The Community HeroCard™ Program: A Community Thanks Its Volunteers

	for more information… The Minneapolis Foundationn Dianne Lev Director of Programs A200 Foshay Tower 821 Marquette Avenue Minneapolis, MN 55402 dlev@mplsfoundation.org www.mplsfoundation.org
	Photo courtesy of The Community HeroCard™ Program
	Volunteers and merchants are making the Minneapolis area a better place to live through the Community HeroCard™ Program

In the Minneapolis area, more than 1,700 volunteers are earning discounts from merchants as rewards for the good work they do in their community.

The Community HeroCard™ Program is an innovative partnership between The Minneapolis Foundation, Hennepin County (MN), a technology firm, United Way of Minneapolis Area, Minneapolis Promise for Youth, National City Bank, more than 70 area merchants, and dozens of nonprofit organizations and neighborhoods.

Here’s how it works: For each hour an individual volunteers at a participating service organization, he or she earns ten Community Service Dollars (C$Ds), which can be redeemed as discounts at participating shops, movie theaters, restaurants, and other businesses. The discount amount varies from merchant to merchant, but averages 25 percent—a significant and tangible symbol of a community’s thanks to its volunteers.

Advocates in Minneapolis call this the “win-win-win” partnership. Volunteers, mostly youths from tough neighborhoods where resources are scarce and opportunities for earnings limited, are rewarded for their service. Merchants attract customers while contributing to community problem-solving. Nonprofit organizations are able to recruit and retain more volunteers. The ultimate “winners” are the families and neighborhoods who benefit from the volunteers’ efforts.

Finding Innovative Approaches to Community Engagement
The Community HeroCard™ (CHC) Program is about more than rewards. It’s about involving young people and the broader community in addressing their communities’ needs, a guiding principle for The Minneapolis Foundation (TMF).

What distinguishes CHC, says Dianne Lev, TMF’s Director of Programs, is that it recognizes community builders as assets. Take the monthly statements volunteers receive reporting Community Service Dollars earned and used. “It’s an asset statement…a monthly validator for volunteers,” says Lev. Displays identifying merchants as Community HeroCard™ participants are another symbol of community assets, according to Lev.

This “dual currency” system to reward volunteers was the brainchild of Joel Hodroff, founder of Commonweal, Inc., the company developing the technology to track CHC’s thousands of individual voucher accounts and transactions. Where others saw needs and deficiencies, Hodroff saw resources and opportunity.

Hennepin County “was seeking different ways of doing business, working with the community on problem-solving,” recalls Jeanie Cunningham, Volunteer Agency Service Coordinator for Hennepin County Economic Assistance, when it committed staff, leading to CHC’s 1997 pilot. The county is the chief provider of technical assistance to CHC’s participating nonprofits.

TMF’s Contribution: Leadership, Networks, Resources, Convening, Agility and Patience
Community foundations provide “a dynamic intersection between philanthropy and community interests,” according to TMF’s Lev. The Minneapolis Foundation contributed to CHC’s development in different ways, at different stages, initially providing seed funding and actively building ties to other funders and community initiatives. “The single most important action” for the program, according to Kevin Ryan, Commonweal’s president and CEO, came in 1998 when TMF established the Community Hero Fund. The fund removes financial barriers to service organizations’ participation by making funds available to offset the program’s $50 per volunteer participation fee. As an endorsement of the program and a vehicle for contributions from many donors, "TMF’s fund legitimized the program in the community," according to Ryan. The fund also solved a structural dilemma for the program, relieving it of the need to form a new 501(c)(3) organization.

With a grant from the Points of Light Foundation, TMF is testing the model in one neighborhood served by its “Building Better Futures” initiative (BBF). BBF is the foundation’s 10-year, $20 million effort designed to improve the lives of children and families living in seven Minneapolis neighborhoods with child poverty rates greater than 60%.

Lessons Learned: “innovation IS messy.”
While a community foundation is a good place to endorse promising ideas, observes Lev, “It also takes time and staying power.” The charge-ahead style of the entrepreneur may be an unlikely match for the more deliberative ways of a foundation, but Lev believes it’s important to tolerate imperfection: “Don’t be frustrated or impatient with entrepreneurial effort… Creativity and innovation are messy.”