For the past two years, Ayada Leads participated in Propel’s Capacity Building Initiative for Family Engagement (CBIFE). This 2-year program, slated to begin just before the pandemic began in 2020, engaged a cohort of 12 nonprofits and/or fiscally sponsored organizations in a participant-driven capacity building model to empower families in K-12 educational systems.

The intent of CBIFE was to help participants deepen their efforts to engage families, and ultimately, create more culturally responsive, welcoming, and hospitable schools for BIPOC families by strengthening their internal capacity.

Why Capacity Building?

Ayada Leads Executive Director Habon Abdulle underscored the value of having access to capacity building funding and peers who were working in the same space as them as they navigated successes and challenges together.

“When I joined the cohort, I believed that our organization was facing a unique challenge that required a unique solution. Over the course of the capacity-building cohort, I learned that we had similar challenges to other organizations,” Abdulle said.

For Ayada Leads, capacity building means improving skills and obtaining the resources their organization needs to survive. The word “survive” was intentional. Habon, the Executive Director, emphasized how the financial challenges Ayada Leads is experiencing is not limited to their organization––instead, it is a systemic issue that many BIPOC-led and serving organizations face.

Throughout the past two years the organization focused its capacity building efforts on board development, workforce capacity, communication strategies, and office space, emphasizing the latter two.

Partnerships and capacity building

The initiative opened the doors to a collaborative effort between Ayada Leads and another Somali-serving nonprofit in the cohort, Somali American Parent Engagement (SAPA). Both Ayada Leads and SAPA work with East African students and parents. Together they identified the need to better understand the causes of opioid disorders in their community. In response to this need, the two organizations’ collaborative project is to conduct community-based research on opioid addiction. They received funding through Propel’s Opportunity Fund, a grantmaking effort for collaborative project made available to cohort participants.

Responding to the community, looking forward

Like many community-based organizations led by and serving BIPOC, COVID greatly impacted the breadth of Ayada Leads’ services. Initially, they focused solely on leadership development and had started to broaden their offerings shortly before the pandemic began. As the effects of COVID began impacting the Twin Cities, they transitioned to the role of a more comprehensive community service organization.

Specifically, Ayada Leads offered interpretation services to families that needed to call schools or public services, delivered food to households, and connected families to mutual aid organizations. As a result of focusing on service provision, they shifted their capacity-building efforts to address challenges related to their new services and the transition to virtual work – something that was difficult for many organizations, let alone new ones working to increase their capacity in general.

Taking on the new service-oriented responsibilities meant staff workloads increased exponentially, which meant that they did not have the ability to focus as much staff time on capacity building. As they look to the future, they have plans to fundraise and invest in staff.

“In our cohort gathering, we learned that sustainability is more of a journey than a destination,” Abdulle said. “As the leader of our organization, I will put my focus on investing in the right people, establishing great partnerships, raising unrestricted funds, and implementing programs that will help our communities flourish.”

Visit the organization’s website.

The post Ayada Leads appeared first on Propel Nonprofits.

Ibrahim, the Founder and Executive Director/Editor of Sahan Journal, has worked with a team of staff and freelancers to build an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit digital newsroom fully dedicated to providing authentic news reporting for and about immigrants and communities of color in Minnesota.

When Sahan Journal applied to be a fiscally sponsored project at Propel Nonprofits, a strategic decision that allowed them the ability to accept grant funding and build the infrastructure they need to grow into the organization they hope to be, they cited the following statistic:

In 2017, foreign-born immigrants comprised nearly 9 percent of the state population, according to the Minnesota State Demographic Center. If you factor in the U.S.-born children of immigrants, that number could be double digits.

Ibrahim noticed, while working for Minnesota Public Radio, stories about communities of color, especially immigrant communities, were underreported, and lacked nuanced and authenticity in almost all mainstream media outlets.

“I found that when people heard about, for example, the Somali community in Minnesota, it was only when there was breaking news or big events, and those are typically stories you are encountering when you read about these communities,” Ibrahim said. “Sahan Journal offers something different; immigrant communities and communities of color are always on the front page; they are always visible.”

That visibility is an integral part of Sahan Journal’s mission.  In Minnesota, reporters usually produce stories about communities of color that frequently lack nuance, context, complexity, depth and dimension. This is because the local media landscape is predominately white and newsroom leaders are not investing resources in fully covering these communities and are slow in making news coverage more inclusive, despite the increasing diversity and the rapid growth of Minnesota’s immigrant population.

“Our communities of color and immigrant communities deserve high quality journalism so they can see themselves reflected well,” Ibrahim said. “It is important for the public narrative around these communities to chronicle how they are transforming the state in terms of day-to-day life, elections, and more.”

Sahan Journal is a timely project, offering journalism that is not available in other places. As a fiscally sponsored project at Propel, Sahan Journal was able to accept grants and receive accounting and finance support as they laid the groundwork for growth before they received their own 501(c)(3) status. They also got a grant through the Nonprofit Infrastructure Grant Program, which helped them establish internal systems and pay freelance staff for their reporting.

For the past 18 months, Sahan Journal has played an important role in telling the story of the Coronavirus Pandemic and its lasting impacts in Minneapolis. They sent reporters out into the community following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, and have subsequently covered protests, elections, and politics across the city. Now a staff of 11, they met in person for the first time in October 2021 and covered the Minneapolis municipal elections on November 2, 2021.

“As a nonprofit newsroom, we want to create and reflect vibrant, inclusive, and welcoming communities,” Ibrahim said. “We want immigrant communities and communities of color to be informed, the more you consume news information, the likelihood you vote goes up and that is how we can strengthen democracy.”

If you want to support the Sahan Journal, visit their website to read up-to-date stories and donate.

Photo: The Sahan Journal staff poses for the first time together in the fall of 2021, having been a remote newsroom during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Photo by Ben Hovland.

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