MINNESOTA— St. Paul Youth Services (SPYS) has been awarded $10,000 from the nineth annual Eide Bailly Resourcefullness Awards, which recognize nonprofit organizations for their creative and sustainable revenue generating initiatives across five states – Minnesota, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and North Dakota.
With St. Paul Youth Services’ award-winning YouthPowerMN Nonprofit Training Center, SPYS strives to teach organizations to partner with kids in order to change systems, rather than using systems to change kids. In short, SPYS engages with other nonprofit organization and public agencies to provide their staff and leadership with the skills, knowledge, and tools to create youth-centric policies, programs, and organizational cultures, with a particular focus on equitably serving black youth and youth of color. To enhance the success of these trainings SPYS partners with Black youth to serve as their experts and trainers. These youth are paid a fair wage to conduct the initial analysis pertaining to the need of the organization, adapt SPYS’ curricula to the specific needs, and design and present the training, either virtually or in-person.
To ensure fairness, independent judges who are well-respected in the nonprofit community reviewed and scored finalists. Those Minnesota judges were:
- Ben Cameron, President, Jerome Foundation
- Cecilia Stanton Adams, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, Allianz Life
- Rinal Ray, Chief Executive Officer, People Serving People