Driving Civic Wealth: Impact Hub in the Landscape
For the final installment of the Designed to be Connected Series, I wanted to move beyond the walls of Impact Hub entirely. Over the past eight weeks, I noticed how the Impact Hub team often speaks in terms of “ecosystem” work — a way of conceptualizing their place in the Baltimore community that takes into account all the movements of other organizations, businesses, government stakeholders and more.
For the onlooker, this might not immediately translate into what exactly ecosystem work looks like in practice.
To make visible what ecosystem work looks like, I map out Impact Hub’s initiatives in Baltimore City, across sectors, with different partner organizations. I spoke with Impact Hub Co-Founder Michelle Geiss and Managing Director Eric Lin about how they plug into collaborative efforts. I end with a conversation with Jay Nwachu, the CEO and President of Innovation Works, as well as longtime Impact Hub member, about the larger vision of community-driven work.
At the forefront of everything Impact Hub does is community; it’s prioritized from the very beginning of any and all work the hub does. This prioritization takes the shape of civic wealth — or the combination of both economic growth and communal wealth.
Impact Hub drives civic wealth through direct support to grassroots leaders, advocacy, and partnership. They sit on panels, consult on city projects, convene conversations, host their own accelerators, and make visible the great work of grassroots leaders in Baltimore.
The Hub, in this way, is an intermediary organization, serving as a bridge between institutions and implementers while also advocating for grassroots leaders. At the same time, Impact Hub is an intermediary between the local and global scale. As part of the global Impact Hub network, Impact Hub Baltimore serves as a conduit for resources and opportunities for the city. Sometimes, this manifests as being able to platform local Baltimore social entrepreneurs to the global network. Other times, this arrives as large initiatives and projects.
A hallmark example from early in the Hub’s history is their involvement with Red Bull’s Amaphiko, a project designed to platform, support, and resource grassroot social entrepreneurs. Red Bull first worked with Impact Hub Johannesburg in South Africa. When they decided to bring the program to Baltimore in August 2017, they decided to work with the local Impact Hub because of their good experience and familiarity with global network’s core values and position in the city ecosystem — namely as a steward of trust and a catalyst for relationships and connections.
Impact Hub Baltimore’s Co-Founder Michelle Geiss explained that although their work with Red Bull Amaphiko was three years ago, it still has its positive effects to this day.
“There’s still people who went through that program who are getting certain kinds of visibility and certain kinds of support because of the relationships they formed. This is an example where you see the promise of how a global network can help you to bring in resources that are values aligned, that root down, and allow people to be visible beyond Baltimore and taken seriously on the global stage.”
Since then, Impact Hub Baltimore has plugged into a wide host of initiatives in Baltimore City, working with organizations including the Station North Tool Library, Baltimore Development Corporation, and more.
How Impact Hub Shows Up
Given Impact Hub’s involvement in so many city initiatives, it’s important to understand what their core values and beliefs are. When it comes to the underlying philosophy behind Impact Hub’s work in Baltimore, Michelle Geiss describes it in a yes-and thinking approach.
“Baltimore has everything it needs to address its own challenges. That’s true and also that there needs to be shifts in power and resources and access.”
With this in mind, Impact Hub focuses on empowering and advocating for the community to tap into their own unique strengths and talents to help solve the city’s most pressing issues, and also drive civic wealth throughout the city by focusing on equity. The approach is entirely adapted to Baltimore’s specific context.
Both Co-Founder Michelle Geiss and Managing Director Eric Lin plug into the Baltimore Small Business Support Fund (BSBSF), a group formed to create more entrepreneurial access to funding and increase the reach of community development financial institutions (CDFIs). When the pandemic hit, the BSBSF reoriented itself to aid people in navigating COVID-19 relief programs.
As governmental PPE loans began rolling out last year, both Michelle and Eric agreed on a massive design flaw in those loans: they were first-come-first-serve. Subsequently, many organizations with big operating budgets and the bandwidth to complete those applications quickly received the bulk of those loans.
