Community Agencies Get Funding Boost Under New State Operating Budget

(KNSI) – Community action agencies that have helped Minnesotans get through the pandemic are getting a funding boost.

Republican Senator Jim Abeler helped secure the additional funding for a group that works with the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and the Minnesota Community Action Partnership that oversees local agencies helping with poverty solutions.

Abeler says these agencies are mostly invisible to the general public but is hoping in light of the pandemic that they will get more visibility and recognition. In an era of divided government, the bipartisan action that funneled the money to where it was needed, Abeler says, is a breakthrough.

“When people consider politics, they think of it as sparring and arguing. But that debate that happens in politics actually generates agencies like this that are committed to doing the people’s work – and they really do a good job of it, on a pretty lean budget.”

Tammy Wickstrom heads up community action work for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. Her agency’s annual grant of $25,000 will now double. Wickstrom says the money will be focused on “supplies and activities that the kids aren’t necessarily going to get in a public school or in another setting.”

Other grants will be able to help assist others beyond traditional needs. Groups that cover several counties say limited funding makes it difficult to reach low-income residents and address their circumstances.

MinnCAP’s Annie Shapiro says the increase came at a good time after years of funding declines for the grant and will be able to fuel them post-pandemic. “This was really a specific moment in time where agencies stepped up to make sure that people were able to stay safely housed, to make sure that people have access to food.”

Shapiro says now they can focus on longer-term recovery efforts.

Community action agencies facilitate a variety of services, like job placement and rental assistance. The new state budget increases their annual grant by one million dollars each year, with tribal nations now getting an equal share under a revised funding formula.

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MNC Reporter Mike Moen contributed to this story.

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