Envision Minnesota

Envision Minnesota is a statewide, membership organization, formerly known as 1000 Friends of Minnesota. We envision a state with vibrant cities and towns close to clean rivers, lakes, and parks; a state with livable communities where people can choose how they get around and have plenty of housing options. We envision a state that invests its taxpayer money wisely and maintains a high quality of life.

We work on thoughtful development so that we all can enjoy thriving communities.

Our work is rooted in a shared sense of community. We help build this through our Legacy Letters project – short videos that air on public television. You may have seen them on TV in between regular programming. They feature individuals who are deeply connected to a place or point in time in Minnesota’s history. We make Legacy Letters, like the ones featured above, to encourage people to put into words what they value. If we treasure a place, we take care of it. If we recognize the importance of people and places in our history, we are more likely to learn our history, and learn from it. Legacy Letters are a way to reach people across the state and encourage them to join us in envisioning Minnesota’s future together.

A strong sense of community is required in order to create livable communities where we all want to live – a process unfolding in planning meetings, city halls, at the regional planning agency and at the state capitol. Here are a few ways we work:

• We published a report, “Investments for a Competitive and Healthy Minnesota,” to urge the Governor and the legislature to make strategic investments that rebuild our local economies, strengthen our communities, and create necessary jobs. We need a structure in state government that yields multiple “wins” — in cleaner air, job creation, physical activity, and expanded opportunity — with each state investment. We need every dollar to accomplish more than one goal.

• We developed the “Conservation Design Scorecard” to help cities and developers assess how well a proposed new development will reduce its imprint on the land and preserve more of the site’s natural resources.
• We wrote the book on citizen engagement – “The Citizen’s Guide to Effective Land-Use Decisions” – to encourage individuals to become engaged in their local communities in meaningful, productive ways.
• We’ve helped pass key legislation that preserves and creates strong-knit communities, like removing the bias against renovating, rather than rebuilding, old schools, and enacting the Community-Based Planning Act to give local cities the funding they needed to plan ahead.
• We’ve worked with dozens of Minnesota cities and townships to help them plan a brighter future that shapes the community they want to see in the future.

You can learn more about all of our work on our website at www.envisionmn.org. We hope you’ll envision a better future with us. Thank you for considering a gift to Envision Minnesota.