Heading Home Minnesota 
Funders Collaborative 

Lessons Learned throughout the Pandemic and Recommendations for Transforming our Statewide Housing System 

Executive Summary

February 2022

The Heading Home Minnesota Funders Collaborative (HHMFC or Collaborative) is a member organization of grantmakers working together to end homelessness in Minnesota. They partnered with Research in Action (RIA), an action research, community engagement, and racial equity consulting firm led by Dr. Brittany Lewis, to conduct the initial grounding work to listen, learn, and gauge potential next steps of the HHMFC’s efforts in 2022-2023. The Collaborative seeks to determine if other key stakeholders in the larger housing landscape see an opportunity to solidify and advance transformative change, and help define and identify where opportunities are greatest in the short and long term. 

Recommendations for HHMFC 

 

Collaborative Table Framework

Inclusion of Impacted Voices

  • Those with lived experience must guide the conversation and be active at the table in a non-tokenized fashion.

  •  Include practitioners’ input since they are the ones administering the work on the ground. 

  • Minnesota Housing should be the main statewide agency providing standardized assistance processes informed by inclusive partnership with the collaborative table. 

Parameters and Ethics Guiding the Table

  • Focus on generative action-orientated solution making and investing in resources that support community power building that creates movements, educates, and transforms narratives. 

  • Produce and analyze new more timely data on current housing trends and impacts and be willing to have tough action-orientated conversations that arise from that information. 

  • Develop and invest in growing the leadership of more BIPOC voices in the non-profit, private housing, and development world in and outside rural communities.

Investment & Engagement
Strategies 

Inclusive Investment

  • Funding and RFPs should be more welcoming and inclusive in terms of geographical barriers inclusive or rural communities. 

  • Flexibilize contract terms and parameters on how funds can be distributed based on what the work on the ground shows is necessary for low-income BIPOC communities. 

  • Provide technical and educational assistance to rural and metro communities, if submitted grant applications are not as strong to ensure future success. 

  • Invest in active yet under-funded BIPOC-led groups and support them in bringing their leadership and voices to the forefront. 

Long-Term Investment & Funding Innovating Ideas

  • Implement multi-year funding to under-resourced groups to invest in the long term transformation of a specific sector, process or strategy, such as supporting community and tenant ownership, manufactured housing rental, among others. 

  • Invest in entities or groups that do not have a track record of success but innovative ideas. 

  • Analyze existing data sets and real time data from organizations to determine where to invest.