City of Warren: Community Development

City of Warren:Community Development Prepared by: Garth Kruger, Ph.D. EvaluationGroup, LLC

Introduction • EvaluationGroup,LLC • Garth Kruger Ph.D. • Dmitri Poltavski, Ph.D. • Jacque Gray, Ph.D. • OUR SERVICES INCLUDE • PROGRAM EVALUATION DESIGN • WRITING LOGIC MODELS • NEEDS ASSESSMENTS • SURVEY CONSTRUCTION • DATA ANALYSIS • POLICY ANALYSIS • WEB PAGE DESIGN

Short list of financial need includes: • Streets • Pool • Playground equipment • Bridge improvement • Airport upgrades • Storefront & business building enhancements • Others

Introduction • Grant searches and grant writing services-city of Warren. • The short answer was there is nothing out there that we perceive to be a “green light” • The long answer was there are a host of opportunities • Grants/Opportunities Located • SWOT analysis of Warren

SWOT • Brief SWOT analysis of Warren community for developing economic/financial capacity • Strengths • Weaknesses/Challenges • Opportunities • Threats

Challenges/Threats • How do we overcome the competitive nature of organization’s silos for the greater good? • Must bring a range of stakeholders together for ongoing conversations about the greater good. • Competing with other community entities without knowing is a bad “mark” for a long time forward. • Ex: Hartz grant. • How much of a communication and coordination system is in place today…not too sure • Foundations are cutting back on giving • Huge state cutbacks • Pressure on donors/gift givers • Limited pool of interested donors/philanthropic donations

Challenges/Threats • The city has yet to develop a community-wide inclusive, integral and formalized “system” for the process of pulling together grant applications. • There are usually lots of requirements, decisions to be made, matching funds to be pulled together, and “strings” attached to funding. • Can create conflict unintentionally

Challenges/Threats • Difficult for external grant writers who are not involved in city day-to-day activities…unaware of protocols, etc. • High cost in terms of time to figure those out. If those things have to be re-learned every time by a new grant writer, then it will become prohibitively expensive and likely would have been better to had someone internally initially. • Ongoing declines in population • Eroding tax base

Strengths • City of Warren • Committed city council & civic leaders • WAO Education Foundation • Marshall County Fair • North Valley Health Center • WEDA • NWRDC • County seat/offices in town • Others….

Opportunities • Collaboration and coalitions are the ultimate keys to successful grants • Foundations/orgs are not likely to give single entities a large pot of money, even if it is a city. • Must show evidence of broad based collaboration and input from stakeholders on multiple levels. • Possibilities for collaborating with other cities, counties, business entities for sharing resources, ideas, staff, etc.

Opportunities: Community Development • Home Town Competitiveness (www.htccommunity.org/) • A focus on resources and assets within the community. • A comprehensive approach to long-term rural community sustainability. • Goes beyond the traditional limited vision of economic development. • What differentiates HTC from many other development efforts is that it focuses primarily on internal resources and assets. The goal is to assess where a community is and to build on the current capacity of the community in 4 distinct areas.

Opportunities: Community Development • HTC helps the community to focus on four interrelated strategies that depend on each other for ultimate success. The four strategic areas of HTC are: • Mobilizing Local Leadership • Engaging Youth and Young People • Expanding Community Philanthropy • Energizing Entrepreneurship

Opportunities: Community Development • Mobilizing local leaders –Leadership training • Rural communities must be intentional about recruiting and nurturing an increasing number of women and young people into decision making roles. • They need continuing leadership training programs, because today’s leadership must constantly reinvent itself to reflect the challenges of a changing environment. • Teaching people how to handle conflicts and think outside the box.

Opportunities: Community Development • Engaging Youth and Young People • Not just the call of the urban cities, but also a perceived lack of opportunity and encouragement to “not come back” that drives young people away from their hometowns. • Work to support and enhance the idea of adults and youth working together to create opportunities for youth to stay in or return to the community. • Just the attraction of a handful of additional high school students per year who return with young families, can potentially stabilize the population.

