Program Provides $400,000 in Flexible Funding and Leadership Skills Development Training to Advance Economic Mobility in Miami-Dade County

MIAMI – Catalyst Miami and Casa Valentina, Inc. have been named as the 2020 Bank of America Neighborhood Builders® awardees for Miami-Dade County. The nonprofits were selected for their work in the Miami-Dade community addressing issues fundamental to economic mobility, specifically affordable housing and long-term community development wellness.

As an awardee, each organization receives a $200,000 grant, a year of leadership training for the executive director and an emerging leader, a network of peer organizations across the U.S., and the opportunity to access capital to expand their impact. Since 2004, Bank of America has invested over $260 million in 50 communities through Neighborhood Builders®, partnering with more than 1,300 nonprofits and helping more than 2,600 nonprofit leaders strengthen their leadership skills. 

“Our nonprofits have delivered immeasurable support to vulnerable communities throughout Miami-Dade County,” said Gene Schaefer, Miami market president for Bank of America. “Our Neighborhood Builders® program can’t come at a better time for these organizations as they try to meet the evolving needs of those they serve. This investment allows us to empower local nonprofits to double down on their efforts in addressing economic mobility and social progress issues in the regions they serve.”

Catalyst Miami’s mission is to identify and collectively solve issues adversely affecting low-wealth communities throughout Miami-Dade County. They help ensure that families’ basic needs are met, provide coaching and tools to establish long-term wellness, and create effective coalitions of change-makers. The organization will use the Bank of America funds to hire and train new staff members who will provide technical assistance for small businesses. Catalyst Miami selected Ahmed Mori, senior director of community economic development, to become its emerging leader.

“We’re thrilled and thankful to have been selected for the Neighborhood Builders award. Catalyst Miami has been creating paths to economic mobility for 25 years and we are excited to have expanded our services to support workers and small businesses, which are key to a thriving South Florida economy,” said Gretchen A. Beesing, CEO for Catalyst Miami.

Casa Valentina, Inc.’s mission is to provide at-risk and former foster care youth with safe, affordable housing, life skills and continued support so that they can achieve and maintain self-sufficiency. The organization will utilize the funds to fortify existing programs, provide resident support and hire a development consultant to help create a customer relationship management system, processes, and infrastructure to help them move to the next level. Casa Valentina has selected Alexis Adams, program director, as its emerging leader.

“Since becoming Casa Valentina’s Executive Director last year, I have been actively at work to make sure the legacy of the past 14 years remains a strong foundation to build upon as we continue to grow and seek to move to the next level. I am committed to elevating our presence and to continuing to improve our outcomes by working closely with our Board, staff, residents, volunteers, and donors to create a culture of excellence,” Janice M. Graham, executive director for Casa Valentina, Inc. “Thank you, Bank of America, for helping us realize our vision.  As our youth would say, ‘Casa Valentina is a place we call home.’”

The Neighborhood Builders® program is an opportunity to provide relevant skills development and topics to help nonprofit leaders address current and future community challenges. Each year, Bank of America refines the Neighborhood Builders Leadership Program to include topics ranging from strategic storytelling to human capital management, and highlights themes that are critical to moving the nonprofit sector forward within broader societal and economic context.

Since 2004, through its Neighborhood Builders® program, Bank of America has partnered with 25 nonprofits in Miami-Dade County, investing $5 million to nonprofits that focus on workforce development and education, basic needs, and community development within the Miami-Dade County area. The invitation-only program is highly competitive, and leading members of the community participated in a collaborative selection process to identify this year’s awardees. Examples of the leadership training topics include human capital management, increasing financial sustainability, and storytelling. Neighborhood Builders® is just one example of how Bank of America deploys capital in communities, builds cross-sector partnerships, and promotes socioeconomic progress as part of its approach to responsible growth.

