manifestation based in the oral tradition and griot skills that form the foundation of Voice of Culture.

A Farm Called Home

Cal Adeboye, Lane Brown, Mari Fitch, Izzy Vielman, Mo Hanson, Jai Jami, Sun Kai

A Farm Called Home invests in Black and Indigenous future farmers by providing access to land-ownership and housing stabilization through cooperative development, education and environmental stewardship.

Lupine

Olivia Nichols, Sophia Nichols, Syreeta Sevé

The mission of Lupine is to restore relationship with the land, animal, human, and plant kin in our home of Mni Sota Makoce.

The Black Prosperity Cooperative

Alicia Clerk, Chakita Lewis

Our mission is to develop a sisterhood based on mutual respect, collaboration, inclusion, and shared economic opportunity.

Cultural Crops Cooperative

Mujahid Layton, Tenille Foreman

We seek to provide sanctuary to those seeking freedom from oppressive systems by modeling our ancestral agrarian & natural lifestyles on 20 acres of land in Georgia.

Boston Black Market and Enrichment Center

Jihan Thomas

We strive to be a place where Black people can gather to ideate, share the joy of the day, and just be.

Please join us in giving our new team member, Leanna Browne, a warm welcome! Leanna is a dancer, a teaching artist, a choreographer, and a connector in community. At Nexus, she’s a program associate working on the North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship. Right now, Leanna’s filling her cup through sharing space with folks and being in community.

“I’ve been thinking about how it is very easy to be isolated right now. I am thinking about how community is being cultivated. Where can people gather and be their full selves? Being a part of North Star—a Black-led and centered space—where folks are able to gather around cooperation, Black liberation, and community wealth has been really special.”

Outside of work, Leanna has been getting energy from dance. For Leanna, “dance is a way to not only be connected to your body but also to connect to others. Reconnecting with yourself and with community is powerful! I want to cultivate spaces for folks to experience that.” If you want to dance with Leanna, she has a free Umfundalai (muh-foon-duh-luh) class coming up! Learn more here.

Apply today for Neighborhood Leadership Program 2022-23! Nexus Community Engagement Institute (NCEI) is excited to announce the 2nd year of Neighborhood Leadership Program (NLP) in Nexus soil.

NLP is a 7-month cohort experience for individuals to gather and organize stories—our personal and our shared knowledge. Our goal is to collectively clarify the narrative we want to shape the world. Narratives like these have the power to transform our future, our mindsets, relationships, power dynamics, policies, and flow of resources. The stories we tell about ourselves are everything.

Our program is open to applicants who are both early and seasoned in their leadership journey. At NLP, we are more interested in learning about your passions and commitment to shape change in community than in popularity, degrees or accolades. Everyone has something to learn and to share. Reach out to NLP@nexuscp.org with any questions.

Last week, we wrapped up the 2021-2022 Pilot Neighborhood Leadership Program year!!! This was the first year NLP was housed on Nexus soil. Congratulations to the newest NLP Grads!

NLP celebrated by gathering in person for the first time, eating delicious food from Demera’s Ethiopian Restaurant, and sharing lots of hugs and laughter! Folks from the NLP community, including the cohort selection committee and Nexus Community Engagement Institute staff, joined to celebrate the fellows.

Sydney Lattimer, also known as Divine Words, offered us a beautiful Radical Acts of Remembrance ceremony, where we honored our ancestors and remembered our way forward. Though we know we are now in each other’s ecosystems forever, we will miss regularly seeing the beautiful faces of this year’s cohort!

Are you interested in joining our next cohort? The NLP team is already busy preparing for the upcoming year—visit us here or reach out to us at nlp@nexuscp.org for more information. Applications will open this summer! Stay tuned.

Nexus Worker Ownership Initiative is excited to be featured in a new report from the Brookings Institute. Read the Saint Paul Case Study here.

“Institutionalizing inclusive growth: Rewiring systems to rebuild local economies,” is a playbook of innovative economic development strategies. Through in-depth case studies, it profiles the wide variety of local public, private, and civic institutions stewarding their communities through the four pillars that drive inclusive growth: economic development, talent development, spatial development, and asset development.

 

This year makes it 17 years I have been lucky enough to work for Nexus. And like 17-year-olds on the cusp of adulthood, it is with great sadness that I am announcing my departure from Nexus at the end of this year, on December 31, 2021.

When I started at Nexus, I didn’t realize what an adventure this would be to engage community and build wealth with amazing colleagues and community members who are helping to build a better world for all of us.

For the past 17 years I have been fortunate enough to be apart of this work through the East Side Housing Initiative, Center for Working Families, and even the Beehive technology project. Interwoven throughout was being able to fund amazing BIPOC-led organizations and organizations engaging and working with BIPOC communities in places like North and South Minneapolis, and my East Side of St. Paul.

And for the last ten years, I have been so honored to have adapted and run the Twin Cities Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute (BCLI). I cannot believe that we are in our 9th cohort. I am so proud of what we have done with the BCLI. I truly believe that we are contributing to the movement and helping set up our communities for long term success. I leave the Twin Cities BCLI to my super amazing partner in crime, Chai Lee.

Over the course of my 17 years at Nexus, I have been honored to get to know and work alongside some of amazing community leaders— like Lupe Serrano, Elder Atum Azzahir, Ricardo Levins Morales, and Paul Fate—all who have provided much wisdom and amazing models of leadership.

