Rest Up Awards

Violence Intervention Project will create a custom healing/rejuvenation retreat for leadership and staff of 15. This will also be a chance to strengthen trust and bonds within the team. We understand the difficulty and pressure that staff are under every day dealing with the trauma of those who are fleeing violence. Many of us are survivors and experience vicarious trauma in the direct services work we do. We hope to find a location on a lake close to nature with a variety of healing/rejuvenating/bonding activities. We also would like to provide our executive director with a solo retreat for rest and rejuvenation. All staff are on a 32-hour, 40-hour pay schedule. But our executive director hasn’t been able to switch over to a 32-hour week working long hours, and filling in for staff if needed. She is a calm and steady presence, working tirelessly to manage resources and balance the needs of staff and the people we serve. Funding will be used for retreat costs, staff travel, and temporary resources to staff our emergency shelter and offices.

Rest Up will help Our Justice advance both short-term and long-term initiatives for rest, joy, and healing for the team. First, we will use some of these funds for a staff retreat that would have an emphasis on relaxation and team building. Our Justice is a remote organization, and we would like the opportunity to spend time together in person as a team, especially as we add an additional staff member. Secondly, these funds support our work towards a more robust rest infrastructure as we explore what paid time off for care leave (parental leave, or caring for another loved one) and a sabbatical program. These funds will help us take the next steps in building these programs.

2024 will be a profound year for the Cooperative as it celebrates four years of community liberatory work. 2023 was the first year the founding director was on payroll and the year the Cooperative membership opened for its inaugural cohort! 2024 will be the first year the Wealth Redistribution initiative has ongoing contributions made at a rate of 5% of all incoming organizational revenue. It is with this mentality of celebration that the Cooperative would use these funds to cultivate joy.

Our staff are mission-driven. In this environment where access to abortion health care and gender-affirming health care is under attack, the Rest Up Award will help support our patients who need financial support to access these essential health care services.

The Rest Up Awards will help support our strategic plan to improve the organization’s ability to recruit and maintain staff through the following: provide staff with continuing education and professional development; establish and maintain an annual Continuing Education budget; create at least two team building opportunities for staff such as participation on the Powwow for Hope Two Steppers Team or First Gift Project; and develop partnerships with other American Indian organizations to provide more professional development opportunities on an annual basis

The Rest Up Award will supplement the financial gap for the development of physically safe and inclusive spaces to reach our program goals of (1) increasing housing stability and generational wealth for young BIPOC families, (2) advancing the overall health & well-being of young BIPOC mothers and their children, (3) empowering young BIPOC mothers to reach their full potential, and (4) promoting the healing of young BIPOC families.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, Annie’s House of Refuge & Restoration recently relocated to a smaller home that will need expanding in order to provide the necessary services to meet these goals. The home requires (a) a larger kitchen area that can accommodate all five families, social service workers, and the community to build connections and healthy relationships, (b) a private space for an on-site and overnight caretaker in order to support participant well-being and sobriety, and (c) additional rooms for visitation, programming, and therapy in order to increase self-sufficiency and healing. This larger project will meet the immediate needs of the families who received these services in our previous location and emphasizes DKI’s commitment to safe and innovative solutions for BIPOC family healing and economic stability.

In Sisterhood, We Brunch (ISWB) will spend October 2023 – October 2024 conducting our strategic development and programming stage, building out the ISWB leadership team, expanding our leadership capacity, and working to continue to provide programming that is responsive, reflective, and impactful to the community.

In Sisterhood, We Brunch started during the global pandemic as a response to isolation, a breakdown of communication, and the overwhelming amount of BIPOC leaders and women left to find connection and community virtually. Following our first year of programming, we were able to transition into holding space for community through brunch-style gatherings that focused on: finances, professional development, utilizing your voice in the workplace, defining sisterhood, love and relationship building, and health disparities facing BIPOC women.

Now, we are a fiscally sponsored organization that is going through a leadership transition. We are working to connect with women of color to build out the Planning Committee and will be undergoing a strategic development process to further build out what the future of In Sisterhood, We Brunch looks like. Preparing for 2024, In Sisterhood, We Brunch will develop a strategic development plan, fundraising plan and model, as well as recruit, train, and transition an In Sisterhood, We Brunch volunteer, planning committee to further expand In Sisterhood, We Brunch’s reach and organizational capacity.