Originally published on Medium on December 3, 2020.

by Fay Walker

Small businesses employ almost half of workers across the country, and many are the retail and service businesses most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. From February to April, the number of active small business owners dropped by 22 percent (PDF). Despite limited federal support through the CARES Act in March 2020, small businesses continue to struggle (PDF), and local elected officials and economic development organizations are grappling with how to best support them through the pandemic. To do this, local leaders need to collect real-time data about what specific challenges their small businesses are facing.

Because Black-, Latinx-, Native-, and Asian-owned businesses are seeing higher closure rates than white-owned ones, leaders also need to hear directly from these business owners to work toward an equitable economic recovery.

For most places, equitable recovery means collecting data directly from small businesses. Data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and Small Business Administration are not disaggregated or recent enough to inform the real-time crisis facing the small business sector today. The limited sources and challenges of small-area business data are described in a recent guide from the Urban Institute on monitoring neighborhood change and displacement.

Two grantees of the Using Data to Inform Local Decisions on COVID-19 Response & Recovery grant program, Catalyst Miami and the Louisiana Public Health Institute (LPHI), recognized this challenge and designed projects to collect data directly from small businesses to better understand the needs of their communities’ small businesses.

The LPHI is focusing on Jefferson Parish, which has been hard hit by COVID-19 and related unemployment. One in 20 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Jefferson Parish, and the unemployment rate is 9 percent, exceeding the rate for the rest of the state. The LPHI will survey employees about their employment status, workplace environments, and economic stability to better target support. The LPHI will also interview employers, to explore how COVID-19 is affecting small businesses, what resources are needed to reopen safely, and what worker training is needed.

Catalyst Miami is working with the North Miami Community Redevelopment Agency to identify businesses that serve low-income communities and are owned by people of color with incomes below 80 percent of area median income. One in 12 people have tested positive in the surrounding county, and the North Miami unemployment rate in 2018 (latest available for cities) was 9 percent, 1.4 times the state level and likely to be higher since the pandemic. Catalyst and its partners are surveying business owners to learn what North Miami’s small businesses need and to determine useful benchmarks for small business resiliency.

Catalyst Miami intends to use their data to help businesses better access technical assistance and to direct relief funds. The LPHI will share their findings with the Jefferson Parish Council District 3 office to build a more effective response to the immediate and long-term needs stemming from the pandemic.

Localities can take action with policy tools, such as providing businesses with access to funding and reforming zoning and permitting, to benefit small businesses and the communities relying on them. However, firsthand accounts from small business owners remain important to understanding which policies will address the challenges specific to each place. Catalyst Miami and the LPHI have already learned from one another by sharing surveys and lessons on gathering data from small business owners. Other places can also draw inspiration from these projects on how data-informed business assistance and supportive policy can guide equitable economic response and recovery in their local contexts.

We thank Ahmed Mori of Catalyst Miami and Barrie Black from the Louisiana Public Health Institute for their contributions to this blog post. The two organizations are grantees of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Using Data to Inform Local Decisions on COVID-19 Response & Recovery program.

Originally published by Miami Community Newspapers 

Miami-Dade County commissioners on Oct. 8 passed a resolution granting $500,000 for the expansion of Future Bound Miami, a universal Children’s Savings Account (CSA) program that will be implemented in phases throughout Miami-Dade County Public Schools.

The funds, which will come from the Community Disparities Subcommittee reserve, will provide CSAs with initial “seed” deposits to more kindergarten students in the district. The 10 commissioners in attendance voted unanimously in support of the item.

Future Bound Miami, launched in fall 2019, establishes a CSA for kindergarten students attending 30 elementary schools that feed into the five high schools within the City of Miami. This new investment from the county expands the program to include an additional 98 schools. The goal is to make CSAs available to all kindergarten students in Miami-Dade County Public Schools by 2023.

“By contributing additional seed funding to the Future Bound Miami program, and leveraging it with contributions from the private sector, we are helping to address economic disparities in our county, helping to make our community stronger and more economically resilient,” said Commissioner Eileen Higgins, who championed this legislation.