Opportunities: Community Development • Expanding Community Philanthropy • Rural residents do not always recognize local wealth because so much of it is held through land ownership. • The purpose of developing charitable assets is to strengthen and sustain charitable giving at the local level in order to build an endowment that will sustain local civic institutions and create a new source of opportunity capital for community economic development efforts. • Enormous amount of wealth that will likely transfer to heirs who have migrated out of the area. • Both the power and the will to use these assets will no longer be tied to the community unless planned gifts are cultivated now.

Opportunities: Community Development • Energizing Entrepreneurship • Entrepreneurial development works to identify and assess entrepreneurial talent in the community and to devise an economic development strategy to increase entrepreneurial business development. • WEDA • NWRDC

Opportunities: Community Development CITY OF WARREN

Opportunities: Community Development • HTC: “When we were given the opportunity for a matching challenge grant to help build a community endowment, we received training for the steps to take.” • HTC: “The idea of getting some major donations before making the announcement to the community and then using the HTC model and presenting those ideas when making ‘asking’ visits worked.”

Opportunities: Community Development • Bremer bank in town • Tapped recently for group home dollars • As a city council, you have the power to levy taxes and raise capital. • As part of a larger network of elected officials, you have the power of connections. • Put forth county-wide measures to raise capital. • Local SHIP Grant coordinator –community assessment of physical activities/resources (RALA) • Other/additional grant works that are ongoing yet not well known may exist…

So What Now? • Potential Next Steps…

Recommendations/Next Steps • Broader community needs a written strategic plan with clearer goals than “we need XYZ” • Need a better roadmap than “lets get a grant” because that will not work. • Developing a wish list is encouraged and should be pursued collaboratively with other entities. • HTC is one example of an organized model or approach that can be used to “frame” ideas, guide conceptual thinking and help keep everyone focused on the larger prize in mind that is the surviving and thriving of the Warren community. • Need to organize efforts –host collaborative meetings • Coordinate and collaborate with other local entities • Both fundraising and grant writing entities

Recommendations/Next Steps • Need to make some tough choices about what true priorities are. • Cannot do it all at once. • People will not all agree what those priorities are • That’s why elected officials are elected: to try and generate consensus, enact the will of the majority and sometimes to make the painful leadership decisions and bear the costs.

Recommendations/Next Steps • Continue searching for grants but also develop fundraising opportunities in conjunction with other entities • Share resources, knowledge, skills, tools • Creatively overcome structural (e.g. laws, regulations) and psychological (I don’t like you because 15 years ago, X happened) barriers • Need a warm body with hard dollars behind them to pull larger efforts together • Internal city position versus hiring out

The Warren Area Community Foundation as a possible solution? • To serve as a forum for thoughtful planning discussions regarding community growth and development that are broader than economic development. • Involve youth, charitable giving, leadership development, strategic community planning, coordination and communication of efforts. • To act as an umbrella organization of sorts that coordinates communication and collaboration across a variety of entities • Host monthly dialogues, trainings and gatherings. • Communication website, wiki sharing site, and an email distribution list or discussion listserv. • To share ideas/strategies and act as a resource for the identification of new opportunities

The Warren Area Community Foundation as a possible solution? • To design policies, procedures and processes for jointly collaborating on community grant writing and fund raising endeavors. • To act as a fiduciary entity that provides matching dollars on grants. • Many grants require matching dollars. • To act as a fiduciary entity that provides hard dollars for identified needs (wish list) and develops the next generation of leaders (insert big dreams here).

The Warren Area Community Foundation as a possible solution? • Can cooperate with other community foundations in the area to enhance regional cooperation and opportunities. • Grants don’t get funded to one-act wonders, they go to collaborative entities. • Develop community celebrations, festivals, and events for the awareness of needs and highlighting successes.

If you have further questions you can contact us at… www.evaluationgroupllc.com 29337 310th ave NW Warren, MN 56762 Ph:218-201-0375 Fax: 218-437-8435

City of Warren: Community Development