Seeds Worth Sowing initially began as a small community effort organized by Minnesota mothers and caregivers as a response after the state murder of George Floyd in 2020. Black & Brown mothers and caregivers have been disproportionately impacted by lack of access to resources resulting from the pandemic. While these inequalities are always present, they were exacerbated by the loss of stores and other vital businesses during the uprising. We provided transportation, delivery services, and holistic gathering spaces. In addition, we gave weekly stipends to families who requested. We continued these efforts into 2021 and became known for being a reliable resource for caregivers and their dependents.

Today, we continue to provide various forms of assistance while developing deeper connections with our families, troubleshooting issues alongside them to improve their lives. Currently, we are operating two programs that support single mothers and caregivers who are low-income. We identify caregivers as anyone primarily responsible for vulnerable people (children, elders, disabled folks, etc.).

Hanna will work with a consultant to develop a plan to identify and integrate care and healing activities into the regular rhythm of the organization. There are many ways we want to get input from our staff. Hanna will work with the consultant to plan regular, self-sustaining meetings or retreats for Black executive directors to connect and support mutual growth.

In addition, Hanna would like to create a recognition plan to acknowledge employees who bring positivity and joy to the workplace. This funding would help us invest in creating and maintaining a workplace culture that fosters rest, fun and joy.

The Rest Up Award will provide an opportunity for our team of 12 to rest, revive, remember, and resist. Our team is tired, they are ravished by hearing and seeing pain, despair and disrespect of Black bodies and souls. There is very little difference between those they care for and their own lives. Therefore, the lines get blurred, and restoration is vital to well-being. We need to rest in spaces and places of beauty and nourishment. When we rest, we revive our souls spiritually and our bodies are knitted back together — we flow in harmony and love energy. We remember that boundaries are sacred tools for well-being as well as remember our purpose and calling.
When we are compounded by the reality of our intersectional lives, we become displaced, and fearful. Fear takes over, and especially fear of lack, and we lose focus. When we pause to remember, we can join ourselves as well as the community renewed and relaxed. We must also remember all of our tools and assets and not just our deficits. And then we must resist objectification of any and all types! We are not objects, we are subjects of Black communal love and awareness. Exhaustion can lead to objectification, because when we are exhausted, we sometimes are just too weary to fight for our well-being on all levels. We are warriors of the light and cannot succumb to even the internal objectification that plagues our community.

Rest Up funds will support self-care for staff, including but not limited to staff retreats in nature, workshops with experts in trauma-informed techniques for coping with past trauma (tapping, writing to wholeness, etc.), connecting with holistic healthcare such as a postural physical therapist or ergonomic specialist, hosting a spa day with therapeutic massage, and/or host a family and friends celebration with music and wonderful food to recognize everyone’s hard work and contributions.

Together, we provide a safe, warm, friendly space for people who have been traumatized and violated. And, when we go home, we provide safe, warm, friendly spaces for our loved ones. While our work is rewarding, it has taken a toll on our collective emotional and physical well-being. Many of us are overextended to the detriment of our health. Thankfully, we are a close-knit team and have each other as sounding boards and for commiseration. However, the opportunity to support staff care, joy, and healing is an enormous gift.

We have long hoped to purchase exercise equipment for our shelter. We could also upgrade our staff appliances, such as coffeemaker and microwave, and other extras that we pay for out-of-pocket (fancy tea, refreshments for meetings). Rest Up funds can sponsor a half-day or day-long retreat for our team to enjoy each other’s company.

During a winter sabbatical, I plan to participate in a multi-week writing retreat, where I will write about Esperanza’s unique approach to gender-based violence work, our theory of change, leadership development for Latin@ nonprofit leaders, and other reflections on my 20-year tenure with the organization. In addition, a portion of the Rest Up Award will support a series of creative arts workshops for our staff. We believe in the power of storytelling to create joyful connections across and throughout our staff. This series of workshops will allow staff located across the country to come together to tell their stories of their work at Esperanza United. Our commitment to listening to and working within our communities extends to our staff programming. Workshop topics will be proposed by staff members, and we will draw on their combined knowledge to identify culturally specific service providers and workshop leaders.