“Research has proven that these accounts have a positive impact on early childhood development and academic performance, increase future financial capability, and reduce the racial wealth gap. By investing in our children, we’re investing in the future of Miami-Dade,” she added.

Children’s savings accounts put postsecondary education within reach by allowing students and families to accumulate savings and increase educational expectations. Research shows that children with a college savings account of as little as one dollar are three times more likely to go to college and four times more likely to graduate.

“Today’s vote to invest in the future of our youth is a big step forward in reducing Miami-Dade’s wealth gap,” said Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava. “I am a long-time advocate of CSAs because we know they improve early childhood development and academic performance, raise the college expectations of children and parents, and improve the financial future of our children.”

Gretchen Beesing, CEO of Catalyst Miami, said, “Catalyst Miami has been working on this for over five years with a consortium of dedicated partners. We’re thrilled that the BCC has chosen to make this investment in our county’s children.”

To learn more about the program, visit www.futureboundmiami.org.

A Miami nonprofit hopes disaster savings accounts will encourage low-income residents to save for hurricanes and other disasters.

By Noreen Marcus, U.S. News & World Report Contributor

A man pushes a cart with plywood sheets in Miami in preparation for Hurricane Dorian, in 2019. A Miami nonprofit is aims to help residents prepare for hurricanes and other natural disasters by putting aside savings. EVA MARIE UZCATEGUI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

This op-ed was originally published in the Miami Herald on Sunday, September 6, 2020. Click here to read the September 6, 2020 e-edition.

By Zelalem Adefris, Catalyst Miami;
Meena Jagannath and Alana Greer, Community Justice Project

The Sept. 3 Miami-Dade County Commission’s budget hearing should have every resident, regardless of political views, deeply concerned about the state of democracy in our county. The meeting defied all conventional assumptions about civic engagement. The message was: If you turn out in numbers and organize around a collective vision, you are more likely to be belittled and ignored.

More than 200 people, including many youth, delivered three and half hours of public comments, imploring the commission to invest more in housing, health and environmental sustainability in these extraordinary times. Yet, their message and personal stories were summarily dismissed by Mayor Carlos Gimenez as “scripted,” unworthy of careful consideration by those on the dais who purport to know what’s best for us.

The mayor would have us believe that periodic voting by an unacceptably small percentage of the electorate is plenty democracy for us. A healthy democracy requires active engagement and accountability once leaders take office. The residents who take time off work to attend commission meetings, educate themselves on complex agendas and spend their evening waiting to speak, many for the first time, understand that. Our leaders must, too.

We often wonder why Miami-Dade is disengaged with what goes on in governmental halls. The answer lies in the consistent attempt to make those who speak out feel small and foolish. People shouldn’t have to subject themselves to censure to participate in democracy. People are exasperated by the state of governance in Miami-Dade, but speak we must. The future of Greater Miami’s democracy depends on it.

May 11, 2020

By: Sierra Club Florida News

Voices serving frontline communities both disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus crisis and vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis came together from across Florida on the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day. Stories of struggle and hope, from activists rising to overcome these challenges and the environmental and social injustices they expose, made clear how these issues are interconnected, how the pandemic has laid bare our vulnerabilities, and what system changes are needed to secure a just and livable planet Earth for all.

Panelists:
- Farmworker Association of Florida: Jeannie Economos (Coordinator, Pesticide Safety and Environmental Health Project)
- Coalition of Immokalee Workers: Oscar Otzoy (translator: Natalia Naranjo)
- The Smile Trust: Valencia Gunder (Co-Director)
- Catalyst Miami: Mayra Cruz (Climate Resilience Program Manager)
- Sister Robin Haines Merrill: Upper Room Art Gallery
- Dr. Jennifer Taylor (Coordinator of FAMU's Small Farm Programs, Florida's 2019 Woman of the Year in Agriculture)

Moderator: Diana Umpierre, Sierra Club

To watch the full livestream, click here. To watch coverage by Go! Latinos Magazine, click here.

