No Better Time To Close Racial Gaps
At a recent gathering of big city chiefs of staff at our Project on Municipal Innovation, a participant taking stock of how much the group has been able to learn from one another turned to one of his colleagues and remarked, “There’s never been a better time to be in government.” I agree, the opportunities to come together and learn from counterparts in other cities are plentiful at events offered by Living Cities, as well as groups like Governing Magazine, the National League of Cities, US Conference of Mayors, What Works Cities, and CityLab. There has also never been a better time to be in philanthropy working with local government as the champion of social change, especially in our efforts to close racial gaps in income and wealth. This was not a position I always held.
A social justice organization I once worked with in Newark is like one of the many examples Ben Hecht wrote about in the first essay in this series, Government as Tomorrow’s Social Innovator, that had all of the right ideas, but not the scale that could drive change on a systemic level for people returning home from prison. Ultimately, we were one of the lucky ones that was absorbed into city government in the Office of Reentry several years later. We had initially braided philanthropic, CDBG, and federal dollars to run our project outside of City Hall to prove that a combination of counseling, transitional jobs, and wrap-around services would reduce recidivism. We created a community by convening other reentry providers to share best practices and begin a seamless referral system. On the other hand, we also found our relationships strained when we would compete to submit winning RFPs to the city, the state, local and/or national foundations. It was untenable to continue to operate in a way that the city was better poised to do. So the city hired a reentry director and a team for the Office of Reentry and took on our transitional jobs program and assumed their role in convening reentry providers and referring residents coming home to their services.
There has also never been a better time to be in philanthropy working with local government as the champion of social change especially in our efforts to close racial gaps in income and wealth. This was not a position I always held.
I usually focus on the bright side: it was a success to have our project institutionalized and taken to scale to serve all of the city’s residents. However, for the people we wanted to serve and their families, our project may have represented more time lost or another closed door. We weren’t located where people would go to find our services, like prisons, half-way houses, or the One-Stop Career Center. Until we developed partnerships and informed staff at these locations, potential participants for our program had to be lucky to find out what we offered. I also think about the men we turned away because we could. We chose who we served. If someone had a sexual offense, for instance, our board decided we wouldn’t serve them: it was too risky for successful job placement and it would increase the liability on our insurance.
When I later joined the City of Newark as its first Food Policy Director, the city took a risk in creating a role to prioritize food security and address it at the systems level. It was an unusual position that had few models to follow and it was being added at a time when employment in city government had shrunk by 25%. The city pulled together discretionary funds and philanthropic dollars to add me to the Department of Economic and Housing Development’s Office of Sustainability where I would be able to work with all city departments. At that time there were only 11 other food policy positions like mine across the country. (As of 2016 the number doubled.)
As a social justice worker and advocate, I was wary of institutionalizing my role and saw myself as an extension of the stakeholders who were repairing our food system with minimal government support and the residents who didn’t even know it could be someone’s job to think of solutions 24/7 to their food access challenges. Indeed, my role was created in response to the community’s requests: non-profits, environmental education centers, elementary schools, urban farmers, senior centers, universities, farmers’ markets, and food pantries and food entrepreneurs to name a few, who wanted a champion in city hall. These residents couldn’t wait for a new budget cycle or council to approve a new position.
I soon realized that they were right to demand that the city create my coordinating and policy-making role. It was the city’s job to make sure their voices were heard, not just in city hall but also at our county, state, and national offices to improve the delivery of services and benefits like WIC and SNAP that were controlled by other levels of government. Although many of these individuals and organizations were funded by the city and community foundations to provide health and wellness education activities, their dollars couldn’t meet the demand that a coordinated program like Let’s Move! Newark with Newark Public Schools involvement could. And while many of them got their hands dirty to turn vacant lots into food oases or start food businesses, they encountered regulations that limited their ability to invest in long-term solutions to growing or selling food that required new zoning laws to be enacted.
The foundations that supported my role and our office stretched their investments in solutions further than prior piecemeal approaches. Not only did we leverage city dollars, but also mobilized our workforce and activated our relationships. For example, when we created a policy that all city -supported farmers’ markets had to accept SNAP, residents increased their purchasing power for fresh foods, local farmers and vendors enjoyed increased revenue from SNAP sales, and the organizers of the farmer’s markets experienced increased foot traffic. In another example, multiple departments such as Traffic & Signals Water & Sewer and Law, contributed to the establishment of a 2.5 acre farm in one of the city’s most distressed neighborhoods. The farm wasn’t in their budget nor their priority but to make the farm a reality, I needed their buy-in, their procured contractor, and their legal counsel. Philanthropic investment of less than $100k/year unlocked these and other improved city functions and services with ripple effects that continue today.
Now that I am in philanthropy, I am honored to invest in public servants through our initiatives, like the City Accelerator or Racial Equity Here. I recognize and continue to witness their tireless dedication, am inspired by their entrepreneurship within government, and am humbled by their disregard for credit and recognition. We should all see our public sector colleagues as our best allies and champions in our effort to close racial gaps in income and wealth. There’s never been a better time than now to be in philanthropy and invest in local government.
This essay is part of a series titled, Accelerate This! Government as Social Innovator, which features leaders at the intersection of philanthropy and government offering ideas about how non-public dollars can be used to drive innovation and systemic change on complex social issues. The Accelerate This!Government as Social Innovator national symposium will take on May 1, 2018 in Los Angeles and feature systems-changing innovations from cities that can be adapted for your community. The event is part of the City Accelerator, an initiative led by Living Cities and supported by the Citi Foundation. For more information, click here.
