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Saying Farewell to Annelise

Fred

As Annelise prepares to leave Nexus, read her journey from the beginning

Annelise’s Nexus journey began summer 2016, when she joined the staff as a New Sector Alliance intern. She worked on Metro Transit’s Better Bus Stops Project, handling project coordination and reporting around bus stop accessibility and revitalization. During her work with Nexus on the project, Annelise had a realization.

“It was my first experience in programming, and I realized, I loved my job and I loved Nexus. From there, I wanted to learn Nexus’ operations, communications, development — literally everything about the organization,” Annelise said.

Once the summer ended, Annelise was able to continue her internship at Nexus as the Capacity Building Assistant while finishing her degree at the University of Minnesota. As the Capacity Building Assistant, she focused primarily on development and HR, deepening her knowledge of Nexus and philanthropy. 

She continued to work at Nexus throughout her senior year and when Annelise graduated in May 2017, she had a job waiting for her; however, mental health challenges had her in and out of the office and she was eventually hospitalized. Despite this, Nexus supported her.

“I was told, ‘don’t worry about Nexus. Your job will be here. We just care about you.’ I felt like I could be authentically myself in a professional environment. Never before did I feel comfortable telling a supervisor I was being hospitalized, and here I was — bringing my full self to this space and being vulnerable,” she said.

When she returned, she was accepted with open arms — and a new job title: Program and Operations Associate. In this role, she focused more on development, grantmaking, and communications. While molding her professional career, Annelise felt herself transforming and growing personally.

“I did more growing at Nexus in two years, than I did in my four years of college — and I didn’t have to pay $40,000. I’ve learned to communicate my love for my work and my coworkers. I know what it feels like to be nourished and cared for. I am a damn fool for leaving because I don’t know if I’ll ever work at another place that makes me feel so good.”

So what’s next for Annelise?

She’s off to Boston to become a Jewish Organizing Institute and Network (JOIN) for Justice fellow. As a fellow, she will continue to explore her role in racial equity work, participate in community organizing, and develop strategies for wealth distribution. Though she’s preparing to work on the east coast, Annelise is keeping her Nexus experience close.

“It’s so weird being in your 20s and you hear everyone talking about how they hate their job. But after being at Nexus, I know it is possible to be in an environment where you love what you do and do it well.”

Written by Nichelle Brunner

We are ecstatic to welcome Keliyah Perkins to our Nexus team! Keliyah joins us as the North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship Summer Intern, where she’ll be supporting the cohort development and engagement, communications and research and technical support for the North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship.

Keliyah is a rising senior this fall at Gustavus Adolphus college. She is a Philosophy major with minors in Film and Media Studies and English. She believes that the problems that exist in this world cannot be tackled from just one angle, that if we want radical change we must advance from all sides.

Please help us welcome her to the Nexus family!

In June 2018, Nonprofit Quarterly featured Nexus Community Partners’ Community Wealth Building (CWB) work – the framework, the programs and collaborations:

In adopting a community wealth-building frame, Nexus borrowed heavily on the work of others… But Nexus has also sought to make the ‘community wealth-building’ approach its own. This includes redefining community wealth-building by developing its own set of eight principles, including equity, mutuality, stewardship, and attention to cultural practices. The cultural practices principle in particular illustrates the unique ‘Nexus approach’ to community wealth building. As Nexus writes, ‘Economic strategies must be tailored for the specific communities they are designed to benefit. Culture is a resource for creating and expanding wealth building options…’

“But building a supportive culture to support this work cuts across all three of these program areas. In terms of rollout, the foundation has envisioned a three-part strategy: with 2016 envisioned as a ‘seeding’ phase focused on awareness raising, convening, educating, and getting a common language, 2017 focused on launching programs (a ‘cultivation’ phase), with this year being a ‘harvesting’ phase where tangible outcomes begin to become visible…

“[Nexus program officer Elena] Gaarder points out that a large part of the work is not just building cooperatives, but also building the ecosystem of support that gives the cooperatives a reasonable chance to prosper and thrive. As Gaarder explains, ‘The work that Nexus is building infrastructure around cooperative models. From that what we learned, it has to be a coordinated effort that builds the infrastructure first locally and then brings in national partners to build support that is needed.'”

Click here to read the full article

Nexus Community Partners seeks a full time Director of Strategic Development (40 hours a week, Monday-Friday), to join a dynamic staff of thoughtful, equity-driven individuals who are deeply committed to the organization’s values.