To support the work of these frontline community leaders, navigate to this bookmark.

Summary of what we heard

A reflection on the 50th Earth Day would be amiss without noting that while air and water are cleaner in some respects in many parts of the country (though not all) we are now dealing with other threats, some which are more harmful than we imagined 50 years ago, including human-caused climate change. The 50th anniversary of Earth Day should be a turning point, when we stop business as usual and together rebuild an economy that protects people, wildlife and the planet, from pandemics and the climate emergency.

How do we do that? Sierra Club Florida invited a number of strong frontline leaders to share what this moment is teaching us:

Jeannie Economos with Farmworker Association of Florida pointed out how the current pandemic and the climate crisis disproportionately affects farmworkers: “One of the things that this pandemic has pointed out is how crucial and important our food supply is…that for decades and decades farmworkers, the people that harvest the food that gets to our table, have been called the invisible workers and all of the sudden now they are the essential workers... They've been the essential workers all along… They are the first line on the food chain that gets the food to our grocery stores.” She also pointed out that (1) many farmworkers in Florida are undocumented and as a result they are unqualified for assistance like coronavirus-related stimulus programs, (2) farmworkers “have some of the worst housing conditions, the worst pay, the worst working conditions,” (3) they are exposed to toxic pesticides and fertilizers, (4) and sometimes they are left without hand-washing water or drinking water in the fields.  Jeannie said “with climate change, we're finding that heat stress is an increasing problem”.  She reminded us that “the first farmworkers in the US were enslaved people from Africa and [that]… there is a direct line from the horrors of slavery… to farmworkers today.. many... live in a kind of indentured servitude or kind of a modern-day slavery... This moment is showing us what we've been trying to say for years, that there's something fundamentally, institutionally, systematically wrong.. because our entire agricultural system is based on exploitation of labor and exploitation of our planet.”

Oscar Otzoy with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), assisted by translator Natalia Naranjo, recounted how the coalition has been helping farmworkers in southwest Florida to improve their wages, benefits, and working conditions. CIW educates and empowers farmworkers to defend their own rights while working in the fields. They provide educational materials in at least three languages devoted to preventing problems that commonly afflict farmworkers. Oscar shared that they have been distributing facial masks and doing outreach via local radio and flyers so workers understand the risks and how to protect themselves during the coronavirus pandemic. Other important CIW initiatives include worker to worker education, public education to consumers and the Fair Food Program that is motivating retailers to buy from farms that respect the human rights of farmworkers. Without farmworkers, agricultural producers cannot feed the nation.

Valencia Gunder shared how The Smile Trust has been helping vulnerable populations in urban Miami, including unsheltered homeless and others experiencing food insecurity, many of whom are black and brown. She pointed out that climate change, pandemics and natural and man-made disasters multiply the threats to communities already experiencing social hardships. With the assistance of a local physician, unsheltered folks are being tested for COVID-19 and provided tents. They also have a mutual aid fund that is providing food stipends to people in need, including the undocumented. With the help of volunteers that speak different languages they are also phone banking vulnerable senior citizens to make sure they are okay and to identify unmet needs. The Smile Trust does not get any funding from the government. Valencia looks at their work as “solidarity not charity.” She pointed out how America is a first world country that creates second class citizens who have to live in third world situations.

Mayra Cruz with Catalyst Miami shared how they aimed to build the health and wealth of low and middle income individuals and families in Miami.  Catalyst Miami provides financial literacy training and leadership and advocacy training, including on issues related to climate and affordable housing. They have shifted how they deliver these services due to the coronavirus pandemic, including a hotline that provides advice with housing issues and navigating the unemployment benefits website. With the hurricane season nearing, they are also looking into how people can safely shelter in place while social distancing and have safe access to food supplies. They have organized demand letters and petitions to the Governor and Florida Power & Light (FPL) to call for a moratorium on utility shut offs. Mayra said “we already knew that a lot of these systems that are in place have been failing our most vulnerable… [and] it's really important… to connect the dots for people: climate change and coronavirus have a lot of similarities. People that are feeling the most impacts are the same ones that have been feeling the impacts of climate change already.” She also warned to not be fooled by the fact that as soon as these economies open up again the assistance people are getting will go away:  “We should be asking... local officials.. how do we come back in a way that's stronger, more resilient?”

