you to our fourth joint annual conference this is the only place in the country where non profits and foundations get together on a regular basis i'm john pratt executive director of the council nonprofits and i'm pleased to be welcoming thirteen hundred nonprofit leaders together thank you all of you and presenters especially those who made the trip from far reaches of the state and from nearby states i'd like to take this opportunity to thank the joint conference planning committee whose members are listed in your for everyone who helped plan this also a key group like to acknowledge the staff of m c n and m c f many of them who are still outside helping registration but please know that we appreciate your amazing hosting and organizational skills that's also give them a round of applause to give a few updates on the nonprofit economy and have election related issues before we start our program each year the council on nonprofits issues a nonprofit economy report tracking for what has happened over the previous year certainly a lot of issues around the recession the way we look at the economy partly is there are three parts business government and nonprofits nonprofits make up about twelve percent of the state's economy twelve percent of the state's workforce we track the number of organizations and the number of employees here you can see we also track employment locations one of the developments you can see is since two thousand and eight the number of  profits with employees has reduced slightly it's now thirty five hundred had been up to thirty eight hundred but the number of employment locations so nonprofits have more places where they're providing services some of the organizations have dropped off wen business some of them are have moved to an all volunteer status also important set of organizations or looking at the overall employment now it's up to two hundred ninety eight thousand people who work in the larger nonprofit sector one question we get often is well how much of this is really to the hospitals the higher education to these really giant nonprofits which separated that out from the rest and so this is that smaller number now without hospitals or higher education still a very substantial part of the state's workforce seven percent what's interesting is that your tables are some sort of nonprofit economy update but as you look at this you can see that the recession didn't really drop nonprofit employment in that two thousand and eight to two thousand and ten parea whereas the business sector dropped one hundred thirty thousand jobs dropped about six percent nonprofits turn out to be a very stable part of the economy and help and certainly demand goes up for many nonprofit services in a time of recession before they prove to be very resilient we also look at that compensation in different ways this is looking at compensation comparing nonprofits to government to the for profit sector you can see over the last ten years there's been some compression which is a good thing there is a wage gap between what nonprofit employees get paid and other employees in the economy so this is sort of a and we would make the argument that there's no economic justification why people doing the same  work in different kinds of organizations should be paid differently so the good news is now profits both have very high levels of benefits actually often better than in the for profit sector and now are starting to close the gap with for profit and government employers in wages every two years would do us however in benefits survey and that is also showing sort of similar compression and improvements over over inflation so which is i think as responsible employers and as important parts of the economy we want to see non profits to thrive in this and to be sustainable that was subject of a presentation last night at the c e o trustee dinner and i think as part of a lot of the conversation today obviously everyone knows that the election is next tuesday a close as we've ever had one of these conferences to the election many nonprofits have participated in get out  efforts voter education efforts in a sort of it tends to be at the top end of voter turnout and voter participation and we're also at the top end of nonprofit activity philanthropy corporate contributions and  volunteering and certainly those things go together nonprofits are trusted advisers and colleagues for people in the community and we've been working with many of your organizations to help get out the vote including people who are in under represented constat this year is different too in that there are several constitutional amendments that the nonprofit sector has also been very active in but it sort of comes to nonprofits opposes both of these amendments the lead campaign against the been led by only an extraordinary organizing effort and i also want to say hats off to sheila smith with minnesota citizens for the arts done a lot of the outreach into the nonprofit sector as well as our participation project display there's a list of both organizations have taken a position on the marriage amendment opposing it and also another nonprofit our vote our future which is opposing the photo id amendment so as as a membership organization we know not all organizations and certainly not all people in the state agree minnesota works best when people are able to set aside their differences and work together not  sort of taking positions on issues and then not talking to the other side so i think one of the healthy things that's happened over the last year has been conversations within communities about how these amendments affect people and we certainly want to work together in the future across the nonprofit sector values all of its members and two thousand organizations the actually susie brown is leading the session after this talk about the constitutional amendments it's very possible we're going to see more constitutional amendments in the future and more discussion of the nonprofit role in dealing with important issues like this affecting the state finally i would like to encourage you to take full advantage of the conference by networking visiting with exhibitors asking expert questions and learning and interacting in breakout sessions this is great to have thirteen hundred people together is our biggest event of the year and a good opportunity to participate both with the exhibitors i talked to someone who said they're putting their audit out to bid they were able to find all the potential bidders right here in the exhibit hall and of course there's also an exhibit so thanks again so much for being here and i'm going to turn it over to bill king thanks  purpose i'm going to start with just a couple of recognitions and then i'll have a couple of comments about the minnesota council on foundations and the work that we're doing in the next three years but what i want to do is recognize that this conference does not happen without generous sponsors and so there has been over one hundred thousand dollars contributed by sponsors to make this conference a bailable to everyone here and keep the pricing of the conference reasonable so that many many people can be i want to just take a couple minutes to recognize those that have given seventy five hundred dollars or more and they are the bremmer bank the design company in comments medtronic foundation minnesota initiative foundations these kinds of events and the kind of work that both the council on foundations and the council of non profits to wouldn't happen without dedicated volunteers and in particular board members so i would like to ask the board members of both councils to please stand and be recognized for your contributions to making this sector strong and whole as we go forward so thank you very much i wanted to share with you that as our members you know the minnesota council on foundations just adopted an ambitious strategic plan last december called leadership for the future two thousand and twelve to twenty fourteen and in it we recognize that with all the sectors of society  economy redefining direction and role also had to factor in its thinking important roles that it can play to work with members non profits and the community on how to navigate the uncertain future that we are in what they affirmed was that we were going to continue to be a member organization that did a combination of service and leadership and really focused on the leadership we will continue to do the work that we've always done well and have been respected for on providing education information and networking opportunities for our members and the constituents that we work with that are close to our members but in these times we really knew we had to make bigger commitments and go deeper on a couple of specific issues  going forward