When Baltimore City had the funds to start similar initiatives, Impact Hub lent their voices to the proponents of making access to funds take an equity approach.
As part of the Technical Assistance Network led by the Baltimore Development Corporation (BDC), Impact Hub also helps to drive similar endeavors. Michelle Geiss explains that the hub’s role in the network echoes its role in other projects — what it often is asked to do at the ecosystem level is to represent the needs of its constituency in terms of how resources and opportunities are getting deployed.
In 2020, Impact Hub helped with vendor selection in the new Lexington Market, as well as being involved with Baltimore Together’s Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) process — a process that occurs every five years that Baltimore City completes to access federal funding.
This past process, Eric Lin recounts, was an in-house process that the BDC ran. Representatives from across the city were invited to sit in working groups to develop a comprehensive plan. While still somewhat skeptical about how much influence these working groups had, Eric hopes that the plan helps hold city officials accountable.
“Whether or not they actually incorporate our feedback or just prioritize developers still remains to be seen, but because the report was developed in such a participatory, collaborative way, now the community has a lot more ammunition for accountability. You can no longer say, “No one ever said we should think about or do it this way, or do that, or do another thing.” They can’t say that anymore because we’re sitting on recorded Zoom calls in committee meetings with them, so that leaves me hopeful that things will turn out better.”
What all of these examples show is a commitment to advocate for and empower grassroots leaders and open up funding access in an intentionally equitable way. Impact Hub drives social change on the ecosystem level by de-siloing resources, breaking down barriers, and promoting its thought-leadership on a city-wide scale.
Beyond the Hub: How Innovation Works and Other Intermediaries Align
Jay Nwachu, the president and CEO of Innovation Works, and president of Ignite Capital, also works on the ecosystem-level like Impact Hub. His organizations support social enterprises in Baltimore City through learning, coaching, mentoring, and financial support. As one of the early members of Impact Hub, and through his own extensive work, he offers a crucial perspective on what it means to work on an ecosystem level and in an intermediary role.
Jay got involved with Impact Hub years ago, before the physical space even existed. He attended the original SocEnt Breakfasts and had meetings with Co-Founders, Rodney Foxworth, Pres Adams, and Michelle Geiss while he was working in the private sector. At the same time, he had started his own social venture supporting social entrepreneurs across Africa from Baltimore City. He attended several co-design sessions with the early Impact Hub community and eventually became a member when the space was launched.
Given his extensive experience, Jay emphasized the position leadership puts grassroots leaders and social entrepreneurs in:
“One thing I’ve always appreciated and recognized is that leadership in general is lonely. Leadership in an impact oriented space is even more lonely. Leadership in an impact oriented space in a place like Baltimore City — with so many challenges — can be even more incredibly lonely. Because you’re essentially stepping up to tell people that you can lead a movement, a mission, or people to address some of the challenges we have in the city, which means you have to have your shit together. Most of us don’t have our shit together. But, somebody’s gotta do it.”
It was his desire for community that led him to Impact Hub. Having a community, he explained, helped to retain and support leaders so they can continue their work. Being at Impact Hub allows him the flexibility to enter into and exit community when he needs to, especially since working at Innovation Works involves a great deal of hands-on work and relationship building.
The mission of Innovation Works, Jay explained, is to reduce the racial wealth divide in the city, along with the overlap in spatial divide because Baltimore is a very hyper-segregated city based on income class. Like Impact Hub, Innovation Works — who supports social entrepreneurs from idea to scale — also stands as an intermediary between entrepreneurs and investors. Part of this intermediary work is to challenge persisting paradigms.
“How do we flip the model on its head and how do we start thinking about risk in a different way? What is the risk in not investing? If we don’t invest in this neighborhood that’s consistently faced blight and property taxes don’t exist, the longer you go without investing in that place, the worse it is and the harder it is to come back from it.