We hope all our efforts affirm the inherent magic, gifts, and strengths of Latina women and girls and uplift the leadership and vibrancy that already exists within Latin@ communities. And if we are truly animating our vision and actualizing our mission, then we will have intentionally catalyzed community-led innovation, action, and movement toward equity, justice, and thriving. So much of our innovation and impact rests in the essence of who we are and how we do our work. It would be meaningful if I could reflect more spaciously on this during my sabbatical, as well as support intentional and creative organizational community building.

Ain Dah Yung will continue to focus on health and wellness with purpose and integrating our cultural and traditional values, and humanness into our everyday experience in response to the critical needs of our youth and families – recognizing that when they experience difficulty and trauma, that we too experience and need to care for the secondary trauma in a good way. The Rest Up Award provides unique opportunities to truly reinvigorate focus and ensure our staff feel the commitment of prioritizing health and wellness. Allowing our staff to experience health and wellness on their terms, not dictated by how leadership or society define it is first and foremost. Dedicating funds to be used through the year as needs and trends continue to emerge for our staff would be the most impactful and developed in response to the voices of our dedicated and passionate staff.

Funds will support a monthly relaxation activity that the whole team can enjoy and look forward to, and an annual activity. In a monthly Field Day exercise, staff can spend time together, share a meal, learn some self-care exercises/activities from experts in the field – like meditation, yoga, stress management, diet and proper nutrition, breathing/deep breathing exercises, etc., concluded by a one- to two-hour walk around any of our Twin City lakes like Bde Maka Ska or other sites proposed by staff members. My hope is that sharing a meal and taking a long walk after will accomplish several things that improve our well-being – exercise, instill camaraderie, an appreciation of the environment, and a sense of well-being.

The second is a one-time activity that involves attending a weekend retreat away from work and home, hopefully away from the Twin Cities. The impact of the retreat will be long-lasting as we will also continue to practice what we learn at the retreat.

We have been very intentional in the past few years to create a working environment that not only cultivates creativity, but one that cultivates healing and wellness. This has been done through both individual and organizational practices. We have implemented a 32-hour work week, and continue a practice of connecting human to human, at the start of each day. We have held staff retreats, where we have attended equine therapy together, and also done mixed martial arts, and even a retreat on the beach in North Carolina.

Another practice that we have done, when we have the funding, is to provide funding for each staff person to spend for their joy, wellness, and healing. Our staff have done things like taking a cake-decorating class, buying running gear and signing up for a marathon, attending a writing retreat, signing up for fitness classes, and more. I plan to use these funds to continue with this practice of providing funds for people to determine their own plan for wellness and joy. The Indigenous leaders in our organization do so much for the community and deserve time and resources to invest in themselves.

Rest Up funds will support a management retreat, staff wellness baskets, a team trip, and an upgrade to our on-site recharge room, a designated quiet space where staff can take some time to recharge through aromatherapy, stress relief tools, yoga, and rest.

MAP has evolved with an understanding that our efforts to address intersectional oppression and violence are inseparable from a deep practice of generating interconnected thriving in community. As a result, healing, wholeness, care, joy, storytelling, and spirit are central to our mission. This deepening understanding, however, comes with a steady flow of realizations that healing and wholeness are needed badly for those of us within our organization—just as it is for people outside of the organization. Our communities are badly in need of healing, and we are in and of the community. I am in and of the community, and am longing for the space, time, and resources to heal and nourish my own spirit as I nourish my community.

I am many things all at once. Native woman. Single mother. Singer. Drummer. Executive director. Descendent and ancestor to this people and place. Survivor of many forms of violence. Community healer. Artist. Poet. Storyteller. I love the many ways each of these identities, experiences, and gifts come together to support community. At the same time, I am exhausted, depleted of resources, and grieving from consistently giving faster than I can resource myself. I am not alone. This is a common condition for people who serve community—with particularly intense needs for marginalized leaders. My organization is full of diverse and brilliant people who, even as they do amazing things in community, are longing to grieve, heal, and nourish their own spirits. It is a critical need of our time.

As we work endless hours to address the needs of community, taking time out for self-healing is much needed for our team. I would like to reward myself and workers for our hard work and learn some essential healing processes for us to bring back as well.

