Hennepin County Community Engagement
Hennepin County Library
Innovation Synopsis
With 41 libraries spread across a county that includes Minneapolis, its suburbs, exurbs, and distant rural communities, Hennepin has a wide range of diversity across our system. How, then, do we embed the work of racial equity and community engagement into every program, outreach event, and partnership we hold locally and systemwide? Our answer: the Community Engagement work unit. We created a suite of tools, most notably our Service Planning Template, which uses the language of "benefits and burdens," to center race and equity. We have created guidance, held trainings, and provided coaching for local staff on how to connect with their communities to understand how to reduce disparities via partnership and engaged planning. We've created a library of these Service Plans that allows us to tell our story to stakeholders, such as leaders, our funders, and potential partners, so that DEI goals are not simply something we train on periodically, but embed into every step of the work.
Challenge/Opportunity
The COVID19 pandemic led to a pause in most programming and engagement efforts. On the other side of that pause, we saw an opportunity to reconnect with community and to understand what, in that time, had changed. Instead of simply resuming the same programming and engagement we'd done for years, we challenged our libraries to reconnect and to rethink their work. With 1.2 million residents, 31% of whom identify as BIPOC (forecast to be 46% by 2053), we wanted to embed the Racial Equity Impact Tool into local planning. We wanted libraries to identify why a service or program was desired or needed and with whom in the community they engaged to inform this knowledge. Internally, we wanted to create opportunities for staff to share their work, to be inspired by and learn from others. Finally, we designed our Friends budgeting so that each library had access to the funds needed to meet their engagement needs, so that budget was equitably distributed according to community need.
Key Elements of Innovation
We created a Service Planning Template, which embeds questions posed by the Racial Equity Impact Tool, and which library staff use to document their program planning. Once submitted, a team of Senior staff consider community outcomes, benefits, and burdens, as well as feasibility, and provide feedback and support to the local staff, while connecting them to funds and resources. The plans are available for all staff to access, and can also be shared with stakeholders like Library and County leaders, or to share our impact with our funder, Friends of the Hennepin County Library. We work closely with other county departments, so that the Library has a clear lane to refer to or collaborate with departments better positioned to meet emerging needs, or to promote the work of the library to their residents where we can be supportive, and we provide consistent guidance and support for local staff wherever they are on the spectrum of developing sustained relationships with their communities.
Achieved Outcomes
In 2024 thus far, we have received and supported 278 Service Plans. This work was deemed innovative enough that a presentation on our model, titled “Too Big To Flail: Community Engagement Across 41 Libraries” was one of the highest-attended sessions at this year’s PLA conference, where we presented virtually as well as in-person. We produce a bimonthly newsletter and quarterly trainings for all staff which highlight important updates from the team or from county or community partners, examples of innovative Service Plans, and opportunities to learn and develop engagement skillsets. While we do not have a means to demonstrate it quantitatively, the quality of Service Plans, and staff’s comfort and ability to identify which communities benefit from, or risk being burdened by, a proposed program, has increased markedly. Staff consistently identify mitigation tactics to reduce burdens to underserved communities while positively impacting those for whom societal disparities remain.