Robin Haines Merrill from Fort Lauderdale shared how she was inspired to start a street market initiative to help local farmers and folks in the food and entertainment service industry affected by the pandemic. She said: “I'm basically a recycler…when I saw on social media these huge mounds of green & yellow squash being dumped... I just decided .. I'm gonna go down and just fill up my car and give it away. So that's how it started." Robin is now using donated funds “to buy from the farmers... because they've lost their orders of cruise ships, theme parks, school boards and the restaurants that are closed.” She's been loading up her SUV, going up to a local farm about three times a week and then hosting a “street market” where she gives away the produce for free to those in need. She’s particularly focused on helping those who have lost their jobs in the hospitality and entertainment industries, including restaurant workers, housekeepers, and janitors. She has also been giving produce to “Food Not Bombs” in Fort Lauderdale, who cook it and give it out to the homeless in the area.

Dr. Jennifer Taylor is a university professor at Florida A&M University (FAMU) and an organic farmer who grows vegetables and fruits and models the type of organic systems she teaches about. She coordinates  FAMU’s Statewide Small Farm Program which among others provides hands-on training opportunities to farmers on regenerative organic farming practices and alternative market development via participatory capacity building that helps identify needs and develop solutions. They work to equip underserved farming populations, including indigenous, minority and small-scale farmers. Farmers learn about food sovereignty and organic sustainable living and how to be good stewards of their own farms, their community and the ecosystem. During the current pandemic, they provide guidance so farmers can offer healthy organically-grown produce using social distancing, gloves and masks. Farmers have been experiencing a resurgence of interest from many customers who have found empty shelves at the grocery store. "It's really important for us to reexamine our food system... building in agroecology… providing healthy environments for our farmworkers...and the local community at large…[It’s] a time of reflection.. at seeing how we can do things differently."

Panelists were asked to reflect on how some say to stay in our lane, to focus on just environmental issues, and that social justice has little to do with environmental advocacy.

Valencia responded by quoting Audre Lorde: "There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives." She reminded us how the environmental justice movement started because black communities were getting waste dumped in their neighborhoods and how environmental injustices started with slavery. She said: "I don't even understand the ideology of the separation... Environmental advocacy has to align with social justice because who are you advocating for? What are you pushing if you're not responding to people, to human beings?.. There's no environmental advocacy without it being tied to social justice. It must be, and it always should be... It ain't no lane to stay on when it's only one."

Oscar replied that he finds it very interesting when people not directly affected are talking about climate change. Farmworkers are directly living the consequences of corporate decisions, which is why it’s important for farmworkers to share how they are directly impacted by climate change.

Mayra reflected that "the people that might think that social justice and environmental justice aren't linked don't recognize their privilege...They might be blind to the fact that climate change impacts certain populations disproportionately...You have to humanize these issues.”

Ways to support these frontline groups and community leaders

Farmworker Association of Florida

• Sign these 3 petitions: Tell House Speaker: Stop the Trump admin from lowering farm worker wages during COVID-19, Tell Congress: #ProtectAllWorkers (Food Workers are Not Disposable) and Tell Congress: Future COVID-19 ag legislation must include farm workers
• Donate to their Coronavirus Relief for Farmworkers
• Hear more farmworker stories here, including about their exposure to heat.
• Subscribe to their newsletter.