Nexus Community Partners is a community-building intermediary whose mission is to “build more engaged and powerful communities of color by supporting community-building initiatives and foster social and human capital.” Nexus addresses the deep isolation within communities of color and Indigenous communities caused by personal, institutional and structural racism by promoting an equity centered engagement model; supporting the development of leaders; democratizing wealth; and by reclaiming culture as an asset.

We are looking for a creative and strategic individual who can grow with the position and the organization. The Director of Strategic Development will be an integral part of Nexus’ leadership team and work in partnership with the staff and the Board to meet annual and long-range strategic development goals. This position will work to ensure the organization has the resources it needs to remain strong, impactful and sustainable through programmatic and organizational growth. This position will work closely with and report directly to the President and CEO.

Click here for the full job description and to apply

Are you interested in building leadership capacity for people of color in the Twin Cities? Come join our team as a part-time, paid intern for the Boards & Commissions Leadership Institute this summer!

Apply here!

Are you interested in building power in Black communities through cooperative economics? Love research? Come join our team as a part-time, paid intern for the North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship this summer!

Apply here!

Nexus Board of Directors member Elaine Rasmussen was recently featured in the Minnesota Council on Foundations’  Fast Forward podcast. In the interview, Elaine discusses the upcoming ConnectUp! event coinciding with the MCF Annual Conference. ConnectUp! will provide space for investors and socially responsible entrepreneurs to connect, learn, share, partner, and catalyze investments to actively create a more inclusive Minnesota economy.

We are honored to announce the  North Star Black Cooperative Fall 2017-Spring 2018 Fellows;

Amoke Kubat, Carl Crawford, Harrison Bullard, Jolene Mason, Lashunda Roberts, Lavasha Smith, Nicque Mabrey, Selah Michele, Sheronda Orridge, Sylvia Williams and Tonya Draughn.

The North Star Black Cooperative Fellows are working on diverse cooperative initiatives that include: food, housing, natural body & hair care products and services, artist cooperatives, and worker cooperatives. Please do support, congratulate and cooperate with these Black Cooperators!

photo credit: adja gildersleve (photo of a the North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship Session; Rethinking Capitalism with Dr. Rose Brewer.)

Nexus is seeking a full-time Administrative Specialist to be an integral part of Nexus’ administrative team. The Administrative Specialist will take the lead in coordinating and supporting programs such as the Community Engagement Institute, Community Wealth Building programming, the North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship, the Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute, as well as supporting Nexus’ internal office management.

For information about the position and instructions for applying, please visit: http://www.minnesotanonprofits.org/job-details?id=145429 

To answer this question, we turn to the story of the Blue Line Coalition:

With the landscape of our cities ever-changing, the Metro Blue Line light rail extension is planned to connect North Minneapolis and Brooklyn Park, running through neighborhoods with a majority population of people of color and immigrants. Major infrastructural investments like the light rail extension will impact our communities for decades to come, with economic impacts in the billions.

There is a long and damaging history in this country of transit planning and development negatively impacting communities of color, especially historically African American communities.  We need look no further than the Rondo Community  in St. Paul, decimated by the construction of Interstate 94 in the 1950’s and 60’s when highway planners failed to engage and listen to the concerns of the community. To ensure that this damaging pattern was not repeated, several community organizations came together in 2012 to form the Blue Line Coalition to advocate for community engagement in the planning process of the Blue Line light rail extension.

Today, Blue Line Coalition members have seen their impact on the policies and structure of the light rail plans, and in building community capacity. The Blue Line Coalition has created a couple of videos that demonstrate the power of community engagement as a key strategy to advance equity in our communities.

Check out the below video for a message to our partners in philanthropy about resourcing community engagement.

Watch the below video for a perspective from BLC member organizations on their experience organizing community.

Nexus proudly welcomes three new members to our Board of Directors: Elaine Rasmussen, Gordon Goodwin, and Jodi Bantley.

Elaine is the CEO of Social Impact Strategies Group, a start-up venture whose mission is to democratize access to capital by and for women and communities of color as well as mainstream impact investing for accredited and non-accredited investors. Elaine has also participated in Nexus’ Community Wealth Building Culturally-Based Cooperative Development Technical Assistance Cohort.

Gordon is the Midwest Region Project Manager of Race Forward for the Government Alliance on Race and Equity, which is a national network of jurisdictions committed to advancing racial equity by transforming government’s role into being an effective and inclusive democracy.

Jodi is the Community Engagement Coordinator for Civic and Community-Based Learning at Metropolitan State University, and has been a long-time partner of Nexus in Community Wealth Building.

We are thrilled to bring these leaders’ voices to our Board as we head into a year full of exciting work in 2018!