i. Fiscal Integrity
ii. Financial Accounting System
iii. Fiscal Year
iv. Cash Reserves
v. Services Delivered at Reasonable Cost -- The Cost for HAMAA Services
vi. The Cost to HAMAA Staff

i. Fiscal Integrity

Our Agency has maintained accurate accounting files since commencement of operations in September, 1990. All records remain on file for viewing. We have completed the filing of Form 990 for income tax report of non-profit organization for each year and filed timely in the past two years. We have completed Year 2001 Audit with 2002 Audit anticipated. We have on file a Letter of Determination from the IRS and a Letter of Good Standing from the State of Minnesota, covering operations for year 2001 with Year 2002 anticipated.

ii. Financial Accounting System

iii. Fiscal Year

HAMAA Agency Fiscal year is the Calendar Year.

iv. Cash Reserves

HAMAA maintains cash reserves representing one-half month of operations (one payroll period) at the current rate of expenditure.

v. Services Delivered at Reasonable Cost -- The Cost for HAMAA Services

Until year-end 2002, our HAMAA Center was a no-frills facility of some 7,025 square feet, of which we presently utilize two-thirds of the available footage for office space and the remainder for meeting space. In December, 2002, we made our move to and commenced renovation of the C.P. Building in Near North (five blocks away) in order to meet space needs for a rapidly growing youth department. In both cases, the building is a simple, single floor construction requiring approximately $10.00 per square foot to maintain and operate.

All social service agencies would avail themselves of the opportunity to note their impoverishment given a willing ear. We are no different. But we have numbers on our side that speak volumes for our work.

We must consider that the MFIP program does not pay the secondary and tertiary wage earner to the agency who places other workers in addition to the principal wage earner. Most of the time the MFIP program maintains a high concern only on the primary wage earner of the family. We do not given the obvious and growing needs of our families to meet basic housing and food income requirements. Yet even as we meet these real needs, we are hampered by more recent City of Minneapolis and Federal programs directing funds for utilization only within limited boundary of servicing in the inner city. We feel compelled to invite legislators to visit and perform the same task for even one day without throwing up their hands in despair.

Culturally and customarily ethnic minority groups that possess limited English proficiency have always gone to the organizations where they will find their friends and relatives sharing those same attributes to help in the job assistance hunt. Naturally even with its hands tied by placement rules, HAMAA is at first flooded and now overwhelmed with clients from the twin cities. Our precious dollars are stretched ever further to meet all of the needs.

For our labors, HAMAA is paid a contract rate by the City of Minneapolis Employment and Training Program of $1,020 per Client, amounting to some $152,000 annually. The net savings, in terms of taxes not reused to continue the employment activity is $244,000 (the same figure we so often note to foundations from which we request annual operating assistance). Of course, if we talk only of “dollars matching dollars” then the government agencies have not come close to matching our activities yet.

vi. The Cost to HAMAA Staff

Our elected officials at federal and state levels have often expressed the intention to empower all Americans through limited assistance to make the most of their lives and build an independent financial footing for the family. This is a clear and understandable goal. But we must be careful to note that the limited trained, skilled personnel and scant financial resources available to our Hmong Community in Minneapolis and Minnesota makes action more problematic. As representatives of new immigrants to America, the majority of our Hmong (and Laotian) new Americans are not truly able to direct for themselves where to go and what to do to become economically self-sufficient. They depend on a few people – our HAMAA Staff -- who know “the system” to explain the steps and recommend the ideas to reach those who can help or provide them advice on how best to comply with the new rules whether to find a job, enter education or even how to take a bus to visit the doctor.

Many times those people who know the system after some twenty years of trial and error either are insufficiently paid or even asked to work for the community totally uncompensated. Turnover among such precious assets is high in the best of circumstances and results in spotty service measuring from fair to excellent and subject to change on very short order. In some cases relatives help one another, with varying degrees of proficiency and knowledge. Many times it is the nonprofit agency social worker that helps them. Over our twenty years of working within this system, our Hmong (and Laotian) staff members have become trained in its use and developed a keen sense of the impact it has on the relative costs per year for one of our Hmong families.

Certainly our HAMAA Staff members are now among the ones who best know how to work between the agencies and help our families build step by step for the future. Our experience has been gained day by day. Our insight is well founded. And we know that we could continue this activity indefinitely if the goal was only subsistence. Seeking a way out of the welfare trap, we know that resources that currently exist, if judiciously redirected, may lead to a startling strong economic situation for our Hmong and Laotian newcomers from both overseas and as secondary migrant resettlement.