the first issue that we're really diving into deeply and we have had a history of doing work here is on diversity equity and inclusion in take a mat on our members are particularly concerned about and want to act on the issues of disparities in our communities and how we do work in that area those disparities occur generally and the areas that they're making grants education health care and so forth employment so we'll be looking at ways in the next three years to really dig deeper and do more work with our members and alongside our members to address those disparities we won't just look at the community though also look at philanthropy itself will be looking at leadership and governance and philanthropy and trying to figure out how we can help these member organizations increase equitable outcomes in communities by changing the diversity inclusion of their organizations so that's one the second one  is also closely related to the disparities issues but it's the issues that john just talked about that we're so proud of the council of non profits on taking its positions and that's we have had a strong history of working on federal issues  primarily on tax incentives or disincentives for philanthropy but we recognize in today's world with everything changing the rules for government changing nonprofits and philanthropy we have to engage more in state public policy  focus and areas where grant makers are largely making their grants similar areas that i just mentioned with education health care workforce employment types of issues and figuring out where we go as an organization and quite frankly  we've got susie on our committee and we look to the council of nonprofits and it's a long and successful history of doing this work to help us bring our grant making community more to the table at the state level many of them are already there and we want to encourage more of that work so both pieces are works in progress and work that we will be undertaking over the next couple of years next i'd like to talk about m c s research as john just gave the nonprofit economy report we just issued about two weeks ago giving in minnesota report that talks about two thousand and ten giving and just this week we issued our top grant maker lists corporate family and community foundations the ten data shows that we're in recovery but it's really slow recovery we have about a two point six percent overall increase and giving it includes individuals as well as corporations and foundations the individual giving actually went up three point four percent which is a great news story for us and corporate foundation and giving without point six percent looking at the twenty eleven data for just those top fifty foundations we continue to see a rise in giving from corporations and foundations and that's good but we also have to temper that with the knowledge it's slow and steady it's not returning to what it was before we'll see what happens with the economy to go forward i share both of these pieces of information about giving so that you have that expectation in your work but i also want to point out that we have one of the biggest opportunities coming up on november fifteenth with give to the max day to really multiply that individual giving generosity in spirit so we're excited to share with you that let than two weeks away until the great minnesota give together there are new additional prize grants available that we want you to know about and we want to encourage you to visit the give men booth for more information on how to make sure that your organization is actively participating and taking advantage of that so a shout out to dana nelson and her crew get to the max day and if shameless promotion here wants give to the max days over and you're looking at your grant seeking needs we want you to know that we've spent the last year updating our online searchable database that has the most up to date information on minnesota grant makers called minnesota grant makers online and during the conference we're offering a enter duce our moderator sandy vargas who is the president and c e o of the minneapolis foundation throughout her tenure sandy has been recognized as a leader in expanding business development opportunities for women and people of color sector collaboration's streamlining business processes and promoting strategies to increase individual efficiency and to strengthen community sand is a great ally of non profits and foundations we we re talking earlier that sandy is sort of an interesting name right now she's not quite the whirlwind but close to what we saw on the east coast so please welcome sandy well i just want to say thank you to both bill and john went to the us and it's great to be gathered here with so many friendly faces old friends and new allies i first  to just comment on the title of this conference and say that allied for action what a great title for this conference but the most important part is bridging differences for the greater good we know that we need to move our alliances together now more than ever as john talked about the constitutional amendments and other kinds of issues that are going on in our community we have to work together none of us can do it alone and one of the things that i think is important about the whole concept about of civil discourse and looking at the future of minnesota is how do we start thinking deeply together about the issue that bill brought up which was the issue of disparities all of you know as i know that we have some of the most tremendous disparity is here in the twin cities in the country whether it's african american men whether it's the achievement gap that our kids are struggling and suffering through or whether it's religious bigotry so that's something that we need to keep in mind as we think about how we not only take the information from today our learning but how do we implement our learning how do we get into deep conversation and most of all action to start addressing some of these issues that are going to stop the economic engine that the twin cities in minnesota is not only for the state but for this country well i'm pleased to now get us started for the reason that we're all gathered this morning today we have three nationally known thought leader who will challenge us to rethink our long term strategies for engaging stakeholders and for serving communities you know sometimes i want to bring up the issue of you know we are the charitable sector but the word charity just doesn't fit the work we do that's not the business we're in anymore as far as i'm concerned we are in partnerships we're in work together we're in strategies that we're developing we have to come together to develop a common agenda and so i think that these three talks that we're going to hear will help us  really think about the new minnesota each of our speakers is going to spend about ten minutes it's a little like the ted talks in challenging us on some of the ways that we can think about the way that minnesota's changing in terms of economics demographics and politics so that we as the nonprofit sector can think about how do we change our rol how do we promote healthy civil discourse and achieve a collective vision for the new minnesota and so now i want to welcome  roya to join me as we enter in to this discussion nate garbus and many of you know nate is the founder and president of nate naked civics and innovative public affairs consultancy focusing on social innovation design and counsel prior to creating naked civics nate served as vice president of government affairs for the target corporation please join me in welcoming forty everybody let's see if this pickle works if everybody's doing well ok so we're living in a fast changing world world of ambiguity and  we all want to produce value we all want to produce healthy outcomes for our communities in order to produce value i oftentimes think of it now actually it's a duality it's a two step move we have to be responsive but we also have to be relevant and i wanted to actually talk about the relevance side of it as we move into paul and laurie scott conversations which are really about how we respond to this but relevance is really about making sure that we are thinking about our issues in a grounded way that we are outcome focuses in addition to input focused because we don't want to hit the wrong targets with amazing accuracy and that happens a lot right so i want to start off by grounding us in this number eight the reason why i came up with eight is because i'm not smart enough to get to ten ok now and there are there at the reason why i come up with eight is that i believe that there are eight outcomes eight outcomes that we all desire in our community eight outcomes that we all need in order to be able to say that we live in a healthy