Citizens League
Background and Purpose
Since 1952, the Citizens League has worked to build civic capacity in Minnesota by identifying, framing, and proposing solutions to public policy problems. Through events, over 400 study committees, and a broad range of educational series and special initiatives, the Citizens League facilitates the citizen's role in creating solutions to challenges facing the state.
In recent years the Citizens League has looked more critically at who is engaged in the policy process and how they are engaged. Adding this focus has fueled an organizational commitment to diversity in age, race, ethnicity, geography, and ideology of its volunteers and membership. The Citizens League has over 1,600 individual members, 35 board members, 1 full-time staff member, 1 part-time staff member, and hundreds of volunteers.
Current Request
In 2007, The Saint Paul Foundation helped to finance the MAP 150 project, an initiative of the Citizens League to improve the processes by which citizens get engaged in public policy on issues of education, poverty, and water quality. That project included the development of a Minnesota policy agenda that looked at future challenges that the state might face, policy design using a citizen engagement process, and increasing citizen awareness about key policy needs in the state.
After the MAP 150 work was completed the Citizens League saw a need to integrate the tools used in the MAP 150 project into the agency's ongoing work and to develop an online citizen engagement platform called CitiZing. This online social networking tool will connect citizens with each other and policymakers to collaborate on policy solutions. This technology will immediately be used for the Citizen League's work on regional policy issues, water policy, and poverty-reduction.