Don’t forget about this exciting opportunity to join with your Cleveland Neighbors for a conversation around what you’re vision for your community is. This community dinner is for Cleveland residents, you’re whole family is welcome, pizza dinner will be provided by The Lowry Cafe, and you’ll have a great time meeting neighbors, discussing what your passionate about and what you’d like to see your neighborhood become. We’ll be continuing with the theme that was used for our community gatherings last year: “I Want ________ In My Neighborhood”
To help us ensure we have enough pizza and space for everyone, please RSVP today:
And if you can’t make it in April (and even if you can), join us in June for our second Neighborhood Conversation:
Some questions regarding this event were raised on our Facebook page, so we’ve taken the time to answer questions and concerns below. If you have any more questions, please contact the office, 588-1155 or on the contact page. Thanks!
Why a Conversation?
As a Neighborhood organization, our job is to engage with and listen to our residents. We do this by hosting three general community meetings per year (according to our bylaws). These two neighborhood conversation events are two of the three events we will host this year (the third is our annual meeting). These Conversations also serve to fulfill to specific goals we are charged with by the Community Participation Program, were we get the majority of our funding for the organization:
-As a CPP funded organization we are charged with identifying Neighborhood Priorities, this event will help us gather feedback from residents about what those should be.
-As a CPP funded organization we are charged with Increasing Involvement in the organization, this event is an attempt to do that as well. (CPP Guidelines)
Where is the funding for the event coming from?
The funding we receive from the city of Minneapolis can not be used for food, but that is something we often like to provide to residents when we ask you to take time out of your busy schedule to spend an evening giving your input on neighborhood issues. This winter, we applied for and were awarded a grant specifically for hosting gatherings like the ones we’ll have in April and June.
The Bush Foundation (which ran a program called inCommons) has been providing small “facilitation grants”. Through their organization they’ve trained hundreds of facilitators in a program called The Art of Hosting. These grants provide funds for smaller organizations like CNA to not only host a high quality event (by providing funding for food and venue), but also use their facilitators to ensure the outcomes of our time are the best they can be. (link to pdf about grant). The facilitators were recommended by the staff of inCommons who notified us of our grant award.
Are paid Facilitators necessary?
Hiring outside facilitators for an organization such as CNA with a small budget and a community focus, might come across as a mismanagement of funds. Hopefully the facts clarify that is not the case. The hiring of facilitators for this event is specifically coming from the grant we received which is specifically for hiring facilitators from the Art of Hosting program, and through which we also received funds to support a local business (The Lowry Cafe) but hosting the event in their space. As a small organization with limited staff and volunteer capacity, we welcome the opportunity for facilitators not only to help us run a smooth event, but ensure we come away with a tangible set of data from community residents that we can act on.
We hope this adequately answers any questions you might have. If you need more details regarding the events, please contact the office, 588-1155 or via the contact page.