Jazmin Danielson
I serve as Executive Director of ACES, a youth development nonprofit in Minneapolis where my role encompasses fundraising, building community partnerships, messaging, branding, and ensuring program quality. Our organization partners with all the professional sports teams in Minnesota, using sports as an engagement hook to increase math confidence in middle schoolers. We take sports like soccer, basketball, and swimming and tie in math concepts so youth get excited about learning, then they get to go to games and meet players. My role involves the big picture aspects - establishing community partners, determining what research and quality frameworks we should use, deciding who to hire and how to train them, and who should be on our board. Each year I work to bring in $1.6 million in funding, which is challenging in Minneapolis's competitive nonprofit landscape with stretched funders and scrutiny of federal and state funding. Beyond ACES, I'm a professor at the University of Minnesota in the School of Kinesiology, teaching sports management, ethics and leadership in sports management. I'm also a trainer with the Search Institute, a local nonprofit that transforms youth development research into practical tools. As a trainer, I travel to share this work - I even went to Copenhagen, Denmark a couple years ago to do training. I've been doing this work for over 20 years in various roles within the Minneapolis community, having served as executive director for two different organizations.
• Psychology Degree
• Master's in Organizational Leadership from St. Catherine's University
What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge is with fundraising. In Minneapolis, we have a lot of different programs, so it's very competitive. The funders are stretched, and we're seeing a lot of scrutiny with federal funding and state funding, so it's just hard. Each year, I have to try to bring in $1.6 million, and then you start all over again. You have to keep everything going and be anticipating and planning for the next year. And that's hard.
Locations
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN