Star Tribune
Almost all Minnesota nonprofits need workers, forcing some organizations to scale back services
Four out of five Minnesota nonprofits say they’re grappling with job vacancies, reporting more workforce shortages than nonprofits are recording nationwide, according to a new national survey.
The survey, conducted by the National Council of Nonprofits, found that nearly 81% of Minnesota nonprofits had job openings, compared with nearly 75% of nonprofits nationally.
Nearly two-thirds of Minnesota nonprofits surveyed have more job vacancies now than before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020.
While the survey is limited to a small pool of respondents — only about 70 of the tens of thousands of nonprofits statewide responded — the results reflect what officials with the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits have heard from local organizations about rising costs, decreasing revenue and widespread staffing shortages.
While some business sectors have also struggled with worker shortages, job vacancies are forcing nonprofits to scale back their programs and services — affecting needy Minnesotans ranging from those looking for housing assistance to parents scrambling to find child care openings.
“If they’re short-staffed and a restaurant closes early or isn’t open on Tuesdays, that’s an inconvenience … whereas if a homeless shelter has reduced hours or has to scale back on facilities, that’s about basic needs,” said Kari Aanestad, associate director of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits. “That’s a threat to a vision of Minnesota being a place where everyone can thrive.”
The nonprofit sector hasn’t recovered from the massive layoffs and furloughs of 2020 when the pandemic began, and it may be forever reshaped by the crisis.
According to state employment data, Minnesota’s nonprofit sector had nearly 3% fewer employees in 2022 than in 2019 — a larger decline than the state’s overall workforce has experienced.
Besides layoffs and furloughs caused by COVID-related revenue losses, more nonprofit workers have been leaving voluntarily, part of the “Great Resignation” of employees who are burned out and switching to careers with better pay and hours. As with the private sector, nonprofits also are seeing more retirements.
High vacancy rates
In Minneapolis, Volunteers of America is seeing more early retirements and employees leaving for better pay, resulting in 62 openings — a vacancy rate of more than 10%. One employee pointed out that manager salaries at a McDonald’s rivals the nonprofit’s starting pay, CEO Julie Manworren said.
“We’re now competing with the gas stations, the fast food places, the dollar stores — places that perhaps don’t have the level of stress, or meaning, that our positions have,” Manworren said. “We’re laser-focused on keeping pace with the market.”
Like many nonprofits that are turning to new ways to attract and retain employees — from boosting salaries to touting better benefits — Manworren said Volunteers of America is also trying to increase salaries and offer hybrid work schedules when possible. The organization added a recruiter position this year to help draw applicants.
The staffing shortages have forced Volunteers of America to cut some services and close a home in Mora, Minn., for people with disabilities. Residents were moved to a different home, but Manworren said she’d like to reopen the facility to meet the demand for services — as soon as she can find the staffing for it.
More than a third of the Minnesota nonprofits with openings that responded to the national survey said their vacancy rate was upwards of 20% — a higher rate than nonprofits nationally. The survey questioned 1,600 nonprofits nationwide, a fraction of the more than 1 million nonprofits nationally.
But Aanestad said it was unclear whether many of those job openings are the result of new positions added to keep up with a growing need for services, or existing positions that are open due to turnover.
“There’s a story we don’t necessarily know just from the numbers, but it definitely echoes what we’ve found,” she said.
‘Doing the best they can’
In the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits’ survey of nearly 200 nonprofits released last month, meeting wage expectations was the top reason organizations cited for struggling to retain or draw workers. Almost 70% of nonprofits reported that their expenses had risen in the last year, while a third reported declining funding.
“It can feel easier to blame nonprofits for these challenges [than businesses]. I sometimes hear people say, ‘Nonprofits just need to fundraise more,’ ” Aanestad said. “But the reality is that most, if not all, are doing the best they can with this impossible puzzle.”
In the national survey, most Minnesota nonprofits surveyed said they’re increasing salaries, while more than half are offering remote work options.
Aanestad said it’s unclear why Minnesota nonprofits are facing higher job vacancies than nonprofits in other states, but that it could be a reflection of higher burnout following the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which spurred a global racial reckoning.
Nonprofits were also on the frontlines of responding to both the pandemic and civil unrest in 2020, having to make sure Minnesotans without food or access to groceries had the help they needed.
Since then, extra federal aid and foundation grants offered early on in the pandemic have waned and donors have scaled back their generosity. In fact, according to the national survey, more than two-thirds of Minnesota nonprofits said they anticipate donations will decline or remain flat this year.
