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2007 NONPROFIT
AWARDS
Honoring Exemplary Minnesota Nonprofits
 Nonprofit
Mission Award for
INNOVATION
This award recognizes creative applications and nontraditional approaches to solving community challenges. The winner of this category should
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be active in creating solutions to community
challenges
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employ a variety of strategies in developing the solutions and
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collaborate with other nonprofits, businesses and governmental agencies in their efforts.
And
the finalists are . . .
view a list of
previous Mission Award recipients
Finalist
Profiles
AccountAbility
Minnesota
 AccountAbility
Minnesota
provides tax preparation services to individuals with limited means
by leveraging volunteer resources.
The Taxpayer Services program uses volunteers and innovative
programming to help families access and retain refunds from their
tax return. Volunteers
help families navigate the complexities of federal and state tax
credits.
In 2006, AccountAbility Minnesota created an innovative solution to
help curb the growing problem of private, for-profit preparers
offering high interest “Refund Anticipation Loans” (RALs) to
low-income families eligible for tax credits.
The Minnesota Children’s Defense Fund has identified the
prevalence of this practice and documented how large, private
preparers (such as H&R Block and Jackson Hewlett) are targeting
these predatory “loans” to low-income families.
When the interest rates on these loans are annualized, they
are -- on average -- 236%. In
2004, it was estimated that $1.9 billion of federal tax credit money
intended for low income families went, instead, to tax preparers.
During 2005 and 2006, AccountAbility Minnesota testified about this
growing problem in front of the U.S. Congress.
They did not wait, however, for federal action.
Partnering with U.S. Federal Credit Union, Accountability
Minnesota developed an alternative product to the high fee RALs, the
“Express Refund Loan & Savings Program” and implemented it
in 2006. Through a close
partnership with metro Credit Unions, clients interested in quick
refunds are provided some education about savings vehicles,
incentives to open bank accounts, and - when desired - quick access
to tax refunds without the high costs.
The first two years of this pilot program were a success.
In this year alone, over 360 customers opened savings
accounts and, as of May 1st, only
12% of them had closed.
Although initial interest was triggered by the availability of the
express loan, 1/3rd of the customers foregone the low-cost loan when
they discovered how quickly their refund could be deposited.
The average annual income of these customers was $12,250.
During the 2006 tax season (spring of 2007), AccountAbility
Minnesota’s reach grew by 20%;
the network of volunteers assisted over 12,000 low-income
taxpayers receive free tax assistance.
By offering free tax preparation, AccountAbility Minnesota
saves each of these filer a fee of $120 or more.
In a recent analysis drawing upon national data, Peter
Heegaard estimates that AccountAbility Minnesota’s work saves
federal and state government at least $835,000, more than two times
their annual budget, and its return on investment is 145%.
AccountAbility Minnesota website: www.accountabilitymn.org
Alliance
of Early Childhood Professionals
The Alliance of Early Childhood Professional (AECP)’s mission is to
advocate for and support the development of a diverse, culturally
affirming, and high quality early childhood system through support
and development of a trained and diverse workforce.
The primary project is the Wicoie Nandagikendan Urban
Immersion Project. Wicoie
Nandagikendan Urban Immersion Project is a collaboration of the
Alliance of Early Childhood Professionals, Little Earth Neighborhood
Early Learning Center, three Native American child care programs,
and Anishinabe Academy (a Kindergarten - 9th grade Minneapolis
Public School serving the Native community) and the Minneapolis
Public Schools Indian Education to significantly increase Dakota and
Ojibwe language competencies and academic achievement of Native
American children in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and to empower parents
to support their own and their children’s ongoing education.
 A
typical immersion program is a stand-alone school.
However, AECP’s Wicoie Nandagikendan Immersion program is a
multi-site program built on top of existing programs that have been
in existence for many years. This
process is a strategy that gains the support of diverse groups in
the Native American Community. It
is an approach that intrinsically builds community engagement and
creates a connecting web throughout the community to bring healing
and the revitalization of languages
that was taken away (often violently) as a means to subjugate a
people.
