GMCC

We maintain our longstanding mission of "uniting people of faith, serving people in need" while envisioning a community in which everyone has equal access to resources necessary to live healthy, fulfilling lives. To better support this vision, GMCC is transitioning from an organization focused primarily on charity-based work to more comprehensively and thoughtfully tackling social inequities through systems change.

Through increased communication, we enhance existing partnerships and build interfaith partnerships so that we can increase awareness and engagement around common areas of interest. We mobilize people to improve their communities by influencing attitudes and changing conditions through service to others.

Focus efforts on areas of strength and expertise and update systems to ensure a sustainable annual operating budget.

Re-invent the Board of Directors to have a fully engaged Board that taps into the relationships, skills and abilities of the individual members to improve our ability to meet programmatic and organizational goals.

Engage member congregations and other faith communities in achieving our goals.

Develop more effective avenues of communication with our faith partners.

Develop clear and compelling messaging around the impact of GMCC and a strategy to better disseminate that message through traditional and emerging channels.

Strengthen our existing Minnesota FoodShare relationships to become more effective on issues of food access and then build on these relationships to include effective advocacy in other goal areas.

Assess the current state and utilization of our physical assets, including buildings, vehicles, computers and other technological equipment, and develop a plan for their highest and best use.

Assess and adjust our current staff capacity with an emphasis on fundraising and administration across the entire organization.

We transitioned from Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches to Greater Minneapolis Community Connections, in part because our role as an official congregational membership organization ended years ago but also because it reflects our transition to a more inclusive, interfaith organization. We hired a permanent Executive Director; focused in on strengthening and growing our three most impactful programs; and finalized an official separation from DIW (Division of Indian Work) to support the transition of what was once a program of GMCC into a completely independent, native-run organization.

Moving forward, we are focused on strengthening and expanding our services through Kinship (ensuring young people have quality mentors), Urban Immersions (offering training on the realities of poverty, privilege, and structural injustice and providing the tools to take action towards change), and Minnesota FoodShare (addressing food insecurity and supporting food shelves around Minnesota). In late 2019, we launched a community needs assessment and strategic planning process to ensure we are leveraging our core competencies in advocacy, education, service-learning, and mentoring as well as our strong history to make the most significant impact in furthering equity and inclusion.