2005 was an exciting and busy year for the Centre for Asians and Pacific Islanders (CAPI). After almost doubling in size in 2004, we successfully managed our growth and even added several new initiatives. We were blessed with an outpouring of support from our funders, and in addition to securing more foundation grants than ever before we’re very pleased to renew 100% of our government contracts at the same level or better.

Our year began with a bang, as we launched our $1.5 million capital fund drive to update our facility, and busily focused our energies on revitalizing a training program we inherited in a December 2004 merger with Project Regina, another non-profit agency. As the year progressed, we secured funding for several new initiatives including a Hmong School Partnership Project (in partnership with North Community High School staff and Hmong parents), a First Words For Health Literacy Program, and a Wage Subsidy initiative. With the addition of these programs, CAPI now administers a growing continuum of 16 distinct programs.

During the summer, CAPI embarked on a strategy to develop a series of satellite service sites to accommodate additional programs and make our services increasingly accessible to a growing North Minneapolis Hmong community. To this end, while the majority of our services are still offered at CAPI's East Lake Street headquarters, we now operate five different satellite sites including: Sabathani Community Center (Asian Specific Food Shelf), Franklin Junior High (ELL Instruction), Lehman Center (Project Regina), Lao Family (RES and MFIP Employment Services), and North Community High School (School and Mental Health Navigation Services).

Comprehensive forward planning undertaken the last half of 2005 is showing results as 2006 progresses. We have a new and updated agency brochure that summarizes our programs, our web site has been revamped and is now up to date for the first time in quite awhile, we recently implemented our first-ever individual appeal campaign to develop a stronger grassroots funding source, and we plan to purchase a greatly needed new 15 passenger van (thanks to several generous gifts from local foundations). Further, we were recently recognized by Hennepin County as one of the top performing MFIP provider agencies in the county, and for the first time ever we actually operated our Asian-specific food shelf at a surplus, while serving over 1,000 individuals a month.

As we continue through 2006 we have a number of challenges to meet:

• Making qualitative improvements with several targeted programs
• Sustaining the same level of program funding as we get deeper into our capital campaign
• Addressing administrative capacity issues in the areas of IT, human resources, development and accounting to keep pace with the growth in our agency budget and staffing.
• Addressing the loss of two experienced members of our management team who moved on to greener pastures.