Smartlink >> Where Donors Go For Great Ideas: Making communities greater than sum of parts

In this A Few Words With, SmartLink speaks with Repa Mekha, executive director of Nexus Community Partners  in the Twin Cities, MN, about community engagement and asset building. Formerly known as Payne Lake Community partners, Nexus Community Partners connects cultural communities of color and immigrant communities to the economic, political and educational mainstream, while pushing for investment and revitalization along two aging commercial corridors in St. Paul and Minneapolis.

As neighborhoods changed, so too did the organization's strategy and geographical focus. In 2009, after two years spent re-focusing and sharpening its mission, the organization changed its name to Nexus, becoming a community-building specialist that supports “inclusive, place-based community building initiatives that expand community assets, build social and human capital, and result in more powerful and engaged communities.” 

To accomplish this, Nexus brings together community residents and leaders from different cultures and acts as a mediator between them and the mainstream funders and developers most suited to help. It promotes community outreach and engagement while setting up model asset-building initiatives in the areas of workforce development, homeownership, entrepreneurship, education, and financial literacy. 

SmartLink: The year 2009 saw many significant changes for Nexus. You not only changed your name, you also changed your organization’s identity and raison d’être. Can you explain how and why your focus shifted?

Repa Mekha: In the Twin Cities area, we’ve historically always had a very strong community development infrastructure. But there are a large number of people who don’t benefit from that structure. Part of this breakthrough was that we began to see ourselves as a community-building initiative: as one side of a two-sided coin that gets at equitable, sustainable community revitalization. On one side is community building and on the other side is community development. We see both of those as being critical aspects of creating healthy communities. Community building, for us, is really about tapping, at a lower level, the human, social and cultural capital that we know live in these communities. By finding ways to bend systems downward while building people up, they become within reach and more accessible. 

We think of it like bending a rod at the ends, causing it to bow and making the ends dip.  Gaining access to the ends creates opportunities to work toward the middle. At the very same time that we were trying to find ourselves, we were creating a niche and operating in a niche where there weren’t other partners that were like us.

SmartLink: How did community engagement influence the way Nexus convenes?

Repa Mekha: When we took on community engagement as central to our work, we saw it as a framework for how we engage in communities. So it wasn’t just a kind of grant-making area;  it really shaped the way we approached communities. Convening people came naturally out of that.

SmartLink: Nexus plays a significant networking and convening role, which sometimes can make an organization seem mysterious or less "direct service" and substantive than others. Can you discuss the importance of organizations that make all the puzzle pieces fit together, in your role as leaders collaborating with community groups?

Repa Mekha: Nexus works closely with its partner grantees, on the ground, in real time. We also have the privilege and the ability to go to the balcony. And from the balcony, we can see things that they can’t see. We can see potential connections; we can see potential partnerships, we can see when things might be headed towards alignment or not. So part of what our role has been is to convene: to bring people together around what might become an interest and opportunity, and begin the conversation.

SmartLink: What makes Nexus unique?

Repa Mekha: Nexus is the only Twin Cities funding intermediary that specifically supports community engagement work in communities of color and immigrant communities. Part of what allows us to do that well is, with communities of color, we really crafted an ability to pay attention to the nuances of the culture.

So when people come together, we’re listening to the words that are being said, but we’re also listening to the nuances that are conveyed through cultural ways of thinking and acting with each other. We’ve been able to pull people together that may have not been able to be pulled together in the past. And because we start with early engagement and walk along side our partners as ideas are developed, we are better able to help think through possibilities and challenges, assess feasibility, and make better investments.

SmartLink: You don't accept unsolicited requests for funding. How does your grant making process work?

Repa Mekha: Because of the way we approach our work with communities -- we use community engagement as a framework for how we enter – we often end up at the table where critical conversations are happening about what will help communities. We never come in with our funder’s hat on, so we can sit at the table, and have serious conversations about opportunities or perceptions in some communities. We might even convene people because we’ve seen what the issues might be from our balcony place. Along the way, we figure out if something has potential or is plausible. Then we can say, 'We might be able to put some early seed dollars behind this.'

So it doesn’t start off as a funding opportunity. It starts off looking at ‘What are the possibilities or challenges to live in the community and what does it take to make something happen.’  That’s one way that we might make funding.

We’ve recently had foundations send people to us who come to them with unique strategies that don’t fit their funding categories; they refer them to Nexus. For us, that’s important, because it allows us to develop relationships, see what others are thinking and where they’re trying to go without having money fit in between us. It’s made for some huge opportunities for us.

SmartLink: You believe that leaders are both teachers and learners, and realize how important it is to listen to organizations seeking help. How do you decide who to bring together?

Repa Mekha: In the convening, we’re looking for opportunities to weave. It looks like if these two people would just get together, something might happen. Or we might see a theme emerging. We might suggest that somebody play a role in carrying a topic a little bit further. So convening is one aspect of it, but there’s a weaving of ideas, opportunities and themes that we do as well when we have people in our space.


Interview and article by Wendy Helfenbaum.