community we all agree on these things we all want to live in a community where you feel safe we all want to live in a community where more people than not experience good health we all need to live in communities where there are opportunities to be productive we all want to live in a community where there is opportunity for innovation and inspiration we all want to live in communities where we can pass on knowledge and wisdom we all want to live in communities where we can be compensated for our activities we want to live in communities where there is good infrastructure not just built but preserved as well and then finally we all want to live in communities where there's morality and justice those are the eight grounding outcomes that we all agree on we all agree that we want that to happen and every one of you in this audience in some way shape or form is working on one and oftentimes more than one of those issues question is what are the natures of this of these issues in front of us and then of course how do we go about moving on the relevance of this one of the things  under stand about this aid is that we oftentimes think about them as problems and problems are something that you fix one of the problems with that is that when we fix problems usually what we're doing is we're fixing our approach these problems actually are problems these problems are actually dilemmas a dilemma is a problem that never gets solved you never put a fork in it and say it's over you and i will never ever live in a safe community hopefully we will live in safer communities and that's an ongoing journey we would actually take a crime to make your community crime free and we don't want to be engaged in any of that what we need to be doing is addressing all of these dilemmas as ongoing journeys ongoing activities that we ha actually something that i call our tool box now it's oftentimes easy for us to think of tools as technology and all of you use technology out there but our world is full of much bigger designs and just our technology our world is full of some of the biggest designs of all which is our institutions every one of you is attention is attached to an institutional form something that was designed we oftentimes don't think of where we work as a place that was designed but every one of you works for an entity that had to be created and the reason why i think that's important to talk about in this relevance thing is that if you understand that what you're working within is a design it gives you the freedom to redesign and this world is screaming for redesign right now we don't want to live in an  unregulated world we know what that looks like on the planet we need to be working in a reregulating world and one of the things i like to focus on is regulating our world well beyond the world of law and politics our world of law and politics is full of professionally ticked off people working in distinctly adversarial situations right and here's the thing too and this happens little p and big p as well is  it's a it's a solution adverse environment because if i solve your problem you don't need me anymore and we get caught up in that a lot but that's not the world that you work in that's not the world you want to work in one of the ways to get beyond that is really twofold one is to understand that what we're working on are not problems they're dilemmas two is that you can't go it alone it's going to take collaboration i can't think of an issue out there that is so simple that it could take one tool to fix it we actually have to use all of our tools to gather we do this not just by producing laws and i applaud you for focusing on the legislative arena my plea to you is don't just focus on the legislative arena it's an important place to be and it's important that it not be the only place where people see you and of course that's not the case with you you're seen everywhere be seen in collaboration my attitude really is that strategic collaboration's these days are that competitive edge you are out there laboring every day to make my community better you've done a mazing job to date you really do deserve a tremendous amount of credit for the fact that i come from what i call the civic capital of the of the country we have civic infrastructure here that is quite remarkable and that's not because any of one of you has done that on no on your own it's taken collaboration but the nature of collaboration is changing these days and you hear more about that but again if we can ground ourselves in the relevance of these eight sayings that we agree on if we can agree on eight then we'll be less disagreeable as we disagree on the problems that we want to fix and paul will be talking about how we actually go around the work of a fact of disagreement without being disagreeable with each other we need a new leadership culture as we approach these dilemmas and i look forward to working with all of you throughout this morning and into the future of my community and how we go about the most important work of all making our communities more prosperous more healthy more enjoyable for all of us to live  thank you nate those are some interesting ideas and i think the three of the themes that i picked up from what you just said was the question of relevance are we making sure that we're focused in on relevance we can't do it alone we have to do it through collaboration and that we have an amazing civic infrastructure here in this community and that we should take advantage of that so let's hold our thoughts on that as people as we go to our next speakers but think about the questions that you have for nate as we go forward so now we're going to next year we'll have the pleasure of welcoming paul smiths from milwaukee paul is the author of everyone leads building leadership from the community up and nash and he is also the national c e o of public allies which has identified and developed and i think this is the most amazing number forty four hundred diverse young leaders to strengthen communities nonprofits and civic participation so paul thank you for joining us this morning and we're interested in what you have to say about this topic thank you everyone i live in milwaukee but i spend most of my time in washington in new york and a colleague called me and said he was coming to milwaukee wanted to have dinner with me and that night i was going to meet with him and i called the mishear wake i could pick him up and it didn't make any sense to me because he was in minneapolis and i can tell you that i have had to i'm sure for many of you travel out it's the same thing happens but i've had to explain to many people that are our cities are actually about five six hours apart we're not part of the twin cities but i'm to talk about today is the idea that leadership is a muscle and like any other muscle it gets stronger with practice and exercise and we all have it and the reality is that first time you stepped up in your life whether it was stepping up to a bully or be  behalf of a friend or when you stepped up to volunteer in some way on a cause you cared about whatever that is that's when you started building your leadership and i'd like to open with a couple stories the first is business scott biz was when we met with her she was an eighteen year old single mother she was on welfare and she was at community college in her own words she was a smart girl who had no idea of her potential her potential was incredible biz went on to college after doing a year of service went to graduate school went to law school and most recently was one of the directors of presidential personnel at the white house most people don't think single mom and community college and welfare white house lawyer the second stories peterhof peter h philosophy degree he was twenty seven years old and he was working at a deli which meant that he could really name cool sandwiches and peter one day a woman came in asking if she could hang a poster  deli and peter struck up a conversation and realize that he really wanted to make a difference he said he would stay up late at night a lot with his friends complaining and talking about social issues and politics but never thought he could be part of the solution peter ended up finding during his year  had a passion for people with disabilities and today he's the c e o of the national alliance for mental illness in milwaukee and one of our state's leading disability rights advocates and what we've done over four thousand times is found that there is incredible leadership potential that's untapped in our communities and there's all sorts of people who want to make a difference and don't know that they could be working with us with our organizations and that we're not doing enough to build that leadership capacity that's out there in our communities