Change Starts with Community will implement a comprehensive plan for the executive director and team members that will allow the entire team to experience improved well-being, strengthened team cohesion, and enhanced coping skills. The focus on care, joy, and healing will foster a supportive environment that aligns with Change Starts with Community’s mission of providing safety, healing, and empowerment to women and girls in North Minneapolis. To enhance the well-being, positivity, and resilience, and create a sense of community among the executive director and team of five, the plan includes a cash bonus, monthly joyful activities, and an individual wellness allowance. Overall, this will cultivate, and empower a team ready to continue impactful safety and violence prevention work in the community.

The Minneapolis NAACP is one of the branches that maintains the missions and intent of the National Organization. We do this through the many volunteers that have a passion for human life and the equalities that should be provided for them. Our branch is made up of an executive board, president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer. In addition is our committee chairs, that are the boots on the ground and our frontline workers. These volunteers are the key to the success of our local branch. Rest Up will support continued activities of committees for political action, criminal justice, education, housing, health/wellness, labor/economic, family/child welfare, and youth/college.

Rest Up will create an opportunity for Dr. Tyner and the team to connect to our cultural roots and heritage by taking a healing journey to Ghana with the goal in mind of soul rejuvenation. This would not only create joy and healing but the space and time to expand our leadership skills through new experiences and connections with other African women leaders who are making a difference in their communities through the power of the arts and humanities. This aligns with our mission and will serve as a source of inspiration for our personal growth and the sustainability of our organization.

This enrichment will help the team to gain the insights to lead change, inspire others, and build sustainable solutions to these longstanding gender and racial justice issues through a community-centric and culturally specific lens.

Rest Up will help provide learning opportunities for staff, time for looking ahead at changing circumstances, and future planning for transition of key staff, and to reward ourselves with some relaxation activities.

What does it look like for a social change leader to be holistically supported as they enter motherhood? How can organizations engage in maternity leave that leaves both the leader and the organization well? How can we create an environment supportive of mothers in the postpartum phase as they return to work and leading in a radically different manner? These are the questions I would like to explore and answer with this grant award.

On this journey, the organization and I will be rooted in Black cultural practices that centers motherhood and mothers as a vital part of community wellness. Too often, especially in recent years, it looks like Black women and gender-expansive people hurting in order to nurture the family and community. Research and firsthand experience have shown that this is not sustainable, nor does it get us closer to the new world we are building. I hope to take the organization I am leading and the field we are influencing to cultivate care, joy, and healing for every one of us.

Our amazing Latina women-led team of four has been tirelessly working on both building and sustaining our growth. Our team would deeply benefit from an opportunity to focus on team building and culturally specific access to healing practices. Specifically, we would like to attend a Latina Wellness Retreat as a team, which will give us an opportunity to pause and recenter our personal relationships as hermanas (sisters) in this space. It is vital that we fill our spiritual and wellness tanks as we connect deeper to our cultural practices.

In addition, part of our care consists of ensuring that we are feeling inspired and constantly reminded of our greatness as mujeres and leaders. The WeAllGrow Summit: Sanctuary of Joy is a three-day sisterhood empowerment retreat rooted in radical Latina joy, leadership, and transformation. It is crucial for our development to ensure we are connecting ourselves with sisters at the national level; expanding our network for support, guidance, and camaraderie – which benefits us as a team and the larger network of Minnesota Latinx.

Finally, to continue to engage in the practice of healing, joy, and care, we plan to operationalize these practices within our team. We hope to partner with current partners, such as DEED, to review our care practices to support us in implementing new and culturally relevant organizational norms of wellness in the workplace.

Rest Up funds will support staff development and wellness, organizational development, and leadership development. To boost organizational growth, Ethelind will use Rest UP funds for coaching and development opportunities. Executive coaching will provide strategies to navigate biases and develop greater self-awareness, confidence, and negotiation techniques to effectively advocate for herself and her ideas. Coaching also offers personalized support and specific tools to counteract internal struggles and dialogues (i.e., being a Black woman and immigrant in places of power, fostering and maintaining emotional well-being despite adversity, etc.).

Rest Up funds will also enable the team to complete supplemental training or coaching that enhances their skills, such as leadership development and communication workshops, and fund conference attendance relevant to the staff person’s current role and career aspirations. Funds will also support wellness workshops for staff and help invest in health-related resources.

