Meet our Community Partners
These community organizations use our tools to help families partner with schools and advocate for change to ensure their child’s needs are met.
Building demand for great schools through trusted partnerships
These community partners have long-standing roots in the Minneapolis community. Through our partnership work, we ensure families receive direct support in navigating the education system, such as finding a best-fit school, determining if their children are on grade-level, and best communicating with their children’s teacher!
Family Resource Improvement Partners
We work closely with key organizations serving the diverse Minneapolis communities to ensure our K-12 Family Resources are community informed and accessible. Through direct feedback, Improvement Partners help us measure the impact of our resources on families’ educational experiences.
Centro Tyrone Guzman
Founded in 1974, Centro Tyrone Guzman is the oldest and largest Minneapolis-based multi-service Latine organization. Their mission is to contribute to the well-being and full participation of Latines through education and family engagement. Following the model of an Intergenerational Learning Community, they use a Montessori-influenced approach across the lifespan to provide information, connect, and engage Latines of all ages. They serve around 5,000 individuals annually.
Lead the Way
Project Lead The Way provides a transformative learning experience for PreK-12 students and teachers across the United States. The organization empowers students to develop and apply in-demand, transportable skills by exploring real-world challenges. Through its pathways in computer science, engineering, and biomedical science, students learn technical skills and learn to solve problems, think critically and creatively, communicate, and collaborate.
https://www.leadthewaymn.org/
Little Earth Residents Association
Little Earth was founded in 1973 to create affordable housing in South Minneapolis. As the first urban housing complex with Native preference, Little Earth serves as a national model, at the forefront of American Indian migration into urban areas. Little Earth provides entrepreneurship training, interpersonal connections, multi-level support, and education services to the American Indian community in South Minneapolis. Their mission is to create highly rated educational and social programs, pre-school partnerships, elder services, neighborhood stability, health initiatives, and cultural programming that fosters a vibrant community.
https://www.littleearth.org/
Northside Achievement Zone
The Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ) exists to permanently close the achievement gap and end generational poverty in North Minneapolis. They partner with organizations to walk side by side with low-income families as they put their children on a path to college. NAZ’s wraparound framework effectively supports low-income children of color so that they will graduate from high school prepared for college.
Phyllis Wheatley Community Center
Phyllis Wheatley Community Center draws people and resources together to advance personal leadership and help build better lives. Located in North Minneapolis, they work with low-income residents in our community and beyond. Their asset-based, culturally specific approach to services allows individuals and families to grow their strengths. Core program focus areas include early childhood education, youth development, and adult empowerment.
Pillsbury United Communities
Beginning in 1879 with Minneapolis’s first settlement house, Pillsbury United Communities co-creates enduring change toward a just society. Built with and for historically marginalized and underinvested groups across our community, their united system of programs, neighborhood centers, and social enterprises connects more than 55,000 individuals and their families each year. They are guided by a vision of thriving communities where every person has personal, social, and economic power.
Urban Ventures
Urban Ventures’ focus is to provide comprehensive, coordinated, cradle-to-career support for youth living in a 25-block core area of South Minneapolis, with the ultimate goal that all children will complete a post-secondary program and become leaders in their community. Urban Ventures provides youth with an academic pipeline from birth through college, plus wraparound supports for the entire family, including athletics, nutrition education, parenting classes, and referrals to a strong network of social service partners.
Way to Grow
For over 30 years, Way to Grow has brought the community together to address the serious and prevalent gap in early childhood education in Minneapolis. Way to Grow supports families with children from birth to age eight, empowering the next generation of leaders. They are proud to work with more than 2,400 individuals in both North and South Minneapolis. With a team of talented Family Educators and Resource Advocates, they provide year-round services every day to these families.
K-12 Policy & Advocacy Partners
We listen and elevate the voices of families and teachers and explore ideas and solutions that strengthen teaching and learning across schools in our city.
Ayada Leads
Ayada Leads’ mission is to equip New Americans, particularly African Diaspora Women, to excel in leadership positions in their communities across the spectrum of societal influence.
Educators for Excellence
Educators for Excellence is a teacher-led organization that ensures teachers have a leading voice in the policies that impact their students and profession.
Education Evolving
Ed Evolving advances equitable student-centered learning for all students by supporting teachers designing and leading schools, and by advocating for policy that catalyzes community-led innovation.
EdAllies
EdAllies partners with schools, families, and communities to ensure that every young Minnesotan has access to a rigorous and engaging education. We advance policies that put underserved students first, remove barriers facing successful schools and programs, and foster an inclusive conversation about what’s possible for students.
Minnesota Association of Charter School Authorizers
MACSA works to increase the quality of charter school authorizing by advancing practices and policies that ensure equitable and responsive educational programming and accountability systems.
MN Zej Zog
MN Zej Zeg’s mission is to empower the Hmong community by nurturing the Hmong language, healing through the arts and wellness, and becoming more powerful through education across generations.
https://sites.google.com/view/mnzejzog/home?authuser=0
National Parents Union MN
NPU is an authentically parent-led organization that works to advocate for policies and initiatives that support families and promote educational equity run by seasoned organizers with direct lived experience. Their work is guided by a set of values that prioritize parent empowerment, collaboration, and community building.
Voices for Racial Justice
Voices for Racial Justice is a movement organization for leaders, organizers, and culture workers who envision a world without racism honoring the culture, knowledge, power, and healing of Black, Indigenous, and communities of color. They are committed to building power through collective cultural & healing strategies for racial justice across Minnesota using organizing, leadership training, community policy, and research.
Your Vote Our Future
Your Vote Our Future works through education and advocacy to increase active participation in government, working to increase understanding and bringing clarity on policies that affect our community.
https://www.yourvoteourfuturens.com/
Become a Great MN Schools Partner
Get K-12 systems information into the hands of Minneapolis families! We provide free resources to organizations that help families better navigate the K-12 education system. Fill out this form to become a Great MN Schools K-12 family resource partner.