Belonging, Meaning, Wellbeing & Purpose

MINNESOTA COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

The Framework

Belonging, Meaning, Wellbeing, and Purpose is a research-grounded framework. It names four conditions, and the practices behind them, that communities, including young people, need to truly thrive. Each is defined by leading scholars and has deep roots in community practice:

The Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions has been supporting this framework with more than a decade of collaboration with communities across the country and researchers at Cornell, Stanford, Harvard and UC Berkeley.

Belonging, Meaning, Wellbeing, Purpose in Minnesota

Minnesota’s social sector is extraordinary — yet it is fragmented, with uneven communication, unequal access to resources, and power dynamics that hold back what collective effort can achieve. Underserved communities, especially Indigenous, Black, Latine, and rural communities, bear the greatest cost of this fragmentation, and community-led solutions too often depend on unpredictable funding rather than trusted, lasting relationships that sustain community change.

What has been missing is not effort or commitment. It is the connective tissue: trusted relationships among change makers to move isolated efforts toward aligned vision for social change with Belonging, Meaning, Wellbeing, and Purpose. 

This is why a group of nonprofits, foundations, Tribal Nations, and community leaders came together as the Minnesota Community of Practice. Members center these four conditions in how they approach and deliver social change. The group’s work during the first three years (2025–2028) is in partnership with the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions and funded by the Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies. In addition, the George Family Foundation has contributed travel grants to support national convenings. 

This Community of Practice is not a grantmaking program, an effort to advance any one organization’s agenda, or one more coalition layered onto an already crowded field. It uses a shared, nationally tested framework — made local — for members to deepen relationships and trust toward transformative social change with shared learning, aligned practice, and coordinated action. Members meet three times a year: one national gathering, one in Minnesota, and one online.

Equal Partnership

The Minnesota Community of Practice is committed to equal partnership while honoring the unique lens that each organization brings to the collective.

  • Nonprofits are rooted in Native Nations, rural, and/or urban communities and already practice the principles of Belonging, Meaning, Wellbeing, and Purpose. 
  • Funders are thought partners, not passive observers or underwriters and are committed to supporting their community partners in their shared journey of integrating Belonging, Meaning, Wellbeing, and Purpose.
  • The Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions supports the Minnesota cohort’s convening, capacity-building, and impact measurements as well as facilitating connections to national research experts and resources.
  • Youthprise, as the intermediary partner, leads and ensures co-creation among the Minnesota cohort in regranting, convening, and capacity building.

2025-2026: Progress

  • A shared Minnesota framework and Intent Map. Belonging, Meaning, Wellbeing, and Purpose defined in members’ own words, with a shared vision of what success looks like.
  • A statewide map of practice. Where and how members are already putting these conditions to work, across regions and sectors.
  • Named tensions and capacity needs. Shared narrative, staff burnout, fragmented funding, gaps in community voice, impact measurements, and integrating Belonging, Meaning, Wellbeing, and Purpose.
  • Implementation ideas. Questions generated by the group turned into creative, concrete ideas for putting Belonging, Meaning, Wellbeing, and Purpose into practice inside members’ own organizations.

2026-2028: What Comes Next

The next phase turns these commitments into shared focus areas the group will shape together. Aligned to a common intent, members are working toward a Minnesota where:

  • Integration.  Most member organizations weave Belonging, Meaning, Wellbeing, and Purpose into their own goals and everyday programs.
  • Expertise. Half or more build real, in-house expertise of people who can carry and teach the practices.
  • In community.  Community organizations and Tribes receive funding and hands-on support to put the framework to work.
  • Local-National.  Minnesota’s members are connected to a national network for shared leadership, regional learning, and joint projects.
  • Measurements.  The group builds its own way to see and measure the difference this work makes in local contexts and across the state.

What This Work Makes Possible

Members are imagining what could happen when they use Belonging, Meaning, Wellbeing, and Purpose to deepen their work and reach for their highest hopes. Some picture classrooms where young people shape their own learning. Others picture workplaces that protect staff so they can keep showing up, stronger trust with families carrying old wounds, or newcomer students who feel they belong in a new country and language. These are just a few glimpses of what members imagine as they carry these four conditions further into their work.

This won’t happen on its own. Members have named what it will take: rooting the work inside their own organizations, funding what the work truly needs, and building a connected web of support deeply in regions and across the state. Most of all, it means changing who is trusted to lead, so that community knowledge, young people, and lived experience guide the way.

The Minnesota We’re Building Together  

A collective declaration by the Minnesota Community of Practice named members’ own hopes and dreams.

We believe better is coming.

We come from love —

from mothers and grandparents, from eldest daughters who carried us forward.

We believe in people.

In goodness.

In youth who deserve to feel safe and heard.

We are optimists.

Dreamers.

Weavers of possibility.