Each day, the team at Centro pours their heart into their work, helping to ensure that every single struggling member of our community receives the resources necessary to change the scarcity narrative. We must also remember that our staff members are part of the same community. We recognize that the well-being of our organization is dependent on the well-being of our staff. Centro Tyrone Guzman has recently taken steps to enhance employee benefits, such as adding a 401K account. The Rest Up Award will help establish an internal employee assistance fund the inaugural five scholarship awards ($2,000 each).: The Roxana Linares Legacy Scholarship Fund, in honor of the organization’s previous executive director.

The Roxana Linares Legacy Scholarship Fund would be a way to continue building on this work – while also honoring someone who created a legacy of humility and giving for our community.

As a retreat center, we are called to invest in the well-being of our community members. In this same spirit, each staff member receives an annual well-being stipend to use at their discretion. This is not a reimbursement policy, rather, a total annual stipend paid directly to employees on an annual basis. Much of what we do at Rootsprings is offering rest and respite to sustain BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities living on the front lines of discrimination. These stipends are essential for ensuring we are sustaining ourselves internally by investing in the well-being of our staff.

We believe in listening to Black women when they tell us what they need to sustain their souls in this work. So many of us have been underpaid, overworked, and traumatized throughout our professional careers. These stipends aim to embody liberation and freedom from surveillance. Rest Up will cover the majority of our staff’s FY24 well-being stipends, which allows us to ensure that our staff members have funds to support their personal restoration needs. Supporting staff members is a new endeavor for our organization. These well-being stipends recognize the unpaid labor our staff experience every day as Black women and offers a financial contribution towards restoring their spirits.

It’s certainly not enough. Black women deserve so much more. We deserve systems free from heteronormative patriarchal capitalism, systems steeped in honoring our whole selves. This is just our beginning; we hope you’ll join us here by investing in the care, joy, and healing of Black women.

The Rest Up Award will be used to support two key areas of care for ourselves as leaders and for our team. First, we will invest in holistic training for our board and staff on human resources and communications to create a shared foundation for the organization to grow and operate in the spirit of transparency and accountability to our team. Over the last year, we have put in place a deliberate, thoughtful approach to leadership and management at SEAD and we want to ensure that we have the processes and infrastructure to sustain that. For too many nonprofits, including ourselves in the past, doing the work in our communities can sometimes gain so much priority that we don’t adequately invest in our own internal work cultures and work protections. We instead want SEAD to be a place where staff are cared for and care for each other, have access to the information and resources they need to be part of a healthy and thriving workplace, and have accountability structures in place at all levels of the organization to maintaining our workplace.

Second, funds will be used for our annual staff retreat. The retreat is a chance for our team to purposefully engage in listening, building safety and trust, envisioning the coming year for the organization together, and creating joy together.

At MN8, we recognize that our most valuable asset and resource is our staff. As people who identify as refugees or children of refugees, our staff members also come to this work through crisis and carry a lot of trauma from their lived experiences. We are investing time, energy, and resources into building infrastructure that supports sustainable initiatives around staff engagement and wellness.

For the last year, we have been intentional about co-creating a human-centered, engaging, and joyful work environment with staff. We want to explore and implement policies and practices that account for the human experience, such as leave for traumatic life events, expanding “immediate family” to include pets, hosting a staff retreat centered on joy and wellness, incorporating consistent staff feedback and input, and much more. Our vision is that these important conversations and changes will make MN8’s movement space one that is sustainable, centers the holistic health of our staff, and reflects the values of our mission. When our staff and internal infrastructure is cared for, our capacity is increased, and our programs also flourish. We are committed to ending the cycles of survival, scarcity, and fear that have long existed in our communities through this effort.

Funds will be used for two ongoing leadership and staff well-being initiatives: self-care resources, which include Self-Care Start Packages and funds for staff to support self-directed self-care, including time off for radical self-care, a wellness activity. In past years staff have used funds to enroll in a one-day sport competition in an activity that brings them joy, or a community workshop on mindfulness; or a wellness resource, such as books, workbooks, or other tangible materials.