Minnesota’s nonprofits, which employ 14% of the state’s workforce, may face tougher times ahead.
“Nonprofit organizations may be facing financial cliffs that were feared the last three years that haven’t come true yet,” Aanestad said. “We’re expecting 14% of Minnesota’s workforce to solve or at least address complex social challenges and some of the hardest parts of the human condition. Nonprofits alone can’t do that work.”
That hasn’t ebbed with Simpli-Fi. The startup incorporated in 2018 as a company based out of Florida that integrated technology systems together in commercial buildings to work as a single unit. But business sputtered when the COVID-19 pandemic began, and Campbell had to make staff cuts to his team of 16 employees. He called it one of “the worst times” of his life.
“But during that time is where we made a pivot,” Campbell said.
He set out to find a new technology, eventually spotting NASA’s electronic nose thanks to Brown Venture Group, a St. Paul based firm that supports Black, Latino and Indigenous tech startups. Campbell’s brother, Paul Campbell, is a partner at the firm but said he recused himself from the investment decision.
Chris Campbell was skeptical of the electronic nose’s capabilities at first but sprung for a commercialization license after spending a year researching the technology. By this past summer, he had moved the company to Minnesota and specifically the Osborne building because both are “known for device creation,” he said.
Simpli-Fi’s sensor packs some of the science of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry — which require huge machines — into a sensor the size of a dime, Campbell said. Using nanotubes, the sensor picks up metabolic qualities in the air and breath, he said.
For now, the company is focused on the C. diff-sensing Provectus Canary device, which scans the air around a hospital patient to detect the bacteria that causes the infection, which has gastrointestinal symptoms like diarrhea. The company is working toward the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval for using the sensor to detect various diseases.
A Minneapolis man was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison for murdering his neighbor in their North Side apartment building last year.
Walter Lee Hill, 59, had pleaded guilty on Monday to second-degree intentional murder. He will get credit for having served nearly a year in jail.
Police were called to the Gateway Lofts on W. Broadway Avenue last November on a report that someone was shot. Officers found Donald Edmondson, 60, dead on the floor of his apartment with a gunshot wound to the chest.
A video camera in the hallway showed Hill knocking on Edmondson’s door, reaching into his sweatshirt pocket and firing his gun once. Hill then left in his Lexus, which officers found near Elliot Park downtown.
They spotted Hill walking nearby, asked for his ID and arrested him when he said something to the effect that they had the right guy.
A witness told police they saw Hill shoot Edmondson, and another said there had been an ongoing dispute between the two. Two days before the murder, Hill had called police because he believed neighbors were breaking into his apartment.
In a statement, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said Edmondson “should still be alive. A violent act committed with such disregard by Mr. Hill has taken him from his family. This sentence delivers accountability and protects our community, and I hope it brings some measure of peace to Mr. Edmondson’s loved ones as they attempt to move forward with their lives.”
ROCHESTER – Buoyed by strong growth in the health care industry, Minnesota’s third-largest city continues to outpace the rest of the state in job creation.
The Rochester Metropolitan Statistical Area added about 7,000 jobs over the past year, a 6.3% year-to-year increase, according to the September jobs report from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). By comparison, Minnesota as a whole was up 1.2% during the same time period. The next closest region to Rochester was Mankato, which grew 1.6% year to year.
Much of the growth in Rochester MSA, which includes Dodge, Fillmore, Olmsted and Wabasha counties, was driven by a 15% year-to-year increase in the education and health services sector. The sector employed 62,435 people in the region in September, nearly half the overall workforce.
The strong job numbers come as Mayo Clinic breaks ground on the first phases of “Bold. Forward. Unbound. In Rochester.” The $5 billion project — the largest investment in Minnesota history — is expected to bring about 2,000 construction workers to Rochester in the coming years.
While Mayo has not said how many employees it plans to hire once the new facilities open, local economic development officials expect the impacts of the expansion to reverberate across the region.
“As their growth goes up, the rest of the economy grows as well,” said John Wade, president of the Rochester Area Economic Development, Inc. (RAEDI). “If you think about neighboring communities, too, there will be more housing opportunities and job opportunities and businesses looking to expand.”
Wade said he also sees potential for growth in other sectors tied to Mayo, such as hospitality, which makes up more than 8% of the region’s workforce. Precision manufacturing and medical technology were also identified as potential growth sectors.
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