The risk of not investing is continued disinvestment, which means we have to get creative now to solve some of those problems. All those things dictate how we pour into the entrepreneurs we support with executive mentors, and curriculum, and the patience, and love, and finances, and all the stuff that comes into the model.”
Challenging How Intermediaries Operate
At the same time, however, Jay pointed out the importance of continually questioning and evolving the work as community needs change. Because of the way the system is set up, intermediaries can be necessary in convincing those with power and privilege to invest their money in disinvested communities. He warned that because of this, intermediaries often see themselves as a necessary part of the ecosystem.
Jay demonstrates the complexities of both ecosystem work and being an intermediary and how incredibly important it is for the intermediary to constantly ensure that they’re supporting the communities they’re intending to support, and not just working to justify their own existence.
“We should be putting ourselves out of business. In an ideal world, the intermediary ceases to exist when the communities that we’re trying to be the intermediary for, the ones being served, when they get to a place of sustainability, when they can control their own vision. But, we can exist in different forms. We can be a service provider.”
Impact Hub, he explained, as with all other intermediaries, need to constantly assess what their value-proposition is to Baltimore City, and how they can aid and not impede resources getting to the people who need them.
The Real Work
Impact Hub’s approach and thought leadership, particularly in that of shifting and sharing powers, and that of being conveners and a connective fabric, drives a particular narrative — Baltimore has everything it needs to thrive.
As intermediaries, we can empower grassroots leaders to drive solutions they know will work based on their own life experiences. These narratives inform systems change because they change the way we approach issues. Foundational to any approach, of course, are people, relationships and trust.
When explaining Impact Hub’s continued existence in the city, Eric cites this trust.
“It’s our ability to meet people where they are and to value people for what they bring, and not who they are or where they come from. We try to be good stewards of that trust and to use it in ways that are hopefully beneficial for the community and the city, and I think people see that. Trust is reciprocal.”
Michelle Geiss agrees, explaining that Impact Hub looks forward to working with more organizations and partners, indicative of a desire to shift and share power.
“It’s great to have more partners in the landscape. We’ve been singing that song for a long time. Maybe it’s counterintuitive to traditional ways of thinking about an organization but we’re very noncompetitive in that sense. If you’re winning, we’re winning, other people are winning, let’s just all keep it moving and try not to be territorial about stuff. We’re propped up by the thing we’re trying to make. I like the integrity of that.
It’s definitely complex, but that’s what a healthy system looks like: there’s these intertwined connections and accountability structures, there’s also sustainability structures, and the more you’re making sure everyone is evolving forward in a good way, it breathes health into the system.”
Impact Hub’s work on the ecosystem level is guided by these principles of trust, of equity, and of new narratives toward a shared future and community in Baltimore City. Cultivating and shepherding trust is integral to any work. Jay Nwachu explains, in light of the pandemic’s shift to remote-working, that at its core, community is built on showing up.
“Community is so important and it begins with in-person dynamics. In Baltimore — and trust me on this — in-person dynamics are core to community building. Folks in Baltimore don’t care what you’re going to say; I need to see what you’re going to do because we’ve heard it all.”
To drive civic wealth, to directly support the community, you have to act on what you say you will do. This is where trust comes in; showing up and doing the work — being reliable — is one of the strongest ways to cultivate trust in a relationship. Impact Hub endeavors to continue showing up and do the work.
Reflection Questions & Additional Reading
- How do your actions affect others in your community? How can you be more intentional in how you act?
- How can you join together on projects and initiatives with other leaders and organizations in your sector?
- Learn more about what Innovation Works is doing in Baltimore City
Enjoyed this piece?
This story is final installment of the Designed to be Connected Series created by Ryan Aghamohammadi, Impact Hub’s talented JHU Community Impact Intern.
The five stories making up the series cover topics ranging from member spotlights, to Impact Hub’s origins, to what it means to do ecosystem work. They can be read in order or as standalone pieces. We hope these stories serve as an introduction (or re-introduction) to Impact Hub and the people who make it up.
