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East Phillips Improvement Coalition (EPIC) and the Midtown Phillips Neighborhood Association (MPNAI) are exploring a merger to strengthen our resources in service to the community. By joining forces, we can do more for the people who live, work and visit our great neighborhoods. Learn more below and make plans to get involved!
Get Involved:
What's A Neighborhood?
A neighborhood is the place where each of us live, work, and play. It's where life, community, and connections happen.
The City of Minneapolis has named and defined the boundaries for the 83 Minneapolis neighborhoods, which are served by 70 different organizations.
EPIC + MPNAI Merger
The East Phillips Improvement Coalition (EPIC) and the Midtown Phillips Neighborhood Association (MPNAI) are the connective tissue between organizations and residents in Phillips. We provide resources, funding, and organizing with and to our residents!
We believe that a merger between EPIC and MPNAI would drastically increase our ability to serve you by decreasing our administrative costs and growing our staff capacity to apply for additional funding and ultimately reach more neighbors.
Phased Plan
In order to thoughtfully test out our partnership and get community feedback,
we've developed a phased approach.
Resources & Updates
See the changes to the bylaws that would occur:
Please update your communication preferences to ensure you don’t miss a thing (including voting links!).
Additional documents:
- Letters from staff/board members (forthcoming)
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Have other neighborhood organizations done this?
A. Yes! Here are a couple examples of other neighborhoods served by one organization:
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Beltrami and Northeast Park neighborhoods, now jointly served by Lower Northeast Neighborhood Association
Q. Wait…does this mean there won’t be an East Phillips or Midtown Phillips?
A. No! East Phillips and Midtown Phillips will still be their own neighborhoods. This potential merger is about the neighborhood organizations merging, not the neighborhoods themselves. There will still be an East Phillips and a Midtown Phillips, but if we merge then there will be one neighborhood organization serving both neighborhoods. This will allow the neighborhood organizations to share resources and focus more energy on serving our neighborhoods.
Q. Will city funding increase with more community outreach? Why can’t we afford to do things like we did before?
A. No, funding from the City is based on neighborhood demographics. See more information here.
In the past, EPIC and MPNAI were volunteer run and most funding went directly to partner organizations. In recent years, maintaining the minimum requirements for operating a 501c3 non-profit has become less manageable by a volunteer board of directors. Additionally, unlike in the past, partner organizations now get funded directly from the City of Minneapolis through the Partnership Engagement Fund (in part inspired by the strong partnerships MPNAI developed over the years). MPNAI used to channel its city funding to partner organizations, but now these organizations must apply directly with the City.
Q. Are the organizations for the neighborhoods of Phillips West and Ventura Village also merging?
A. No, only EPIC and MPNAI have agreed to pursue a merger conversation with their organizations. EPIC, MPNAI, PWNO, and VV do collaborate on things like Phillips Clean Sweep. Aside from EPIC and MPNAI, no other mergers are planned. PWNO, EPIC, and MPNAI are discussing a programming collaborative, but are not working on a corporate merger.
Q. Where did this idea come from?
A. In October of 2022 MPNAI began having internal conversations about joining forces with EPIC. In February, 2023 they initiated a connection with EPIC to further pursue that idea. This is what lead to the MPNAI-EPIC Staff Collaborative that has brought new energy into our neighborhood organizing.
Q. This is feeling fast! What’s the urgency?
A. We understand this may feel fast! But this is a conversation that started in October of 2022 and the boards and staff of the neighborhood organizations have been working towards this potential merger since then. [Midtown annual meeting last year, feels fast now that we’re closer to the end]. We are eager to move this process forward so that staff and board members can focus on the work of bringing neighbors together towards our shared vision and mission.
Q. How will we ensure that each neighborhood will be invested in equitably with resources and outreach?
A. This question is core to our commitments to work towards equitable engagement towards the diverse communities of our Phillips neighborhoods. In addition to ensuring both Midtown Phillips and East Phillips residents are being served by the neighborhood organization's activities, we believe it is the responsibility of the board(s) and staff to regularly assess and evaluate who is and who is not being represented, because there are many classes of people and communities that often get overlooked (e.g. housing status, various ethnic and language communities, age, ability/disability, etc.). When we do better outreach to the Spanish-speaking community in our neighborhood, we are serving residents on both sides of Bloomington Ave at the same time.