FAQs

Midwest Partners is a non-profit, tax-exempt (501(c)3) organization founded in Princeton, IL in 2015. It promotes collaborative civil engagement on issues ranging from Main Street revitalization to growing local food, and supporting community and environmental health, public arts, regional economic development, and services for children, youth, and adults of all ages.

Midwest Partners has helped create projects that have had an impact throughout Bureau County and the surrounding Starved Rock Country region. Sometimes even further away than that. To learn more about how we work, and to meet our team, go here.

The revenue to cover most of our expenses comes from bicycle repair and sales. Most of our raw materials are donated bicycles or bikes we have rescued from dumpsters full of merchandise that cannot be sold for one reason or another.

We do, however, also depend on contributions and relatively small grants for projects. Contributions are always welcome.

Legally, Midwest Partners is a tax-exempt non-profit corporation, not a legal partnership. But we like to see the people with whom we work as co-founders, co-sponsors, and cooperating organizations, and sometimes, co-investors. If we receive a grant or consulting contract, for example, we may accept payment for those services to help us keep going.

No. We rarely if ever deserve all the credit. Our model is to connect people, places, ideas, and resources. Sometimes we write the grant proposal that funds a new project or we help organize a fundraising strategy. Other times, we introduce someone with unique skills, talents, or time to someone else who has what the first person wants…and they get to work.

AmeriCorps is a network of local, state and national service programs that involve more than 70,000 American adults of all ages and backgrounds in learning through community service. ABC AmeriCorps, at Sauk Valley Community College, for example, has helped provide talented part-time workers for Midwest Partners for several years now. Midwest Partners, in turn, has helped other nonprofits find AmeriCorps members to help them accomplish their missions.

• We realize every person has something to offer and everybody has needs, no matter their privilege;

• We are not afraid to go beyond “the usual suspects” for partners. We have found unusual bedfellows can often come up with better ideas than allies with similar backgrounds and personalities;

• We feel most people want to help when they are asked, often for different reasons;

• We have learned that authenticity almost always wins;

• We know from experience power rarely generates long-term results without continuous enforcement;

• We believe changing attitudes does not always lead to changing behaviors; and

• BIGGER is not always better, even though it may seem so.