Build Back Better

United Way of Olmsted County recognizes equity as a core value that is critical in achieving our mission. We value the intentional inclusion of everyone in our community. We strive to dismantle systemic, institutional, and historical barriers based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and other identities so they no longer determine socioeconomic, education, and health outcomes. That's why we're investing in Olmsted County's diverse cultural communities by strengthening the organizations that serve them. One of our key strategies to Build Back Better is to provide financial and technical support to organizations that serve and are led by people from historically marginalized communities within Olmsted County.

Launched in July of 2021, United Way of Olmsted County’s Culturally Powered Communities is a multi-layered capacity building program designed to strengthen the education, health, and financial stability of Olmsted County’s cultural communities by strengthening the organizations that serve them. 

Culturally Powered Communities takes a transformational approach to supporting organizations in achieving their goals for growth. Transformational capacity building is relationship-focused, culturally relevant, flexible, and mission-centered. It cultivates networks, changes systems, and invests in people so that organizations have the resources to grow their capacities in multiple areas over time. Inspired by the values of trust-based philanthropy, we seek to equalize power with communities and community-based organizations.

Culturally Powered Communities provides four types of benefits to support culturally specific organizations in achieving their missions and mainstream organizations in achieving their equity goals. Those areas are:

• Financial support
• Peer learning
• Organizational and executive development
• Strengthening networks

The core values of the Culturally Powered Communities program include:

• Antiracism and equity require actively dismantling systemic and institutional barriers that uphold racism, xenophobia, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia
• Relationships are at the heart of the work we do together
• One size does not fit all when it comes to capacity building, and organizations know best how to invest their resources to meet their missions
• Communities hold the solutions to the challenges they face
• Transparent and open communication.

Read on to learn more about some of our investments to Build Back Better for a more equitable Olmsted County.