Coalition of Immokalee Workers

• Sign petition (for individuals): Ask Gov DeSantis: Protect FL farmworkers during the COVID-19 crisis and/or this organization petition for non-profits, unions or any other organization.
• Donate to them here.
• Learn more about their Fair Food Program.
• Subscribe to their newsletter.

The Smile Trust

• To learn more, subscribe or volunteer to fight against homelessness, add your email here.
• If you would like to sponsor an individual or a family, email: [email protected]
• To phonebank senior residents, email: [email protected]
• Donate to them here

Catalyst Miami

• Sign-on to letter calling on FPL to provide transparency and forgiveness in light of COVID19
• Learn about housing justice in the face of climate change, here.
• Donate to them here.
• To partner with them, click here.

Robin Haines Merrill

• To donate to her street market initiative, click here.

Dr. Jennifer Taylor

• To learn more about her work helping small underserved farmers, click here.
• To learn more about IFOAM principles of organic farming she talked about, click here.

For other ways to volunteer online to help FL vulnerable communities during the pandemic, click here.

This story originally appeared in the Sierra Club Florida News

May 11, 2020

By: South Florida Caribbean News

Nonprofit Brings Virtual Mindfulness Practice to Families Who #stayathome with Breathe Overtown Campaign

MIAMI – Holistic Life Foundation (HLF), a nonprofit empowering underserved communities through yoga, mindfulness and self-care practice, along with partners Catalyst Miami and Overtown Children and Youth Coalition (OCYC) is bringing a virtual 14-Day Self-Care Challenge to Overtown families – and beyond – with its Breathe Overtown campaign.

Beginning May 11th and concluding May 28th, Holistic Life Foundation senior staff will lead a 10-minute mindfulness practice via Instagram @HolisticLifeFoundation daily at 10 am.

This “10 @ 10” live daily practice is to encourage and support Overtown-based children and their families to “take a break and breathe” during this often-overwhelming time at home.

Although this partnership began in Overtown, the organizations hope families nationwide will participate in the community mindfulness initiative.

“We are excited to introduce this 14-Day Self-Care Challenge to Overtown with Holistic Life Foundation,” said Graylyn Swilley Woods, Ph.D, executive director of the Overtown Children and Youth Coalition. “The Overtown Children and Youth Coalition welcomed the opportunity to collaborate with the Holistic Life Foundation, nationally recognized for delivering transformative services for at-risk youth.  We want to ensure that our residents have skills to cope during the pandemic and beyond.  The innovative programming with the Holistic Life Foundation will help strengthen the resiliency and Social-Emotional Learning skills of all families in Overtown.”  

“The global pandemic has altered nearly everything about the way we live,” said Holistic Life Foundation co-founder Ali Smith. “Adjusting to this new reality is hard for everyone, with a lot of stress on working parents and young people in particular. Much like our hometown of Baltimore, Overtown is a place with a rich history and a vibrant community, but one with significant obstacles for its residents. We created the Breathe Overtown campaign after a recent Overtown community meeting where local community leaders expressed concern over the impact of such heightened levels of stress. The goal is to alleviate anxiety and focus on self-care to help navigate their feelings through this confusing and difficult time. We also love the idea of making this a family activity for families who are learning how to navigate new routines with children of all ages.”

The Baltimore-based nonprofit recently expanded into South Florida and until school shutdowns due to COVID19, HLF was serving 10,000 youth each week through its partnerships in the Baltimore City Public School system. HLF has been able to pivot its organizational approach to still meet the HLF mission of empowering underserved communities in both locations.

“Catalyst Miami is thrilled to have the opportunity to collaborate with both the Overtown Children and Youth Coalition and the Holistic Life Foundation,” said Gretchen Beesing, CEO of Catalyst Miami. “Synergies exist between the three organizations where we may leverage each other’s strengths to provide innovative programming, working together to strengthen the resiliency and an overall culture of health of all families in Overtown.”