the reason why i'm so passionate about this is that's me i was someone who grew up struggling with depression and addiction i was institutionalized when i was sixteen i was so many when i was that photo was taken when i was nineteen i was living on the streets and so for me i was actually a product of social services there were nonprofits to help my life along with a lot of mentors and as my life started coming together i wanted to make a difference for others and that's when i found public allies and that's when i began a path that really for me as an unbelievable i could have imagined at that time all the twists and turns that bring me to the point where i'm leading a network of almost five thousand young leaders across the country and an advisor to the president and states and so it's because of my own journey that i'm so passionate about the belief that that we need to invest in the young leadership in our communities especially those unlikely leaders because that is where we'll get power to create change we believe about leadership in three definitions that we think really capture the kind of leadership we need today the first is that leadership is an action everyone can take not just a position that few people can hold when we shift our thinking from leadership as a noun to a verb we open up the possibilities of who can participate and the reality is throughout our history change has always come from the leadership of the many individual leader might spark something but it takes courageous leadership acts of many people to create change in our first job as leaders is really to unleash the power of leadership throughout the people we work with the second part of the definition is about taking responsibility because it's the essence of leadership leaders are not people who are blamers and planners leaders are people who see a problem are willing to do whatever it takes and learn whatever they have to learn to be able to work on it and solve it and because leadership inherently clabber of act is something we do with others and speak goals we hold in common with others and the third part of the definition is when we talk about mostly today which is what i think it's a secret sauce which is values when we think about why people are cynical about leadership in our communities in our country it's because of leaders who don't listen who aren't interested in others thoughts who don't collaborate well who don't practice what they preach it's all about values and one of the constructs i like to use to think about leadership comes from the u s army their leadership manuals be no do and the basic concept is first have to understand who am i as a leader what's my vision what's my mission what are my values what are my strengths and how do i work well with others and i have to master that before i gain the knowledge and the skills to achieve my mission what i would argue is most leadership development on campus communities focuses on knowledge and skills and we don't focus on the beat yet think about it are your biggest problems with other people that they don't have enough skills and competence or that they're pains in the butt to work with right and so we really do need to invest in building leadership values and i'm going to offer five that i think are essential today the first is about recognizing and mobilizing all the communities assets and i like to think of the proverbial glass and public eyes has been rigorously studying this glass for about two decades we've done randomized control samples and everything else and we've come to the conclusion that the correct answer to the question is the glass half empty and half full is yes every one of us is half empty and half full and one of my colleagues from the early days of public allies in from the asset based community elements to it was michelle obama and that's when i read a quote from her that i think really captures the essence of this value we all skills and talents that make us good friends family members workers and leaders and we also have needs and shortcomings that come along with those strengths we can't do well serving these communities if we believe that we the givers are the only ones that are half full and that everyone we're serving is half empty that it's been the theme of my working community my entire life that their assets and gifts out there in communities and that our job is good servants and good leaders is not only just being humble but it's having the ability to recognize those gifts in others and help them put those gifts  action and i would argue that really is the secret sauce of leadership in the foundation of the other values if we can get this right we can really do so much more better the second values diversity and inclusion and we look at least at inclusion not as something that's passive but as active and there's a simple pass fail test we open up our eyes and ears and we explore are we bringing all the right people around our tables do our tables refract and represent the  serve are there any parts of our community don't feel engaged invested and connected inaccessible to us and if we change who's add our table we have to change the table itself and that means we have to confront issues of power and privilege openly and it also means we have to ensure that all the people who are table don't just feel that their that their that their culture is understood but that there's a culture at our table that makes everyone feel valued and important  third values collaboration and i look at collaboration really it's about building trust because the reality is that if we bring if we really are asset base and look to see and recognize others assets if we're inclusive and bring people different people the table we're bringing that difference together means there's going to be conflict we all have different leadership styles some of us are more visionaries summer analysts and focus on quality and execution some are mobilizing who can mobilize people to action  bring a sense of urgency and some of us are nurturers who are great coaches and great it helping unleash others potential but the reality is a great team has all of that but if we bring that difference together there's going to be conflict and the question is whether aware of our own style strengths and needs enough and we accept others in them and we've spent the time building trust where that conflict is constructive or we haven't done that and the conflict is destructive the fourth value is continuous learning and the story i like to tell here is a few years ago i was asked to do a presentation for the green foundation about how we built public allies and i ended up trying some called the worst practices of social entrepreneurship so i figured that there was nothing really valuable they'd learn from our best practices that if i was starting over again what would i do but the first slide in the presentation was called things i suck at and i before sharing our worst practices publicly i shared instincts delegating responsibility making a proper decisions that went on but the thing is i put this list for my staff and i was terrified but you know what happened everyone started nodding and the reason is the things you suck at a secret everybody knows it and you have a choice as a leader you can either own it which invites the possibility you can improve it and talk about it get feedback on it or you don't own in which people still talk about it just not and the fifth and final value is integrity and we look at integrity going back to that notion of that be it's our fundamental ability to recognize that we that our mission and our values that have to be true to that and we have to be accountable those we work with and those we serve and have the courage of our convictions to speak truth to power to speak truth to those we work with and speak truth to those we serve so i think that if we're going to be allied for action i love that title we have to be values based on our leadership and really recognize that values are an important capacity for organizations  leaders positions that can learn from your experience of of admitting all of the weaknesses that we have in front of the people that we serve and that we are working with i also want to say there were three messages that you talked about what is too little unleashed leadership from wherever comes from make sure the table is set in the right way second of all take responsibility i mean we're not going to move anything unless we take our personal and organizational responsibility and then third it's live our values practice our values as deeply as we can thank you for that and now i am so pleased to be joined on the stage by laurie soraya lori is a co founder and the current president of the council on american islamic relations minnesota care minister