And to all the other amazing folks I’ve met—I have enjoyed building connections with you all in community and across different sectors (even over Zoom!). Not only is it about the work, but I love hearing stories about your families, your communities, and what drives you to do this work. And of course, I want to send love to my awesome Nexus colleagues who have made the 17 years so enjoyable. From the bottom of my heart, this Hmong girl says ua tsaug/thank you!

As for my next adventure, I won’t be too far away. Starting in mid-January 2022, I will be a Program Director at the Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies leading their Local Initiatives and Opportunities program. I am excited and will certainly be bringing all that I have learned to this new position. I know our paths will cross again and look forward to connecting with you all to create a powerful future together.

Love,
Terri

These past few years have been hard. As we navigated the hardships of transitioning to online trainings starting in 2020, the team at the Nexus Community Engagement Institute (NCEI) longed for ways to connect to community and share a little bit of us with those we hold so dear despite being physically apart.

When we were in physical space with each other, we invited people to bring their full-selves, we engaged senses and centered wellness and joy, surrounding participants with food, music, people, toys, coloring sheets, and more throughout the sessions. There was something special about being present with community members—giving hugs, sharing stories, laughs, and food together.

It was challenging to transfer that beauty to online sessions, whether we were hosting, attending or facilitating. We longed to and needed to engage and welcome our whole selves and bodies in our training spaces.

After hosting our first online Tapping the Potential of Community Engagement series in 2020, the NCEI team and co-facilitator Nicque Mabrey brainstormed ways we could host virtual trainings while engaging with our bodies in the ways we did when hosting the series in-person. From this desire emerged the idea of creating our Playbook!

What is the Playbook?

Designed by Nexus Communications Manager, Elly Fireside-Ostergaard, the Tapping the Potential of Community Engagement Playbook is intended to be another resource for people to learn about community engagement while interacting with music, dance, body stretches, coloring, and reflection questions. While enjoying the Playbook, we invite you to connect with your inner child that embraces messiness, goofiness, and joy.

Who is this for?

The Playbook was made for participants in the Tapping the Potential of Community Engagement series to follow along the curriculum but is also a resource for any community members looking to engage in fun activities and community engagement practices and principles from home.

Check it out!

We encourage you to print the Playbook, use its resources, and ignite your inner playfulness as we continue to move through this global pandemic and remain connected to each other and our joy!

Download the Playbook here!

At Nexus Community Partners, we believe that when we make decisions that affect all of our lives – across race, place, gender, and more – we all must share the power in making those decisions.  

But for too long, publicly-appointed boards and commissions have been a “hidden” layer of power making decisions about our communities, without our communities. And, increasingly, it is clear we need people in government who are accountable to their communities, and who are fighting for policies that direct resources to the people that need it most. We need to build the government that we want to see.   

Over the past nine years, Nexus been this work through our adaptation of the Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute (BCLI),* a seven-month leadership program that supports, trains and helps place BIPOC community members on publicly appointed boards and commissions. 

Today, Nexus is pleased to announce the 16 fellows in our ninth cohort of the Twin Cities BCLI. From Woodbury to St. Louis Park, from St. Paul to Brooklyn Center, they represent a wide swath of geography and demographics, talent, and life experiences. Fellows are working to advance equity across sectors and issue areas, such as economic development, health, housing, transit, and workforce development. The 2021-2022 cohort kicks off this week with a private virtual opening dinner and online training session.

The 9th  BCLI  cohort  members are:  

  • Aimee Vue, nominated by Youthprise
  • Akia Vang, nominated by BCLI alumni
  • Chonburi Lee, nominated by Hmong American Partnership
  • Chrissie Carver, nominated by BCLI alumni
  • Danielle Swift, nominated by BCLI alumni
  • Kabao Xiong, nominated by BCLI alumni
  • Mai Tong Yang, nominated by BCLI alumni
  • Ricky Williams, nominated by BCLI alumni
  • Robert Boos, nominated by BCLI alumni
  • Saundra Massey, nominated by BCLI alumni
  • Stephanie Jones, nominated by Brooklyn Center
  • Stephanie Shider, nominated by Nexus staff
  • Temitayo Olasimbo, nominated by Woodbury
  • Veronica Rono, nominated by BCLI alumni
  • Yariet Montes, nominated by St. Louis Park
  • Yasmin Muridi, nominated by BCLI alumni

The BCLI continues to build momentum and challenge the status quo within local government by supporting fellows and alumni to bring their full selves, their responsibility to their communities, and their distinctive cultural perspectives to these governing positions. 

The incoming BCLI fellows join a network of 114 alumni. Over half of them have been appointed to a board or commission or hold a high-level policy position, and all of them are building racial and economic equity in their communities.   

 Alumni of the Twin Cities program include Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (MN-05); MN House Representative Hodan Hassan (DFL-62A); Metropolitan Council Representative for the 8th District Abdirahman Muse; Bush Fellows Roxxanne O’Brien and Carmeann Foster; Lower Phalen Creek executive director Maggie Lorenz; Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Minneapolis Ron Harris; Executive Director of Minnesota Voices HwaJeong Kim; and local entrepreneur and former Metropolitan Council Transportation Advisory Board member Jamez Staples. 

Biographies of each fellow can be found on Nexus’ website. 

For more information about the BCLI, the launch or ways to become involved, please contact program manager Chai Lee at clee@nexuscp.org. 

*The BCLI is adapted from a model created by Urban Habitat in Oakland, California.