“We are excited that our local partners in the Overtown community helped design this innovative program and are the ones on the ground who can allow us to reach more people,” added Phoebe Haupt, Regional Director of the HLF South Florida Initiative. “Both Catalyst Miami and the Overtown Children and Youth Coalition are well-respected organizations in the community known for their grassroots presence and knowledge of the community.”

To participate in daily instruction from anywhere in the world, follow @HolisticLifeFoundation on Instagram and view stories beginning at 10am 5/11. 

Live video instruction will be available for replay until 10a the following day.

This article originally appeared on South Florida Caribbean News

April 20, 2020

Originally published by Inside Philanthrophy

By: Laurie Mazur

Climate protestors in Miami, where advocates successfully pushed for greater community involvement in key decisions. Hernando Sorzano / Shutterstock

As the saying goes, “When white folks catch a cold, black folks get pneumonia.” Centuries of racist policy and practice mean that people of color are hit first and worst in every crisis. That’s true of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is disproportionately killing African Americans. And it is true of the ongoing crisis of climate change.

Consider this: Neighborhoods scarred by racist redlining practices are nearly five degrees hotter, on average, than their whiter, wealthier counterparts. As a result, those communities are literal hotspots for the urban heat island effect—the deadliest climate impact.

Environmental funders are increasingly aware of the need for a more equitable response to climate change. And in impacted communities across the U.S., local groups—often led by people of color—are tackling the twin challenges of climate and equity.  But for the most part, philanthropic dollars are not reaching those frontline groups. Today, about half of climate funding goes to just 20 national organizations, which are overwhelmingly led by white men.

The Kresge Foundation’s Environment Program is an exception. In 2014, Kresge launched the Climate Resilience and Urban Opportunity (CRUO) initiative, a five-year, $29 million effort that prioritized work led by advocates and organizers in frontline communities.

“We wanted to address the historic disinvestment in community-based organizations,” says Shamar Bibbins, a senior program officer at Kresge who led the CRUO grantmaking. “Our question was, what would look different if we provided significant, sustained funding to help those groups deepen their influence, leadership and capacity around climate change?”

A Path to Victories on Climate

The answer to that question is now coming into view. A recent evaluation of CRUO, conducted by Spark Policy Institute and Ross Strategic, affirms the value of Kresge’s approach. CRUO grantees scored impressive policy wins in their communities, regions and states. Collectively, they built a broader coalition and helped shift thinking about climate resilience.

Importantly, the CRUO grantees showed that investing in frontline communities is a path to victories on climate: “At a time when the U.S. has abandoned global efforts on climate change and there is either paralysis or attacks on environment at the federal level, this grantmaking strategy is working and winning,” says Rachel Leon, executive director of the Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA).

There are several reasons for climate funders’ neglect of frontline communities. First, in the mid-2000s, many of those funders aligned with the Design to Win strategy, a policy agenda focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That strategy called for technically focused, market-based solutions, establishing funding patterns that remain despite diminished prospects for such policy changes at a national scale.

Also, “There was a perception that highly local work couldn’t add up fast enough,” says Lois R. DeBacker, managing director of Kresge’s Environment Program. “And the reality is that it's difficult to get money to small organizations—it’s not easy to give away $18 million in $10K grants.”

There is sometimes a misalignment of scope: “Frontline community groups are often multi-issue, as they should be,” says Leon. “But historically, philanthropy has focused on very specific goals and metrics.” And funders question the capacity of local groups. But that is a “chicken-and-egg” question, says Leon, because foundation support would bolster local groups’ capacity.

More insidiously, grantmaking decisions are shaped by the less-than-inclusive culture of environmental philanthropy. “We hire people and they bring with them certain networks,” says DeBacker, “Many environmental grantmakers are white, and that influences the networks they have and know. And we have mental models of who we view as experts, those we go to for advice—and that creates unintentional, but actual, bias.”

Flipping the Frame

Given those realities, Kresge’s approach was to “flip the frame” of their climate investments, says Bibbins. That meant changing assumptions, strategies and even the foundation’s culture of grantmaking.