min through her work with karen millen laurie has striven to promote a better understanding of islam educate the community and employers about legal rights and religious accommodation and give a voice to minnesota muslims please help me welcome this morning thank you lori and lauren will be addressing from the podium and it's heartening so i say actually spent my night watching the n p r debate how many people were able to watch that yesterday r debate on the gay marriage amendment and so i just have to say the word prophecy comes up and a debate about the u s constitution we have a serious problem so that's all i got out of that debate  so care minnesota is the state's only muslims civil rights advocacy and we function on a basic premise and that is that everyone deserves to be treated with and we were just founded five years ago and in those five years we have resolved over five hundred cases of discrimination hate and harassment right here in the state of minnesota and these incentives that we deal with don't just involve minnesota muslims we also get cases from individuals who are perceived muslim so that includes sikhs hi arab christians and other minorit to a little bit about why i do this work so this picture that you see on the screen is actually my family and this is what we look like growing up in southern iowa of all places we lived in a really small town  right on the border of missouri with only eight hundred people and because we were the only muslim family and in fact the only minority family in town we were subjected to a lot of hate and bias the first incident that i remember that involved a hateful act was when i was only six years old so i am actually the serious looking one in the front if you're wondering and so i was probably around that age when this incident happened so we came home it was a typical day we're running errands all day we came home and there was a message on her answering machine and for those of you who are young younger than me you probably don't know what it is your machine is but it's an actual device that was attached to the voice small back so we come home and the red light is blinking and my mom hits the play button to see who had called and it was a hate message this person was screaming and swearing at extremely upset and his main message was that we weren't welcome in this town and that we should leave or else there would be and the way my mom dealt with this was to quickly delete this questions that just weren't answered i refuse to believe that it was just a coincidence just a random prank call and that something serious had happened but no one was doing anything about it and so i lived in fear for several months of this person he knew our name he knew where we lived he knew our phone number and i was worried he would show up to our house and do what he said he was going and so as a six year old the way i dealt with this was to carry around the the way to solve these issues you don't change your situation by living in fear you change it by knowing and asserting your rights so in a way this threatening message that i listen to is such an early age is really what motivated me to start care in minnesota it was the reason that i went to law school it was what motivates me to this day to do the important work so twenty years later you know you would think that things are a lot better but unfortunately they're not things especially after nine eleven for the muslim community in particular have escalated there was a recent poll where americans were asked what comes to mind when they hear the word muslim thirty two percent of americans made a negative comment and only two percent had something positive to say so that's alarming but the good news is that sixty six of the percent of the people had no opinion and so those are the people that my organization seeks to work with and educate and these aren't just individuals that we're dealing with we see bias from entities and news media as well so this lie that you're seeing was actually a news coverage of a local mosque open house this mosque decided they were going to do something proactive and positive and hold this open house and invite their neighbors and you know surf a meal and really have this dialogue with their neighbors and this is the headline that our local news channel chose for this they called it a suicide bomber meeting and it had nothing to do wit going to touch on two of them workplace discrimination is really a big issue that we see forty one percent of the cases that we get care minnesota our employment discover and another issue that we're seeing a real increase then is mosque opposition we've had four separate mosque oppositions in the state in just the past year one of them that gets so serious that the department of justice has now stepped in and launched a formal civil rights investigation and i think what's troubling to me is really who is being targeted by this you know on our care minnesota advisory board we have a woman who served thirteen years in the u s army have a volunteer who served in the u s marines and so these individuals put their lives at risk for this country but when they return home they have to deal with some of this  information and have their faith but their ability to practice their faith challenge one example of the us is the recent bill this actually took place where he recently on march fifth and bill was introduced right here in minnesota in our minnesota senate and this is a bill you probably heard of in the news it's a statewide campaign where seventy two bills have actually been introduced all over the state all over the nation by an anti semitic stream and what they basically do is prevent courts from recognizing muslim marriages divorces and contracts basically outlawing the practice of islam in that state which is a clear violation of the first amendment and but they're still getting passed they're still getting a lot of momentum behind them but what's great about minnesota is that our community and our partners speak up when things like this happen after an interfaith press conference and that's the picture that you see there is probably twice as many people but all kind of fit in the picture so we held up interfaith press conference and three hours after this press conference the author of the bill with  and so what's become a court battle that's going to last several years and other states only took three hours to resolve in our state and it's really led to some positive work we're now working on a state wide minnesota anti hate coalition that's going to address these issues before they come up and not just against muslims but against every minority and so how do we solve these problems specifically in the same community what we do care is to really help our community define themselves and empower themselves we organize recently legislature the first muslim student to mock legislature at the state capitol and talking about bills that concern them such as curfews school nutrition voter id we've organized of free legal clinic that's run by minnesota muslims so we are doing these proactive things but we need your help i know that many of you get a you're here working in the nonprofit community speaking out because you get it you understand that justice is really  but we can't function if all members of our community aren't doing ok and i'll just tell you a quick story a few weeks ago i was playing soccer with my my little son he's only two years old but he's far more th am and so i was playing soccer with him i accidentally tripped and hurt my foot and so i was done for the day after the incident happened you know i had to reschedule all my afternoon meetings i went back to bed i was i couldn't function because of the small injury and so i feel like our community is like that when one part of our body hurts it really affects our entire well being we cannot function if we're not all doing ok and so i want to end a quote from dr martin luther king jr the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy and so i ask you today where do you stand during this time of challenge and controversy and this is why i'm still doing this work this is my little boy and my family so please don't let history keep repeating the itself we've seen this you know with the jewish americans many catholics italians and now it's the muslim community i ask that you speak up that you ask questions being close of support to those that you see that are hurting and help us create a society where my two year old who is a third generation american now doesn't have to deal with this nonsense thank you thank you laurie i'm i'm missing this side of the the view auditorium here so i think i'll stand up and just say that what you've talked to us about today is the fact that minnesota still has deep strategies