HARTFORD — Several Connecticut organizations led by people of color, including three from Hartford, will participate in training to help them get grant funding and build organizational capacity — luxuries traditionally afforded to white-led organizations.
The Local Initiatives Support Coalition of Connecticut is leading the program with funding from the JPMorgan Chase Foundation. Hartford’s Blue Hills Civic Association, San Juan Center and the Urban League of Greater Hartford will participate in the cohort with four other community development organizations from Bridgeport, New Haven and Waterbury. Leaders from each group will get funding and information on how to build capacity and capital in organizations that are often understaffed and underfunded.
“Disproportionately, nonprofit organizations led by Black and brown CEOs are funded at a lower level than organizations doing the same work led by a white individual,” said David Hopkins, CEO of the Urban League of Greater Hartford. “And so that creates a level of funding gap in trying to do the same work.”
A 2020 Bridgespan and Echoing Green study found that when BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) led organizations won unrestricted grants, the funds were 76 percent less than their white-led counterparts. Furthermore, among BIPOC-led organizations focused on improving the lives of Black men, the unrestricted funds were 91 percent smaller than those with white leaders.
Leaders at LISC, which aims to improve opportunities through housing and funding for people across the country, acknowledged they, too, have disproportionately funded white-led organizations simply because BIPOC-led groups lacked the infrastructure to process the money.
“We realized that we were funding white-led groups, compared to Black or brown-led groups at a rate of nearly four to one,” said Kasey LaFlam, senior program officer at LISC. “We have asked ourselves, why is that? It usually came back to Section 4 funds as federal dollars are really just time-consuming and difficult to administer if you don’t have the right staff or technology or internal systems in place to be able to do that.”
A $300,000 investment from JPMorgan Chase will fund peer learning sessions with a consultant to allow the seven groups to share best practices and plan for the future. Additionally, each organization will receive pre-application support to apply for the United States Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Section 4 Capacity Building grant.
LISC will provide $25,000 to $50,000 in subgrants to support staff salaries and technology upgrades.
“People who work in our organization are committed to our mission,” Hopkins said. “They love the work, but at the same time, they may be taking a pay cut, and some families can only take that for so long. How can this capacity building help us build up our financial position so that we can pay people more competitively?”
The program kicked off recently, but the first workshops with the organizations will take place in May. LISC anticipates the program will run through the fall of 2024.
“We are hoping that this will really be the start of a longer-term relationship and a longer term way of thinking about how we approach working with our partners, especially Black and brown-led organizations,” LaFlam said.
emily.disalvo@hearstmediact.com
Source: ctinsider.com