We at CLUES, a Latino-led and Latino-focused organization, have been a part of this community for over 40 years. Our staff, particularly our leadership, and behavioral health staff, worked through the pandemic, and faced stressors that no one was equipped to handle. Our staff is largely women, mostly Latina, and by the nature of our work in the nonprofit field, we are caregivers. However, there were many times when set aside our own needs to take on the more immediate needs of others during the long-drawn-out crisis of COVID. We want to have a two-day facilitate session that is healing-centered and Latino-specific, where we can come together to be vulnerable and to process. We will culminate by creating traditional artwork, that will memorialize our collective journey of resiliency through COVID. Funds will be used to hire an outside facilitator and for materials.

Cultivate care, joy, and healing sounds like a gift from heaven. The work of changing systems and social structure can be at times lonely, overwhelming and upward struggle with all the challenges along the way. This grant can be a perfect opportunity to pause, rest up, recharge and reflect on the path forward.

Rest Up will help provide a sabbatical for Kelly to use this time to reflect and vision for MIGIZI future following five years of leading MIGIZI through two building projects, two capital campaigns, COVID, and the devastating loss of our building in the civil unrest in May 2020. The Rest Up Award will also support a two-day staff retreat for team building, learning, reflection and rejuvenation as we launch into a new space and strategic vision for MIGIZI following our transition in space, programming and opportunity. We want to connect with our staff by providing some respite and care outside of our urban dwellings. Connecting with each other in nature will provide the type of rest and rejuvenation our staff need.

Rest UP funds will be used for Project DIVA International programming. Our solution across all our academies, clubs and wrap around services has been and continues to be to provide Black girls with the time, space, and tools needed to accomplish their self-identified visions and goals. This is done by introducing participants to our customized I AM curriculum, the ‘I Align Me’ method. The I AM curriculum is a mix of lived and professional experiences intertwined with cognitive behavioral science which seeks to expand each girl’s mind toward reaching her visions and goals and financially sustaining them.

The board has always dreamed about taking our Hmong Women’s Leadership Institute (HWLI) throughout the U.S. and even worldwide but has not had the financial means to explore this avenue. We would like to be able to create a plug-and-play HWLI that can be used all over the U.S. and possibly even in Thailand and Laos, where large Hmong populations live.

Our board is an all-volunteer board of Hmong women. The board members work full time and/or have families and do this passion work in their spare time. We would like to provide formal training for board members on governance, fundraising, grant writing, and other areas to propel our mission. We also realize the time commitment the board puts into the organization and would like to host a relaxing retreat where the board can not only plan and strategize but remember to indulge in self-care.

I think as community workers, we need grieve and build together in ways we feel comfortable and safe, because we’ve been isolated for so long that the human connection and support feels like a distant memory. Even when we’ve been isolated with people… most times we don’t know how to talk about the traumas of the pandemic. I am hoping with this funding that this can help me achieve this for my team and myself, because when I have supported team, I can truly lead affectively and feel that I’m continuing to build on our vision of sustainable leadership for AAOP.

Women Who Influence plan on using this fund for growth and expansion of their services by supporting our operation team in office Supplies, improve our services, update our technology, marketing and professional development for professional staff.

Through purposeful off-site team-building activities, we’ve identified what our staff values to forge a personal connection with the organization: a sense of community and a common mission. We will offer our staff a variety of experiences, from outings like our bowling day to restorative self-care activities to outdoor adventures at our Camp Katharine Parsons, a majestic 106-acre property on the edge of the Twin Cities that was donated to PWCC in 1956 and is now undergoing construction to reopen it to youth from our Northside neighborhoods, or doing personality type tests to give staff members self-awareness and to better understand one another and be able to work together in a healthy, productive way, and give them motivation and excitement about coming in to work every day. By building bonds and creating understanding on an individual level, people begin to see what makes each of us tick — and offers insight into have to best work together.

My Executive Team and I are taking care of so many I am concerned about our physical and mental health and well-being. The Rest Up Award allows me the resources to take care of my Executive Team and finally be able to allocate intentional time to cultivate care, joy, and healing. Funds will bring in a self-care coach to coach us in setting healthy boundaries, provide tools and strategies on physical, mental, and emotional self-care and transformation; ultimately, to build stamina for the long game as executive leaders. We recognize that it is time to take care of ourselves in order to continue caring for those who depend on us: our communities, our employees, and our families and friends.