for discrimination and specifically religious discrimination and religious bigotry and what you talk to us about is that we have muslims in our state in our communities who are experiencing workplace discrimination where communities are organizing against opening mosques and where we've got the bullying and harassment of children that is absolutely unacceptable thank you so much for your comments and for helping us see what's going on in this community so let me also before we open it up to the audience just ask a question here because we've had three wonderful presentations nate you talked about value and eight elements that will speak to that with  morality and justice as part of that paul you've talked about unleashing leadership but also looking at ourselves and seeing not only ourselves as half full but also the weaknesses that we bring and inviting everybody to the table lori you've talked about the fact that we still have a community that doesn't understand and in that fear we are acting against the development and well being of a whole community so let me ask this question to each one of you and i'll start with you laurie this is minnesota this is minnesota nice so we don't like conflict here in minnesota and so we act that out in lots of different ways how could you help us as nonprofits as foundation leaders really put issues on the table in a way that we have deep understanding and that can move us to action y think the minnesota nice concept i think really prevents our prohibits a lot of important dialogue from taking place you know i'm from iowa i was born and raised there and so the culture is all different and i would have people on the street come up to me and ask me well why do you wear that thing on your head you know what about this you know it was just more open and so i think there is that difference here in minnesota where people aren't as open as you know just asking questions even if they look stupid you know it's fine you know we're more conflict doesn't have to mean that we're disagreeable with each other or that we aren't nice i think it just means that we have to speak truth and i think the moment we're doing the dance we're not saying what we really think we devalue whatever we're in and i think that if we're working in a collaborative working on a team of four working in an organization again i think it's one thing to say if we want to be diverse if we want to be inclusive then we have to have space for that difference actually emerge and be confronted nate i'll agree with paul and to add i think it's incredibly important to disagree because of the complexity of what we're going after and it's incredibly important that we're not disagreeable with each other and one of the ways to do that is to attack issues not each other why do we attack each other usually it's out of ignorance it's through a lack of understanding of the importance of this diversity and the one thing i'll add to laurie's comments is that what she spells out is a huge cultural dilemma a huge cultural issue you located it in history you're not the first community to experience this and one way to deal with conflict is to make sure that in addition to the work that we're doing in conflict arenas is simic sure that we don't find herself solely in those arenas as well so one of the things that laurie and i were talking about earlier before was cultural fixes in addition to legal fixes so if you look at what the the show was to racial relations in the one nine hundred ninety s that wasn't a story about a black family that was a story about an american family with a crazy attorney wife and a crazy surgeon father and we all laugh with that show because we saw ourselves in those characters not that they were black it's that they were american i think in addition to all the great work that lori's doing we all need to create an envelop in culture that breaks down that ignorance so we look at someone like lori and say the fact that you wear a headscarf the fact that your muslim is no big deal it's really that you're from iowa you know so thank you ok now we can have the audience and we've got a couple of roving mikes and so it's hard for me to see where those roving mikes are but i would invite people to ask our speakers questions we have do we have any additional questions here come on this is not the shyest group in the world ok we've got a question or a comment we have a question here from morgan from the minnesota fathers and family network oh i'm also from a small town in iowa on the  corded area so well we'll connect later on other comments other questions a way to engage in this conversation let's start modeling we've got one ok let's have this question i'm just trying to see where the person is ye s we have a question from nancy clean men on the board of the minnesota council of nonprofit just a comment that i think that the minnesotans united has come up with the idea of conversations in which really helped to have a lot of people who really differ come together and come to a common understanding and just for the record i want to point out that nancy actually lives on my block up until about seven smaller than a small town nancy i think you're absolutely correct that you know what we've done is we've created it's unfortunate how we got into this space right  because that amendment really i believe is i have a very cynical view about it it's not about that public policy it's about driving politics it's about driving voters but it did force a conversation and one of the silver lining to that amendment is this forced people to get out of their insular thinking it got them in a conversation with the facts that nearly every one of us knows someone in the g o p community or knows someone who knows someone in the  community and through familiarity we can bring break down this device of insularity and political heat but one thing i'll add to that is and this may be controversial  mean i'm i'm personally against the amendment we have the sign in our yard it doesn't matter because our whole neighborhood is orange but regardless of where that law and up the cultural regulation is already being made what sesame street was to my generation glee and modern family are that this generation on this issue the law's a laking indicator that angry politics are there to drive politics societal really weren't good shape and we're getting better every day signs this year i made a decision not to put up political yard signs after i noticed that some of my neighbors on my block didn't talk to me for a year because my signs were different from theirs that i thought that that was unproductive so i making an experiment this year and i feel kind of her oppressed but i wanted to i just wanted to hear from you what you think are those conversations showstoppers they can go first you know it's hard to say so in our yard we actually have conflicting signs and that's ok because we don't as a family we don't always agree you know on everything which is fine no even my extended family you know we don't bring up at thanksgiving politics that's just the general way to some bring it up so you know i don't know that's a difficult question because for me you know i'm willing to engage anyone that has questions because i feel like the people that come to me with any kinds of questions they just they don't know and i'd rather be that person than answers them and sets them on the right path that have them go and look at some international incident to help some understanding my faith and my culture i'm so i don't really i can't think of an example that would be a showstopper for me that i had the experience of having glenn beck say that i run marxist reeducation camps that train impressionable young people to hate america craziness what happened is that a gun club put our home addresses of some of our staff on the web site asked their members to spy on us and we went we contacted with help the club and they shut down this this is it's part of the site that had that but then sent us this apology and one of the people i actually called me and said i want you know we're not all like that and that was some of our more extreme members and i'm embarrassed because of that and i think the lesson in that for me was we somehow we like to paint this thing as all red and blue black and white however we want to do it and the reality is at the end of the day a lot of us are a lot more nuanced than that and that  red state you know we get in the political dynamic right now red states still have for you know four tenth's of people voting blue blue states full of on average four to five almost five tenths i mean and we act like somehow the state that is so c red it must be thinking somewhere in the state that's all blue is one way and the reality is that things are much more mixed