Insights Archives

Recently, I was fortunate to attend the Minnesota Compass annual meeting. It was great to celebrate this organization's work in advancing our understanding of Minnesota now and in the future, and to reflect on what these statistics mean for our state. The most sobering findings won't surprise anyone who's heard about Minnesota's large racial achievement gaps.

The Minnesota Compass team, along with Minnesota Department of Education Commissioner Brenda Cassilius and Boston Scientific's Director of Community Relations Marilee Grant, recently convened an Education Advisory Group to provide insight on key measures featured in our Education topic area.

Minnesota Compass won a national award – our community and state win a much bigger reward! The Compass project staff at Wilder Research were proud to accept an "Impact Award" at the Annual Community Indicators Conference in Washington D.C. last month. The award honored the project for its pace-setting quality providing useful information that communities throughout our state can use to maintain and improve their quality of life.

We know that a lot of people like to have data about the state as a whole, but also want to be able to say what is going on in their own area. For that reason, we provide data for all 87 of Minnesota's counties, and the 55 cities with populations over 20,000. You can access this data in two ways: by region and by topic area.

Before the recent election, we heard a great deal about conditions in our communities, our state, and our nation, and the conversation continues. So, we thought we would share what we know, from data which have recently emerged on community conditions. Because, of course: "We are all entitled to our own opinions; but we are not entitled to our own facts."

Compass talked with Randi Roth, Executive Director of the Otto Bremer Foundation since 2008, about community involvement and the Foundation's role in promoting it.

Times are tough. We know that. Those of us who manage organizations serving the community and who have worked through demanding times before also recognize that, with creativity and hard work, we can persevere; we can succeed in continuing to meet the needs of the community.

Minnesota Compass has revised the Jobs key measure in the Economy section. Compass researcher Allison Churilla answers questions about the changes and the reasons behind them, and points out some key learnings we can glean from the revised measure and accompanying breakdowns by geography.

Construction of the Central Corridor Light Rail Line running along University Avenue and linking downtown Saint Paul and downtown Minneapolis is well underway. The Central Corridor Funders Collaborative provides support to build on the strengths of adjacent neighborhoods, and is working with Compass staff to track changes along the corridor.

In Robert Putnam's book, "Bowling Alone," he demonstrated that since the 1960s, Americans have become less involved in their communities, less trusting in their neighbors, and less likely to give of their time and resources. In short, he concluded that the fabric holding together neighborhoods is slowly unraveling. And he warns that our stock of social capital has plummeted, impoverishing our lives and communities.