Because the Ojibwe and Dakota languages were forcefully and often violently
taken away through the boarding schools, many people see language
revitalization as a vital step in the healing and reclamation
process. Today there are less than fourteen fluent Dakota speakers
in
Minnesota
, and fewer than 300 fully fluent Ojibwe speakers. The Wicoie
Nandagikendan Project is the first early childhood Dakota Ojibwe
Urban immersion project of its kind in the
United States
. Head Start and early
childhood programs from tribes around the
United States
and
Canada
have been visiting the project to replicate it back home. Tribes
from around
Minnesota
,
Canada
, and the
US
have been visiting the program to examine the model and its
implications for their own communities.
The project has had several exciting outcomes.
The program’s pre-kindergarten children were tested on
their kindergarten readiness. They
tested twice as high as the control group of children.
The Kindergarten classes at
Anishinabe
Academy
had some of the lowest test scores in the state last year.
This last September, we started our Kindergarten immersion
classes in Dakota and OJibwe. This year the kindergarten class had
some of the top test scores in the state.
This was in part because of the immersion work with the
students. Additionally,
the Minnesota Legislature [as a result of the legislative work of
the Alliance of Early Childhood Professionals and the Dakota Ojibwe
Language Revitalization Alliance (staffed by AECP)] has passed
beginning legislation to acknowledge the importance of the Dakota
and Ojibwe languages as Minnesota resources and the need to provide
funding resources for immersion programs.
Alliance of Early Childhood Professionals
website: www.earlychildpro.org/wnabout
Women
in Construction Training Program
 Women
in Construction Training Program (WiCTP) has a dual mission of
providing training to low-income individuals to lead to economic
self-sufficiency and providing living-wage jobs by building
primarily affordable housing options for and with low-income
individuals; and promoting economic justice through creating
awareness of opportunities to under-represented populations within
business, particularly within the construction trades.
WiCTP achieves this through its on-the-job training program
and its subsidiary construction company. WiCTP actively recruits
low-income women, people of color and gay/lesbian individuals who
have been denied opportunities within the construction trades.
WiCTP provides paid on-the-job training so that employees can
earn a living while being trained.
In addition, WiCTP builds high quality, affordable market
rate housing that is energy efficient and environmentally
responsible. The
organization operates all its programs from income derived from
sales.
The construction industry in northern
Minnesota
is over 96% male and predominantly white.
WiCTP actively works within the community to challenge these
barriers and to bring awareness of opportunities for women, people of
color and gay/lesbian individuals. WiCTP challenges the construction
trades to become more active in recruiting, training & hiring
these under-represented groups.
WiCTP has developed a variety of strategies: creating public
awareness through the media and presentations in the schools and at
community events; development of a website that offers information
and solutions to a national audience; formation of a successful
construction company that is 60% female, 25% people of color and 20%
gay/lesbian. The company has created a diverse workforce and an
extensive portfolio of completed projects ranging from single-family
new construction to large multi-family renovation.
WiCTP partners with a wide-variety of diverse community
organizations and businesses to ensure the success of training
project and business.
The impact on the local community has been great.
Since 2000, over 44 women and 21 men have completed the
training program. Currently
WiCTP has 22 full-time employees, 75% of whom had no construction experience
before entering the program.
WiCTP currently has 100 people on a waiting list and 13
low-income women are on an active waiting list to get into the
program. Since 2002 when
the organization was formed, WiCTP has completed the substantial renovation of 95 units of affordable housing, completed over 25
remodels and built 22 units of housing (single family and
multi-family). In 2000,
over 90% of the organization’s funding came from private
foundations, state and federal sources.
In 2007, 100% of WiCTP’s funding derives from sales so the
organization is totally self-sufficient and all profits go back to
support the training program. An added impact has been a focus on
building energy efficient/green and through education have impacted
local consumers in their quest to build more efficient homes.
WiCTP recently completed an Eco-Home, a solar demonstration
project that is open for two years as an energy resource center
through a partnership with local and state agencies.
Women In
Construction Training Program: www.womenworking.org/training.htm
If
you have not already done so, you
are also encouraged to view the finalists and vote for the Nonprofit
Mission Awards in the areas of:
Return
to About the Nonprofit Mission Awards
  
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