IMPACT SUMMARY
Together We Strengthen Our Community
As communities continue to navigate a world facing the ongoing pandemic, economic challenges, and community crises that have affected the health and welfare of people here, locally, nationally, and globally, the YMCA of the North has answered the call to serve.
Your support has made this possible, giving us the courage and means to continue. Together, we’re strengthening our community and giving more people opportunities to experience the YMCA's incredible people, places, and programs.
We push what’s possible, challenge limits, and open doors for all.
Youth and Family Services
Our Y supports youth and families facing homelessness, eviction, unemployment, and systemic challenges by connecting them to life-saving resources and comprehensive services. In 2022, 3,200 people were served. From March 2020 through 2022, Y staff has served 16,993 individuals in Youth and Family Services plus 19,869 through Community Response Services.
UnitedHealth Group Equity Innovation Center of Excellence
The UnitedHealth Group Equity Innovation Center of Excellence (EIC) commits to connecting people and groups with valuable information, resources, and insight to help them navigate our ever-changing community and learn ways to advance inclusivity and systems change so all may thrive. The EIC focuses on fueling equity innovation for a more significant impact. Equity means seeing and removing structural barriers in systems for people to create equal opportunity. Innovation is fresh approaches and practices that positively impact the organization. In 2022 more than 3,186 individuals embarked on a pathway of Leading with Excellence and Equity through learning experiences that can be applied in system change work for more significant equity. Since March 2020, over 16,012 people have engaged in learning experiences around diversity, equity, and inclusion.
School-Age Care
Each day 3,884 kids attended Y Summer Power and Uproar Programs. Kids can run, play and participate in a full day of Y programming. More than 4,000 families receive care and enrichment programs before and after school at 37 locations. Youth engage in activities with friends that help them learn, grow, and thrive.
New American Welcome Centers
Our Y supports newcomers, immigrants, and refugees in securing basic needs by helping them navigate and connect to immediate resources. The Y staff served 975 people in 2022.
Military and Veterans Programs
The YMCA of the North is committed to helping military, veterans, and family members through meaningful programs and services, including family camp getaways, kids to day camp, a YMCA membership discount, family sports days at the Minnesota Twins and Minnesota United, military deployment and redeployment support, wellbeing webinars and much more. The Y also partners with the National Guard and the Minnesota VA Physical Therapy Department to serve the community. In 2022 the Y served 80 people.
Food
Through our Every Meal partnership, we served 519 meals in 2022, 180,623 pounds of food. From March 2020 through 2021, 1,378,757 meals were given to our communities in partnership with United Health Group, Loaves and Fishes, Every Meal, Bix Produce, Appetite for Change, and other local partners.
Early Learning Child Care
We have 12 Early Childhood Learning Centers delivering trusted and safe care to infants six weeks old through five years so parents who need to work can do so. More than 1,000 children attend Y care daily. Our newest location located on the University of Minnesota campus is already serving over 80 families.
Neighborhood Centers
Our teams at the YMCA Neighborhood Centers support families by providing access to healthy foods, sharing educational resources and enrichment activities, and assisting with necessities, technology access, and job support. YMCA Neighborhood Centers have met the needs of over 650 families and supported over 150 youth in 2022.
Teen and Young Adult Programs
Across the YMCA’s teen and young adult programming, 6,757 young people participated in high-quality youth development programs that provided safe environments to grow leadership and career skills in 2022. Teen programs reached 1,127 youth with internships, college/career exploration, and recreation opportunities, including Y’s Start, Career Pathways, Achievers, Hudson skatepark/teen center, Mezile Center Teen Programs, and the Best Buy Teen Tech Center in downtown St. Paul. Beacons/School Success engaged 3,432 youth in Minneapolis, Richfield, and St. Paul after-school programs. University Y college students provided over 30,000 hours of mentoring to over 1,500 young people in local communities. The UY on the University of Minnesota campus had 1,104 Pen Pal letters written between youth and their college mentors.
Fitness and Wellbeing Programs
Our Y offers in-person and virtual wellbeing programs. More than 195,000 members visited Y sites 4.5 million times in 2022. In 2022 there were over 750,000 participant visits to group exercise programs. There have been more than 15,100 participants in swim lessons in 2022; since March 2020, there have been 47,623. Virtual Y also offers the community virtual exercise classes, wellbeing programs, cooking demonstrations, and kids activities to do from home with Y at Home. Since March 2020, there have been more than 4.5 million views across Virtual Y, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
Nature, Outdoors, and Adventure Experiences
Y Adventure offers safe and healthy outdoor experiences at day camps, family camps, overnight camps, and adventure and nature programming throughout the region. In 2022, 4,200 people participated in our adventure races, and more than 10,000 people did one or more Unlock It! adventures. In 2022, over 85,185 people participated in Y day, overnight, teen wilderness, and family camps.
Senior Support
The Y provides wellness checks to senior ForeverWell members, shares information on programs to stay healthy and happy, and provides resources to help with housing, finances, and more. In 2020 Y staff made over 137,832 wellness check calls to over 44,000 ForeverWell members. In 2021 the YMCA made over 71,000 engagement calls to seniors, welcoming them to be active and social in safe places with the Y. In 2022 we continued to make over 40,000 calls to seniors to check in on them and see how we can support their wellbeing efforts. In 2022 we had over 300,000 ForeverWell participant visits in programs such as group and water exercise, pickleball, social groups like bingo, book club, knitting club, walking/hiking/biking clubs, and more.
Basic Necessities
Responding quickly to urgent community needs, 32 YMCA community response hubs were mobilized as resource collection and distribution sites. Additional staff and resources were provided to critical sites in highly impacted areas within Minneapolis, allowing us to serve over 2,000 households experiencing immediate and significant needs.
Blood Drives
The Y has partnered with the American Red Cross to provide blood drives. In 2022, 1,243 people donated blood to help save 3,729 lives. From March 2020 through 2021, more than 1,600 individuals donated over 1,650 pints of blood to help save 4,956 people in our community.
Free COVID-19 Vaccine Clinics
The Y has collaborated with the Minnesota Department of Health to provide free COVID-19 vaccine clinics. Hundreds and hundreds of doses have been administered to help stop coronavirus transmission in our community.
Thanks to You
Your generosity makes our good work possible.