than we give it credit for and we have to build relationships that allow us to really confront these issues together and i think we you know again i think we have to be able to disagree without being disagreeable yeah i would again add to that show stoppers usually happen in environments that are built to stop conversation and that's exactly what the red vs blue conversation has turned into we have weaponized our civic conversation that way and as i said earlier it's to the point where we're solution adverse you never hear positive economic news out of the u s chamber you never hear positive environmental news out of the sierra club the other thing that i would add to that though in the yard sign is i think that it's instructive to see how we've changed as well and how we attach ourselves to issues when i corrupt the bumper said you know support our teachers now it's i support teachers live automatically put this into a personal adversarial thing that if you don't support teachers you're not supporting me the more we attach yourself to these outcomes the more we can get into that space if we actually agree on that that that gun club president was did not want to be defined by the ten percent the better off we are as a community we can be actors we can be spectators i prefer to hang out with actors and actors who live in nuance we have some questions up here i've seen some hands can we get a mike up here ok we'll make our way up we have a question from david nicholson with the had watters foundation for justice yeah i was just hoping you'd reflect a little bit we have a amazing leaders in the in the room today and i'm just struck by how the changing demographics in minnesota over the next ten years is going to usher in the new majority and how do we think about power and privilege and sharing that given this new reality of demographics our demographics are destiny and you know something i'm going to attack that issue from a really patient standpoint ok because i think we all agree we i'm pretty confident that we all agree on the more the moral and justice side of that right let's focus for a second on the productivity and compensation side let's be repayed rapacious capitalists for a second ok and the idea is if you want to be relevant to a diverse marketplace you better be diverse yourself because you can respond but if you can't be diverse yourself there's no way for me to respond to you in a way that's authentic so if we really want to be a service oriented society not just business not just faith based not just non profits but if all of us want to produce value for our communities that value is being defined by our community and the more we understand that that community not only has the right to do it but it doesn't even matter if it dead it's happening and you can play into that you can move into that and do it proactively or you can react to it negatively and i'm going to be on the folks who do it in the form or not the latter if the photos on the cover of your annual reports and the photo of your staff and board in the back don't look relatively similar you've got a problem  and and i think that the reason why i talk about it as an action is because i hear a lot of people talk about the ideal and about diversity is something they believe in but it's something you do and there's a simple pass fail exam and so i think that any organization today has to look and i recognize that different communities have different demographics and different different ways but that's why i think you have to ask yourself who is not what groups are at our table what groups are we  do we take calls from different kinds of leaders do we make calls to different kinds of input actively i mean i think there's lots of ways we can look at that but at the end of the day it really is about what we do not what we believe well i would just add to that in addition to bringing diverse people to the table i think we also need to address having diverse leaders in our organization is because i think a lot of times we're still focused having them you know set the table and you know i get this from you know i get asked to be on boards all the time and it's i always feel like it's a token position you know they go here's this muslim woman let's have her be on our board and we'll look diversified  diverse so and that's concerning because they are there are lots of qualified muslims and you know other minorities out there but there really aren't too many minorities in leadership positions in both corporate sector and the nonprofit sector so i would  urge this community to look more at that my organization trusted me i was still a college student is actually a senior in college when i started this organization and so we have a lot of you know young leaders out there that are very capable of leading organizations and they just need that trust and that mentorship and guidance from and i will just add a couple of things because it's a high priority for the minneapolis foundation and that is that we're going to have a tremendous amount of retirement in the next i'd say in the next five to ten years what have we done about creating a pipeline that make sure that diversity is part of that pipeline because when organizations come to me and they often do it's like well what about the latino community what about the african american community what about the native community asian community and it's like well what about your networks how have we included different kinds of people with religious backgrounds with disabilities with different racial backgrounds in the networks that we oftentimes are connecting with because it can't just happen at the time that someone has a position open we have got to be planning for it right now and if we doubt it's a fail it's our failure that we're not going to stay relevant to what's happening in our community so thank you for that question david i think it's something that will come up time and time again next we have a question from jay from for nonprofits we're talking about the necessity of being able to pay all of the conversations that are around controversial issues and conflict in a healthy way i've seen how difficult it is even when it's people face to face to make that conversation productive and  civil but what i'm really concerned about is the prevalence or the ease now with the kind of communications we have now of putting out anonymous messages of anger and hate in even when it's not anonymous when you're communicating with whoever it's easy to put out an angry message and it's degrading the stability of communication just in society and how do we deal with that given that we want to have free speech but yet somehow we need to bring civility to it  we have new technology we tend to weaponize technology before we learn how to figure it out you know the first people to capture fire didn't cook your lunch they put it in your face and that's what we've done with our mass communications we have become the media and you're absolutely right that the anonymity of this media has coarse and the conversation the first way to address that is to identify it as an issue the first cure to a disease is to name it and that's a disease incivility it's a cultural issue again we need a cultural fex how do we fix culture by acting and we act civil and you start and you start taking ownership of your language you know the day that lance armstrong's issue broke there was a ton of twitter traffic most of it generated by retreats some of it was really disgusting testicular cancer jokes things like that and people retreating at people and realized that they actually should be thinking that they own that tweet because that's what every tweet is it's a digital amen i agree with that right and we don't own our language right now until we start owning our language we won't design it for the betterment of all i don't believe it or not i mean i write a lot and i have seen some of the most horrific comments over time i don't believe one is i think the news sources it's irresponsible to allow anonymous come i think people want to say something publicly they should stand behind it and i think that we have to as a culture you know again as you say model that civility i think that especially in our sector we have to demonstrate that we can bring people together i think after this election whichever way it goes there's going to be a moment and i think our sector can really lead feeling and people are hating the polarization the law is the ads and the question is what's going to fill that void because all of a sudden you know all those ads are going to go away people are kind of tired and there's going to resign resolution in th  election and the question is what role can we play to show people that we can bring people together in our communities and in