Who is Love Your Neighborhood MPLS?
It’s All of Us Working Together!
Sarah Linnes-Robinson, Owner
When I moved back to Minneapolis in 1989, I bought a house in the Bryant neighborhood because I wanted a place, and a community, to call home. I joined the very first Bryant Neighborhood Organization Board and confused about what we were being asked to do by the City, I then studied issue-based organizing through the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) at the U of M. I was instantly hooked on tackling community-identified issues collectively, and using creative techniques to solve problems and have been working with neighborhood groups ever since! I am a high-level planner, grassroots community organizer, marketing specialist, financier, grant writer, and the biggest cheerleader of community-based engagement you will ever meet!
I have served numerous Minneapolis neighborhood groups in a bunch of different roles, including the Director of the Kingfield Neighborhood Association for 26 years. Whether as a volunteer or as the Executive Director, my real passion has been to support volunteers in leadership roles. While we have shared a large number of successes, the actual outcome of each project isn’t simply a community garden/ a mural / a PorchFest / or an affordable housing development, but is instead a more cohesive community and a stronger relationship between citizens and the City of Minneapolis.
Over the last many years, I have become concerned about the future of these neighborhood-based groups whose primary job is creating a community within the big city. I created Love Your Neighborhood MPLS to support neighborhoods and the work they do to create a more responsive and closer community. Now I work in community, on behalf of governmental departments or community groups, to help design community engagement processes, lead projects, and walk the path with you of bringing the community in, while we also getting something concrete done.
Created under the premise that “we all do better when we all do better” and starkly aware of the disinvestment by the City of Minneapolis in its neighborhood organizations, Love Your Neighborhood MPLS’ mission is to keep these grassroots, vitally important community-based groups alive and functioning to better connect neighbors to each other, to local businesses, and to their City. We do this in two ways:
Love Your Neighborhood MPLS offers nonprofit planning, community engagement, grant writing, event implementation, and project management to organizations that support and strengthen neighborhoods and communities. Since forming in 2023, Love Your Neighborhood MPLS has worked with the City of Minneapolis, Minneapolis Park and Recreation, and directly with multiple neighborhood associations.
Additionally, Love Your Neighborhood MPLS strives to help Minneapolis neighborhoods build their base by creating a stronger brand-identity, while also bringing in a stream of unrestricted revenue. We do this by offering this free sales space for branding merchandise like t-shirts and tote bags to neighborhood associations, as well as to local businesses who are interested in supporting their community by donating their share of the profits to their local neighborhood groups.