💼 New LCC director joins group at time of existential crossroads

Joel McReynolds has had plenty of homework since taking over as Executive Director of the Longfellow Community Council at the end of June.

There's a lot to learn about the organization, which is run by a 15-member board that branches into multiple subcommittees, offers several grant programs with different requirements drawn from different pools of money, organizes dozens of events per year, leases land, funds everything from murals to rent assistance, and touches just about every major development or political issue that overlaps with the neighborhood. 

But the most important challenge facing Joel and his board is more existential: The plum funding that brought neighborhood groups to prominence in the 90s and 2000s has dried up, leaving many facing consolidation, austerity, or dissolution. 

Neighborhood groups in flux

Neighborhood groups as we know them today were born out of the Neighborhood Revitalization Program, an ambitious 20-year project launched in 1991 that funneled $20 million a year of property tax from downtown developments into neighborhood groups to promote localized decision-making and neighborhood identity. It was part of a broader national urban planning trend of the era toward grassroots governance and a renewed focus on neighborhoods outside of the downtown core, in the wake of the divestment in urban neighborhoods of the 70s and 80s. And while there were similar endeavors across the country, the scale of Minneapolis's program was unique. Mayor Don Fraser described it at the time as "one of the most unusual things a city has ever tried."

The program was set up to funnel the money to independent nonprofits that represented individual or clusters of neighborhoods. Though the Longfellow Community Council had existed as an advocacy group since the 60s, it reached the scale we know today in 1992, when residents from Longfellow, Cooper, Hiawatha, and Howe petitioned it to participate in the NRP. Encompassing more than 21,000 residents, it was and remains the most populous neighborhood group in the city. (In many ways, the concept of Greater Longfellow as a community dates back to this grouping; prior to the rise of neighborhood groups, people more commonly associated with either broader regions like "South Minneapolis" or their city council ward.)

The group received about $12 million over the course of the 20 years. Half was required to be spent on housing — most in the form of forgivable loans for improving aging homes and making down payments for first-time buyers (often doled out at dramatic in-person lotteries, complete with a revolving barrel). The rest paid for things like building the 27th Street stairway to the river, restoring the 36th Street Oak Savannah, planting hundreds of trees, constructing a new Brackett Park rec center, and building playgrounds at Longfellow, Cooper, Hiawatha, and Howe schools. If your house has motion-sensor security lights, there's a decent chance the neighborhood group helped pay for them.

Across the city, the program yielded both the pros and cons you'd expect of decentralizing spending: It kickstarted neighborhood organizing and generated many of the period's most notable projects; it also created a lot of redundant work, was occasionally plagued by misuse of funds, and skewed toward the interest of wealthy homeowners with the time to participate. Taken as a whole, it was generally considered a success and won a number of awards — including a notable nod from the United Nations.

When the 20-year special financing arrangement expired in 2011, the funding was ratcheted down from $20 million per year to $4 million per year, and then cut even further in 2022 with the advent of the "strong mayor" system. Today, groups receive a base funding of $15,000 a year for each neighborhood they represent, plus some additional funding for targeting underrepresented groups.

Which makes it tough to keep the lights on. Many groups are subsisting on leftover funds that weren't spent during the NRP days, though others are out of those funds completely. Some have merged in the past few years, while others, like neighboring Seward, operate without staff. LCC is one of six southside neighborhood groups that has banded together into a coalition known as "Southside United Neighborhoods," which could someday be an organ for shared staff and services.

So, that's the situation McReynolds is stepping into. And while LCC, with its three full-time staffers and roughly $330,000 annual budget, is in better shape than many, that only slightly delays the same decision its peers face: Merge with others? Shrink service and staff? Fundraise more aggressively? Lobby the city for more? Go away altogether?

LCC today

Like many groups, LCC still sits on a pool of money that wasn't spent during the NRP program. The money, totaling about $1 million, can be hard to spend; it can't go to food or entertainment, and it must hew to categories set out in a comprehensive plan or face a lengthy process of amending a plan.

When Rachel Boeke took over as executive director in 2021, she made a push to put that money into what they call "active strategies." A chunk was set aside to ensure another few years of staffing and keeping the lights on. The Board set out a plan to spend the remainder over the next three years, beefing up its home improvement grant program and doling out about $23,000 per quarter for small-scale grants. (Longfellow Whatever received a Communications grant to fund a package of sponsored subscriptions.) 

Boeke took a new job with a higher education nonprofit this spring, and McReynolds was hired at the end of June. A relatively recent Minnesota transplant, he'd spent the past two and a half years working at Banyan Community, a nonprofit focused on building community in the Phillips neighborhood where he lives. There he ran a variety of family programs, like after-school activities for kids and violence prevention programs, plus programs to get families involved like movie nights and English classes.

Beyond the question of sustaining the organization, this community-building work will be one of his top priorities. One particular program he ran, which he'd like to emulate at LCC, was robust support for individual block groups known as the "Lighthouse Network." His team would offer training and networking for block group leaders and lend support that encouraged block club events, like tables and coolers and a stipend for food and drink. By the time he left, there were more than 30 such groups in Phillips.

He's also pushing to focus more on engaging renters and other groups who have historically received less attention from neighborhood groups, something the city has prioritized and offered funding to support.

You can learn more about the Longfellow Community Council here. Its board meets every third Tuesday of the month from 6-8 on Zoom. Elections are held each spring.