Advocating Change Together (ACT)

You Can Expand Disability Equity in Minnesota  

Support Advocating Change Together

Advocating Change Together (ACT) began in 1979 as a nonprofit organization offering advocacy and leadership training to people in Minnesota who live with a disability. For over 45 years, ACT has assisted thousands of individuals with disabilities, their families, disability support networks and the broader disability community across Minnesota. ACT facilitates, encourages, and supports education and advocacy for people with disabilities both individually and collectively.

ACT seeks to employ and select its leadership, advisors and employees from  a wide consortium of people with lived experience as someone with a disability. This is central to everything we do.

The self-advocacy movement is an integral component of the broader global human rights movement. ACT serves to be a model that transforms the disparities people with disabilities face towards their fundamental right to be self-advocates. 

Meet Cynthia - an ACT Self-Advocacy Champion!

ACT is here to help make this happen

ACT envisions a society where people with or without disabilities are treated with dignity, equity, and respect for their expressed choices and have equal opportunities to participate in community, side-by-side together. with everyone. ACT believes all individuals in Minnesota can live, work and play within the communities of their choice and are empowered to manage their own services, wants and needs with the support they choose.

Our Mission: ACT promotes and advocates for the rights of individuals with disabilities through advocacy, empowerment, education, accessibility, community outreach and leadership initiatives. ACT believes that the burden of change is not on people with disabilities, but on society and systems to be more accommodating and inclusive for everyone.

ACT Programs & Services 

ACT Self-Advocacy Academy – The Self-Advocacy Academy is a weekly program of sessions and activities geared to support people with disabilities, accessing advice and resources to help them discover what they want to accomplish and empowering them to do it with specific trainings to build on their individual capacities. 

ACT Olmstead Academy – The Olmstead Academy was launched as a response to the Minnesota Olmstead Plan which was created in 2013 to ensure that Minnesotans with disabilities live full, integrated lives in their chosen communities. ACT delivers a 9-month program which includes classroom and fieldwork through which self-advocates are positioned as leaders within the state's Olmstead Plan.

ACT Self-Advocates of Minnesota (SAM) Network – SAM began in 2007, initiating a way for people with disabilities to build a network to support self-advocacy in their community. There are now 50 SAM Network groups split into 6 regions throughout the disability community across the state, creating a more powerful coalition for disability justice. The SAM Networks are the organizing arm of  ACT.

ACT Disability Power Day – Disability Power Days bring people with disabilities together monthly around self-advocacy, leadership development and current issues facing the Minnesota disability community. It covers important topics while building friendships serving as a forum where the disability community can share experiences and discuss issues effecting the community.            

ACT Minnesota Statewide Self-Advocacy Conference – ACT, together with the SAM Network, hosts this event which brings over 400 self-advocates and allies together every other year. Individuals and groups throughout Minnesota take part in planning and attending this event. 

ACT Disability Equity Series Training (DETs) – Provides skills for individuals and groups to build a culture of disability equity within a community that supports it.    

ACT Side-by-Side People's Chorus - The Side-by-Side People's Chorus gathers people with and without disabilities together to share empowerment through the meaningful sharing of songs of pride. These gatherings serve to bring community together for a social evening of food, song and movement.

Disability Pride Day Festival - ACT began organizing the Minnesota contingent of the National Disability Pride Month of July. ACT will be hosting the Third Annual 2025 Disability Pride Festival with support from the SAM Networks along with our community partners and sponsors, to bring awareness of Disability Pride and Justice movements to Minnesotans throughout July.