By now, it's old news. COVID-19 swiftly and shockingly – if not surprisingly – laid bare the nation's vast, systemic racial and economic inequities. The disproportionality of the toll on lives and livelihoods and the frightening risks faced by millions of low-wage employees on the front lines who were suddenly recognized as "essential workers" has settled a paramount certainty: A return to business as usual ––getting back to "normal" after the pandemic –– is not an option.
As did fellow members of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Catalyzing Community Giving (CCG) cohort when confronted by the pandemic's onset, United Way of the Battle Creek and Kalamazoo Region (UWBCKR) turned its immediate focus to mobilizing donors and partners and directing resources to its grantee nonprofits as they struggled to meet unprecedented levels of urgent community need. A disaster relief fund raised and deployed $1.7 million for food, housing, child care and other emergency assistance. The Kalamazoo Small Business Loan Fund, created in partnership with the city of Kalamazoo, has provided more than 75 local employers access to low-interest loans to keep their doors open and their workers on the job. Through another partnership with Kalamazoo Micro-Enterprise Grants, awards of $5,000 went to 100 of the city's smallest entrepreneurs –– many of whom are members of Kalamazoo's Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities. This three-pronged response prioritized the populations most heavily impacted by the pandemic: BIPOC and families that are asset limited, income constrained, and employed (ALICE).
While the impact of the pandemic underscored UWBCKR's impetus, the funder had made the strategic decision months before to tighten its focus on equity work and improved outcomes for ALICE families and BIPOC communities, and embarked on a fundamental reassessment of its role as a regional grantmaker and convener. In an intentional shift away from the standard funder-grantee power dynamic, it will seek to be guided by its partner nonprofits and community organizations in identifying the region's most critical community needs and the support that will best respond to them.
The Village
This shift is evident in the nature of UWBCKR's support of The Village Reemergence Plan, a comprehensive effort unveiled this summer to dismantle systemic and structural barriers to equity and prosperity in the Black, Burmese, and Latinx communities of Battle Creek. Organized as a UWBCKR initiative and supported through a CCG grant, its approach is rooted in a number of CCG's strategic priorities –– building philanthropic capacity, fostering partnerships and network building, collecting and sharing data –– aimed at expanding the financial resources available to communities of color and increasing grassroots participation in how those resources are distributed. In 2020, Kellogg provided the seed funding for the Village, taking the fundamentals of previous planning processes and applying them across BIPOC communities in Battle Creek. To date, the foundation's investment has totaled nearly $1.4 million.
"Our role is to provide the technical and capacity support for the creation of the framework that lifts community voice into action,” says Nakia Baylis, senior director of data and equitable systems at UWBCKR. "So it is through community conversations that we learn what residents and other community stakeholders need and want. We are not creating the plan; we are supporting the creation of the framework."
Traditionally, "BIPOC leadership has been asked to co-sign instead of lead," notes Alyssa Stewart, vice president for impact and engagement. "What the Village shows is that they've had the trust of the residents they serve all along; they just haven’t been resourced and recognized as broadly as we believe it should be. With this new energy, resources, support, and visibility," she says, a greater space is being created for community-connected philanthropic leadership in Battle Creek.
The Village effort is being led by a cohort of eight community leaders who work collaboratively on issues affecting Battle Creek's BIPOC residents while they continue to serve and advocate for their specific communities. Each will co-lead one of the Village's four "planning pillars" –– industry and food; education; health and wellness; and personal growth and advocacy.
"We have developed a team that provides technical and capacity supports, coaching, and tools," Baylis says. "We hold ourselves accountable. It's responding to immediate needs communicated from the ground level. It's providing support for BIPOC leaders in building visibility, and acknowledgment of the communities most impacted by the issues they are seeking to address.
"Before you 'level the playing field,'" she points out, "restoration must take place. You have to restore the people and their leaders first and foremost. That’s equity versus equality."
Seeding Grants Program
In September 2020, the COVID shutdown allowed UWBCKR to take a dramatic step in its transformation in announcing it would hit the pause button on RFP applications for two years while it prepared a new funding process for grants to begin in July 2023. Plans will be shared in October for that 2023–24 grants process, which will launch in 2022.
The first priority was to stabilize partner support –– "more important now than ever,"
Stewart says, "locking it in because we know COVID is going to have ongoing impacts" and allowing service providers to continue vital work without having to face "extra work in a time of crisis."
In that interim, a new Seeding Grants Program, resourced by a pot of about $375,000 in internally allocated funds, will fund financial and capacity-building support that is focused on growing partnerships with BIPOC-led and BIPOC-serving organizations. The one-time grants of up to $60,000 in unrestricted funding will be made available to at least five organizations across the region; the program's aim, Stewart says, is to direct resources that have typically been excluded from UWBCKR's traditional grantmaking and ensure that help is available to communities that would otherwise be locked out of such support during the hiatus on new grants.
"We have several identity-based organizations," says Stewart, "the Urban League, the Burma Center, and Voces, for example, that are led by resident-trusted BIPOC leaders who haven’t historically been invited to all of the decision-making tables. We are leveraging our organizational power and privilege to ensure a seat at every table for these leaders. We want to demonstrate that by doing something that hasn’t been done, we can impact outcomes that haven’t been seen before –– by sharing and even transferring power."
The program "is based on trust and what we’re learning through the CCG project," she says. "We can invest the money where it’s needed. CCG gave us the courage to do that. It shows us what can be accomplished if we just get out of the way."
'We Are Providing an Example'
The departure from its traditional approach to grantmaking left some of UWBCKR's partners "uncomfortable and/or curious," Baylis says, "so we continue to have conversations with our stakeholders about why we fundamentally believe it is necessary to make this move."
The pandemic "allowed us to throw a lot of things out of the window," Stewart says. "In some cases it was very painful, but as a funder we are privileged to have some autonomy, and it gave us permission."
At the same time, Baylis adds, "new funders that are coming along are asking for help on how they can do things differently, how they can lift the community voice into their work. We are providing an example, and inviting our funding partners to share space with community members: Hear what they're saying; see them," she says. "Acknowledge all of their glorious assets. And take into account the conditions that are creating the barriers. Let's really dig deep.
"In leaning into our values around equity, diversity, and inclusion," Baylis says, "this work really provided us with a platform and opportunity to try new things, to step out and take some significant risks that organizations of this size have tended to shy away from. And we've been able to share our learning with our United Way partners across the state. Everything we're learning and sharing seems to be resonating."