“If 2020 was a dessert, it would be a fruit cake,” said our Executive Director Dana. “Here at NineNorth, we have sliced up that fruit cake and served it with vigor.”
At the end of every year, our team puts together an annual report. 2020 was a year of challenges, innovation and accessibility. We came across many challenges, and we worked to support our cities, staff and community members.
Surprising successes
Despite these challenges, NineNorth had some surprising successes last year.
We recorded 840 city meetings, interviewed 52 guests on our podcast, highlighted 96 businesses on Chamber Check-In and completed 459 projects. That’s a lot of content we were able to push out to the community!
Connecting our community
Despite not being able to be physically together, we still worked to connect the community.
We were still able to publish our annual program Points of Light where we highlight religious groups in the area. Instead of recording live, we went around and safely filmed each organization throughout the week.
We highlighted The Ralph Reeder Food Shelf that saw a 35% increase of patrons during the pandemic. We also covered the Awaken the Suburbs student-run protest against police brutality.
Making an impact
NineNorth strives to make impactful content that brings together community members, especially in 2020.
Local governments needed to pivot from in person to remote meetings quickly. We loaned and installed temporary equipment into city council chambers while we devised a more permanent plan. Within a week we were ready to host live virtual meetings. During 2020, we surpassed over 2,100 hours of city meeting recordings.
The pandemic left parents desperate for answers around virtual learning. School leadership needed to answer questions in a transparent and safe way. The solution was a virtual town hall event. We set up this meeting with a capacity of 500. Then we webcasted a zoom call between the Superintendent and other school administration on our website, Facebook page, and cable channels. We reached over 5,000 people on social media.
When COVID-19 hit Minnesota, there were a lot of questions from the public. The Minnesota government responded with a series of press conferences, but needed to reach 500,000 non-English speaking residents. NineNorth partnered up with TPT Now to provide simultaneous translations of our Governor addresses in Spanish, Hmong, and Somali in a LIVE atmosphere. Our highest performing video reached 40,843 people with 11,332 engagements.
New year, new name
As we entered the new year, we announced our rebrand from CTV North Suburbs to NineNorth.
“That isn’t the only change. We will also be moving into our newly designed studio space that will be nimble, and modern, just like our organization,” said Healy
The NineNorth team wants to thank you for working so diligently with us this year. Because of your help, we were able to make information more accessible to the community.
