Grantee Learning Logs | Bush Foundation

An important part of creative problem solving are the lessons learned along the way. As a learning organization, we realize how important these discoveries are and have intentionally included time for reflection and sharing as part of how we work.

In that same spirit, we ask our Community Innovation grantees to share their reflections and learnings through interim and final reports. Their learning logs are a great resource for what went well, what didn't and what others might take away as they work to make our region better for everyone.

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Our partners are creating broad confidence in the process by their experience. This will allow us to continue our pathway to innovation.

Creating artist-designed spaces in collaboration with the community is a growing and evolving field in the arts, and Plains Art Museum has found itself to be uniquely positioned to help meet expressed community needs.

Four Bands Community Fund

Term: November 01, 2013 - June 30, 2016

Four Bands Community Fund, of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, will lead a reservation-wide effort to develop and implement a comprehensive workforce development program. Using a combined place- and sector-based approach, Four Bands will provide training opportunities to increase the capacity of individuals to gain meaningful employment while supporting businesses to build their capacity to effectively hire and retain qualified employees.

The collaborative process has always been the key element of our innovation process. There has been tension within this process and a strain on resources to support the collaborative efforts.

Make time for the people within organizations. Our ability to connect community input and innovations into health care infrastructure really floats or sinks based on individuals within those programs and departments.

Our work has only reinforced our belief in the importance of and viability of engaging older adults in their own self-care and supporting others in improving wellness.

Healthy Community Initiative

Term: November 01, 2013 - December 31, 2017

Northfield Promise' is a collective impact initiative designed to achieve community-level change for children and youth growing up in Northfield. By aligning all the major community institutions around a shared set of measurable benchmarks, assembling diverse action teams, collecting and sharing data, implementing action plans, and sharing progress with community stakeholders, the project seeks to ensure success for all Northfield youth.

Put your seatbelt on and step on the gas! When we began this work, we never expected that there would be the level of interest in Northfield Promise that there was (and, remarkably, continues to be).

Testing is a process where you are analyzing the results as you go, allowing you to make changes and tweaks and better do your work. This was and is a crucial approach to how we do community organizing.

We find radicalism to play a critical role in community innovation.

There is not an entity (private, government, non-profit) whose singular focus in farmland access...So we have worked to be inclusive, but what is helping us progress is collaboration.

Considerable progress is on display using our inside out continuous loop model. New leaders have emerged, jobs have been created at PN, community members have been empowered to fulfill the jobs, community members have been employed outside of PN...

It was vital to be inclusive to involve leaders and clients from ethnically diverse nonprofits or groups and key community stakeholders to share and identify the issues, needs and challenges.

We learned that it is critical to have major players as early adopters, but equally important to have a defined hierarchy for task completion.

The Barbara Schneider Foundation

Term: November 01, 2013 - December 31, 2015

The Barbara Schneider Foundation will work together with four Native nations--Red Lake Nation, White Earth Nation, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and Rosebud Sioux Tribe--to create culturally distinct programs for prevention of and intervention in mental health crisis and wellness recovery. Each Nation will identify strengths, needs, priorities and barriers to wellness, and develop a collaborative response plan for their community.

Building bridges, strengthening partnerships, achieving possibilities opens the door to resolution of underlying wrongs. Resolutions that will benefit all communities and not just be another zero sum solution.

We were able to achieve the innovation in more than half of the 19 counties. In the counties where we are still at the “test and implement solutions” level, it was the lack of inclusion and collaboration with the local leaders that was missing.

Through this grant we were also able to better align our strengths as the business and entrepreneur development provider in north Minneapolis.

This process has led staff to do more research and exploration about traditional Hmong farming practices and times when cooperative principles were present in those practices.

Despite lacking any authority the RRBC has maintained its relevance through the power of education and influence due to our board membership.

The group felt the most important voices were those of students and at some meetings only one student was present. This was the biggest lesson learned. If we want students to be included, we need to change how and when we do our work.

We have learned that new ideas need to be communicated consistently and repeatedly to those community partners who are invited to the table.

Many of the ideas that will help move the region forward are already being tried in some communities. That learning needs to have a way to be distributed more broadly, so those ideas can be tried, tested and refined.

We recognize that from the beginning there was a need to frame the process and history, and then to repeat it over and over for all participants.

Our commitment to creating a farmer-led process *despite* the pace at which that is happening (SLOWLY) has been recognized by both our project partners and the farmers with whom we work.

Being open to seeing and understanding one another’s perspectives is vital for us to continue moving forward.

The Certified Peer Specialists (CPS) stepping up and contributing their time to make the project be successful was instrumental to our success.