As part of a foundation-wide pivot toward expanding opportunities in America’s cities, Kresge’s environment program was charged with developing a climate strategy that prioritized the interests of low-income urban communities of color. “So rather than funding mainstream environmental groups, hoping that they would strengthen their competency around equity, we decided to fund groups whose work was already grounded in equity, to deepen their engagement on climate,” says DeBacker.

CRUO’s grantmaking was divided into two phases. Nine-month planning grants enabled Kresge staff to work with a cohort of grantees as they devised strategies and identified areas for capacity building. Then, in the implementation phase, Kresge funded 15 of the 17 community groups from the planning cohort, focusing on those with the greatest likelihood of success.

Throughout both phases, Kresge worked to remain flexible and adaptive, allowing grantees to respond to changing conditions. This was particularly important after the 2016 election, which presented many grantees with urgent community needs and new political realities. That adaptive approach was supported by dialog with an external advisory committee and grantees, as well as other supports such as peer-learning funds that fostered learning and engagement across the climate-resilience field.

Community building and technical assistance were baked in from the start. In addition to support for local groups, CRUO made grants to a handful of national “field-building” organizations, including the Center for American Progress and EcoAdapt. And Kresge supported various mechanisms—annual convenings, peer-to-peer learning and special-issue convenings—that enabled those groups to learn from one another.

Those connections proved transformational on both ends. Frontline groups got access to the resources of national organizations; the national groups got schooled on the equity challenges facing local groups. As one field-building grantee told the CRUO evaluators, “We've learned tremendously from the first-hand experiences of place-based [organizations]… This knowledge has helped us to craft meaningful policy recommendations that policymakers and local advocates support.”

Kresge also took on what Green 2.0 has called “an overwhelmingly white ‘Green Insiders’ club” by hiring diverse, culturally competent staff. “We’ve hired people, like Shamar [Bibbins], who have really strong commitments to equity, and who have a lived experience of understanding how racism plays out,” says DeBacker. “The intensity of a commitment to equity, and the sense of urgency around it, is stronger for those who have lived it up close and personal.”

A Growing Record of Wins

Together, these approaches led to significant policy wins. In Portland, for example, several CRUO grantees (Coalition of Communities of Color, OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon, Native American Youth and Family Center) helped secure passage of the Portland Clean Energy Fund. The fund imposes a surcharge on retailers with over $1 billion in annual sales, generating $30 million a year for clean energy projects, job training, local food production, and green infrastructure. Crucially, the fund directs resources to Portlanders who are impacted by climate change but historically excluded from the emerging low-carbon economy.

In Fresno, California, the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability worked with partners to redirect state climate funds to under-invested neighborhoods in West Fresno and secured new statewide guidelines that require community engagement and support in allocating those funds. In Miami, Florida, Catalyst Miami pushed city officials to ensure that the $400 million Miami Forever Bond includes a Citizens Oversight Board that represents the interests of the community and has a say in how bond money is allocated.

As frontline groups secure policy wins, they are producing tectonic shifts in thinking about the climate movement. “The grantees really forced us to expand our vision of what constitutes climate work, because they are coming at the work from such a holistic, intersectional approach,” says Bibbins.

That expansive vision has been embraced by other funders, notably the JPB Foundation, which supports the Institute for Sustainable Communities’ Partnership for Resilient Communities. Leon, of EGA, says that support for environmental justice issues among her group’s members has been steadily rising for the last few years.

Fundamentally, the CRUO initiative showed the value of investment in frontline communities—not only because those communities are most vulnerable in a warming world. Frontline groups bring invaluable assets to the climate fight—including trusted leaders, deep knowledge of local conditions and history, and hard-won experience fighting against inequity. Paired with philanthropic resources, frontline groups are poised to win on the entwined challenges of climate change and inequity.

This story originally appeared on Inside Philanthropy

May 9, 2020

By: David Ovalle