Court Appointed Special Advocates of Minnesota

Background

Court Appointed Special Advocates of Minnesota is a nonprofit organization founded in 1992 that supports court-appointed volunteer special advocates and volunteer guardians ad litem (GAL) in Minnesota. The group recruits, trains, and provides ongoing support for the volunteers. The group supplements Minnesota’s statewide guardian ad litem program and does not act as a standalone direct-service program. CASA MN is affiliated with the National CASA/GAL Association and works with the state GAL board programs in various judicial districts. ^{2  3  4  1}

Activities

CASA Cares is a grant program offered by Court Appointed Special Advocates of Minnesota that provides opportunities and goods for children in foster and kinship care that they would not experience otherwise such as music lessons, bicycles, or soccer camps. Grants provide up to $500 per child and CASA Cares has distributed over $180,000 in direct grants across Minnesota. ^{5  6}

Controversies

In a January 2024 Minnesota Star Tribune article, Court Appointed Special Advocates of Minnesota board president Gerard Bodell criticized a Minnesota Management and Budget (MMB) report that raised concerns about volunteers’ adhering to standards and boundaries, limited accountability options, exposure of confidential records and supervision and recommended moving to a full employee model. Bodell termed portions of the report as “slander” and called attention to high turnover and unfilled paid staff positions while expressing fears that phasing out volunteers guardians ad litem would reduce the number and quality of advocates. ⁷

CASAMN 2024 tax returns show lobbying expenditures of $5,208 and an excess lobbying amount of $4,166 which was spent on advocating to the Minnesota State Assembly for passage of a bill to protect volunteer GAL roles. CASAMN further indicated on its return that it did not plan to continue these lobbying activities. ^{8  7}

Despite these efforts, the Minnesota State GAL board moved to eliminate volunteers by attrition and their numbers declined to twelve while the number of abuse and neglect cases grew. In 2025, the GAL board directed management to restart the volunteer program, and the legislature provided funding to support the program.  ⁶

Funding

Court Appointed Special Advocates of Minnesota recognizes receiving grant awards from Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation, the Ramsey County Bar Foundation, and the Minnesota State Bar Foundation on its website. ⁹

People

As of 2026, CASAMN was operated by an all-volunteer eight-person board led by Gerard Bodell as president. Previously, Bodell was vice president and managing director of in-store and direct marketing at Novus Media LLC, a finance and marketing operations executive at Target, and a CPA at Ernst & Young. As of 2026, Kristen McKittric was vice president and at that time was a senior principal manager of strategy and analytics for coronary and renal denervation at Medtronic. Prior to this, she was director of development at Great MN Schools and senior development associate at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. ^{10  11  12  13}