Insights Archives

Minnesotans are ready and willing to cross the great divide.
We just need to give them the opportunity and the tools to govern for the common good.

At the recent Compass annual meeting, Christine Ganzlin introduced the new Children & Youth section on the site, and told audience members why McKnight wanted to partner with other funders and with Compass to provide more and better data on our state's young people.

The data analysts at MN Compass get a lot of email questions about the data we feature on our site and why we do what we do. We thought it would be useful to share the questions we get asked most often with all of you who may be too shy to ask.

In October, Compass hosted its second annual Fact-based fundraising seminar for grant seekers and foundation program officers. Neal Cuthbert, vice president of program at The McKnight Foundation, talked about McKnight's new evaluation framework, the strategy behind it, and how his organization is using evaluation to assess the effectiveness of its grantmaking investments. Here is an excerpt from his remarks.

Ahh, summer. We hate to see you go. But for those of us who care about educational equity, maybe we shouldn't be so sad. A recent article in Time magazine made the case that summer itself is a culprit in the achievement gap between high-income and low-income students, often between white students and students of color.

The Unequal Distribution of Health in the Twin Cities, a new Wilder Research study commissioned by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation, reveals some surprising socioeconomic factors that may influence health in the region. Marsha Shotley talks about the findings and how Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation is working to address them.

Over the past several months, many Compass users have asked how to find data for their county. Susan Brower points out some interesting county trends and walks us through the steps to finding it on Compass.

It takes a village: coalitions across the state work together to nurture children

Minnesota Compass research intern Heather Vinge Hanson recently completed a literature review of evidence-based strategies that combat obesity from a systems-change perspective, rather than those that involve actions individuals can take.