About Us

Co-Stewards: Brett Buckner, Dr. Bruce Corrie, Jane Leonard

We are a unique, statewide, multi-ethnic network of people and organizations working to build wealth in the ALANA communities and connecting individuals and organizations to key resources.

We launched as a response to the deep crises experienced by the ALANA communities during the pandemic and civil unrest, building on the work of OneMN.org, Growth & Justice and EmpoweringStrategies.org.

We elevated a core policy idea – that we need to offer a new economic playbook to address racial economic disparities - The Minnesota Solution, which is a comprehensive set of strategies to build the economic and wealth building assets of the ALANA communities – from equity pools and capital funds to land trusts. These ideas were incorporated into the Minnesota House Select Committee on Racial Justice. In the current legislative session, Dr. Bruce Corrie, of the ABT, was invited by the Chairs of 5 very powerful committees to share these ideas with committee members and provide a rationale for this strategy. The Nonprofit Quarterly, recently published an article by Dr. Corrie on this effective strategy to a national audience. The Saint Paul Pioneer Press published an article on the need for a comprehensive wealth building strategy for the ALANA communities.

We engaged with core institutions in Minnesota – The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Governor’s Office, DEED, Congressional Representatives, SBA and other groups on the need and importance to build the economic development infrastructure of the ALANA communities and to do so in a large enough scale and with new instruments. Ideas proposed were changing the charter of the Federal Reserve Bank to be the lender of the last community resort and back a billion dollar bond fund; a 100 million loan guarantee fund backed by the State of Minnesota; and redirecting PPP funds of the SBA towards ALANA entrepreneurs in effective ways.

We convened a state wide ALANA Brain Trust of highly leveraged people across Minnesota including the Minnesota Initiative Funds, the regional development commissions, and a wide range of individuals and groups and continue to work with this group to offer a multiethnic economic development vision and policies for Minnesota.

To address the barriers to capital experienced that ALANA entrepreneurs faced we assembled an alliance of 8 banks and 3 nonprofit lenders and piloted a model around the second round of the PPP forgivable loan program. 58 ALANA businesses requested our assistance in connecting them to a lender – which we did. Many of these businesses were connected to banks or lenders primarily through our intervention and follow up.

We coordinated a group of 40+ neighborhood organizations to build community and bring resources to people negatively impacted by both Covid and the civil unrest.

We invested in an economic impact model from IMPLAN which we call the ALANA Brain Trust IMPLAN Economic model as a tool to assess the economic impact of investments in the ALANA communities. We used this model to offer testimony at the state legislature on the needs for comprehensive wealth building investments and to support proposals from the Philando Castille Bill to the cultural investments requested by the newest refugee community in Minnesota – the Karen. We also used the model to counter the strong notion in the legislature that funding ALANA proposals is a zero sum game, by illustrating how all of Minnesota will benefit through these investments.

We leveraged our networks to convene a statewide alliance for ALANA youth that applied and received over $600,000 in grants. We submitted a proposal and was awarded a grant that helped us convene a statewide group of 100 + youth from 30 cities and 60 schools – the Better Community Initiative. Apart from supporting the development of their ideas to improve their communities, we also connected them top policy officials. A core group of youth continue to work with us as we integrate them into our ACT activities.

We have connected businesses to capital and business services, youth to policy makers, public grant programs to ALANA communities, community needs to top policy officials.

Contacts: Jane Leonard - Jane@growthandjustice.org, Brett Buckner - brett1mn@gmail.com, Bruce Corrie - brucecorrie@gmail.com