this country to work together productively across difference and i think there's me a hunger for that whichever way it goes  add that i think it's about a lot of times reframing it you know we also see whenever there's a story about muslims in the media we always see you know the nasty comments and sometimes it gets old bad that the you know whether it's a newspaper or t v they'll actually shut off the comments because they just get so bad and that's their decision to do that but i think also just a re framing it and that's what's so important is many of you probably saw the newsweek cover called muslim rage and this was about what is muslim rage to them and i'll just share two of that i thought were really funny so one young girl a young woman tweeted having a great hair day and no one even knows about it to exist and let's not kid ourselves we're not going to get rid of bigots and we're not going to get rid of angry language what we can get rid of is the fact that those folks get to exist in right so the more that we lean into those conversations with better conversation the better off we are the other two thing that i'd like to point out is how important the surgical use of humor is when we can laugh with each other as opposed to laugh at each other humor is an incredibly powerful tool to defuse anger and actually point out the absurdity of of things right unfortunately we're pretty comfortable living in anger we're not as good at living in absurdity and humor is a great way of pointing that out so make ourselves laugh more next we have a question from gene rasmussen people of consulting good morning everyone two quick things first off to step back just to let you know that the university of st thomas has melted cultural forum on workplace diversity which is really a wonderful thing or dissipated and since we are nonprofits you can volunteer and be able to attend at no cost my actual question folds a little bit into this last question how to utilize social media to promote you know civility and gain positive things in the world but also recognizing the digital divide that not everyone can afford smart technology and also in greater minnesotan rule areas there may not be cell phone asked cells or high speed communities but i know that in small towns and big cities and we need to extend it to rural areas that communications but young people don't even use computers and i mean they're texting and they're accessing everything from mobile devices and i do think that as organizations we do have to think about how to use these how to use these technologies a lot better and one thing is just if if all the people in this room started like tweet it immediately about the nonprofit jobs issue it would if thirteen hundred people tweet it finds the you would all automatically rise to the top of twitter right and i don't think we're often strategic about how to kind of blast our information blaster ideas and echo them so that we can really get resonance in the larger culture and i think i think we're still too stuck on like press releases as a way to communicate and we're not thinking enough about how to use blogs how to use social media and other things and you know if that is what that is what it is anyone you know any one of you could create a blog on huffington post and then you could develop your own list of people in your commute can send it to and they can tweet it and then it i mean you know there's a different way to broadcast information and we have to get much better at us as a sector in how to do that and i would just add that so there's many people in our communities that don't even have access t e media i think the immigrant is one area you know the somali community for example a lot of their communication is through word of mouth so whenever my organization issues something you know will do the regular tweet facebook you know press release all of that but then we have to physically go to the leaders the elders in that community and relay that message and so it just knowing those different dynamics of each community are also helpful so your message is getting across the first point that you had mentioned literate on technology but again focusing on the content of the conversation so it doesn't matter whether it's in the twitter view or sorts from you know what is the nature of that and since you open the door i want to put in a little plug since we're about civil discourse on november fifteenth st thomas is sponsoring an event called freedom speech evening on civil discourse go to st thomas forward slash free speech it's going to be a fun crowd and it's going to be full of these stories of how we can lean into a more civil society because as paul said after the election we're going to want to we have ourselves back together that's exactly right do we have one more question and then we'll wrap up here so i marry or have a consulting organization in grand rapids minnesota and i'm just reflecting on paul's glass half full or half empty so we can take the stand being pessimistic and seeing the glass as half empty which is easy to do or we can be optimists and see it as half full hand maybe miss out on some reality or we can be opportunists and while the other two are arguing we can drink it and i think that's what we need to do and as members of this society and leaders and nonprofit organizations be opportunists thank you great comment thank you all right up we're going to wrap up here and i'm going to ask nate to start just give us a couple of words some words of wisdom that this group those of us that are in the nonprofit community can take with us as we leave this conversation but something that we can take action on something that we can give the future of this whole conference is about how do you collaborate for those outcomes so here's my words of wisdom on collaboration it's actually a few things one is in order to collaborate effectively you have to find someone to collaborate with and you need to agree on the absence of a goal that's why laid out those eight things those are good goals you also have to agree that you're going to iterate your way there there's no perfect way of doing it there is no silver bullet what we need is silver  shot we need to be patient with each other and we need to actually fail fast fail cheaply and move forward drink that glass and keep on going every day finally the way to do that is don't be so tied to what you do figure out how you do what you do your skill sets are what you collaborate with don't get shackled by the familiar don't get shackled by what you've been doing in the past this is a world of reinvention it's time for you to start reinventing as well thank you we all came to this work because of our values we all made a choice that we want to devote ourselves to others and so we have to double down on those values today and we have to recognize that other people took chances on us and took risks on us and we have to extend those risks and take chances on others and so we have to dig deeper into our communities and we have to go back to the values and values because it's strategy for breakfast you can have the great organizational plan but we have to build cultures that will engage leaders that's why i recognize i'm from out of town but i will be in back with books after the thing in the back so please feel free to come by if you have other questions for me but it's been a pleasure to be here minnesota  laurie i think the best way to build bridges with other communities is just dialogue know that where it came up a lot to get to know another community so i would really encourage everyone in this crowd just to commit to getting to know a community that you're not really aware of that you may not understand any minority community and i studied abroad in brazil in high school because it was it was something i had never you know learned about and have any family there i a something just even just trying something you know traveling is difficult we were talking about there earlier not everyone has the opportunity to travel and learn about other cultures but we have so many resources right here in minnesota to seek those out care minnesota is always a resource for you and you can definitely feel free to contact us as well i just want to say thank you so much to our three percent and i also before you start clapping i want to say thank you so much to this attentive audience who hung in here and were you were a part of this conversation i hope you you are energized by this and you can take it forward as we go and do our work for the next decade thank you thank you you thank and there's  institutions a lot of the points he made here today thank you for bringing that nate paul schmitz will be signing his book everyone leads in the registration area right out yes so you can buy the