As the President and CEO of the Consumer Health Foundation (CHF), Yanique Redwood is responsible for the strategic, programmatic, financial and administrative operations. She joined the Washington D.C. based CHF team in 2012 as its second President and CEO. Prior to joining CHF, Yanique worked for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, where she managed the health and mental health portfolio of grants and the evaluation of Evidence2Success. She also provided leadership for the Race, Class, and Culture Committee of the Evidence-Based Practice Team.

Additionally, Yanique worked for the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and directed a community-based participatory research initiative in Atlanta funded by the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health. In 2012, she was named a Terrance Keenan Institute Emerging Leader in Health Philanthropy by Grantmakers in Health and in 2016, she was named a Business Alliance for Local Living Economies fellow. She was elected to the Board of Directors of the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers in 2013. Yanique has degrees from Georgia Institute of Technology (B.S.) and University of Michigan School of Public Health (Ph.D., M.P.H.). Throughout her training and career, she has focused on addressing the social determinants of health including racial equity.

II: What lived experiences guided you to this work and allow you to show up to it in the way that you do?

YR: I didn’t know I was Black until I moved to this country; I’m from Jamaica. At about eleven years old, I was old enough to understand that we were Black people, and there were White people, and there was something negative about being Black. That was my first understanding of race.

We were a middle class family in Jamaica, and in Jamaica there are problems with race, but it’s more colorism. The lighter you are, the better you are, and so I knew we were doing okay. We were doing better than some people, people who tended to be darker skinned than us, but not as good as some of the people who were lighter skinned than us. I knew there was something going on but it wasn’t until I got here and my father was working that I began to understand class. He was an accountant in Jamaica but then he became a taxi cab driver here. He was throwing newspapers;he was really struggling to find work. My mom was working really low wage jobs answering phones. I started to understand some differences as it related to class.

I remember when I was on hall patrol (in school), there was a kid that came up to me crying and saying that another kid called him a Jamaican. It was right when I got to this country and I was like, “Okay, he’s crying. He’s saying another kid called him a Jamaican, so obviously it’s a bad term.” I’m Jamaican. It was all starting to come together that there was something wrong with being Black, something wrong with being an immigrant or Jamaican, and something wrong with being poor. Those kinds of experiences coming from one country to another really started to shape the social issues that I began to really think about. Later, I learned about the Tuskegee Syphilis study and that was the confirmation that I needed to begin doing something different with my career.

II: How have health care practices and policies affected people of color and their livelihoods over time?

YR: Even though CHF works on health care, we think about health much more broadly. While we have a health care portfolio, we also have a portfolio that’s focused on economic justice. We believe that people need safe and affordable housing, access to good food, to be able to live in neighborhoods that are safe, and jobs that allow for a living wage in order to be healthy. We don’t believe that we can simply talk about health care.

Even then, there are some very significant challenges with our healthcare system. Right now, just think about all the debate just trying to get people access. People need access to health care, but they’re getting access to a system that is still very discriminatory.

Look at the research comparing how whites and Blacks get treated when they get into the system. There are several studies. Doctors will, on average, provide different treatment options for Black people versus white people. And Black people will get less of what they’re supposed to get than white people.

We’re fighting for people to have access to more health care, but that access is to a system that’s hurting us and still has the remnants of institutional racism in it. As a result, we have poorer health outcomes. It’s pervasive. It’s not just on the healthcare side, it’s all throughout our society. Sometimes I don’t even know how we make it given how much there is stacked against us.

II: How do redlining and displacement affect the health and overall well-being of those they are impacting? When you displace one or many families, what does that do? What does it do to community?

YR: Mindy T. Fullilove, a professor at Columbia and a psychiatrist, has a book called Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It, and she talks about the trauma of displacement. It’s not just, “you’ve been displaced this one time, but over and over again.”

For example, imagine a neighborhood that stops receiving investment and then the property values start to drop. This is typically where people of color live.The land becomes so cheap over time and then developers start to stake it out and cities will say “we’ll sell this for a dollar. Literally, we’ll sell you this for a dollar.” So developers come in, do what they do, buy cheap, sell high. On top of all of that, people have seen roads and highways built right through their neighborhoods.

A 'Forgotten History' Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America

Displacement starts to happen; families get fractured and there’s trauma that is never accounted for. It would almost be okay if you experienced one trauma, but it’s trauma after trauma after trauma your whole life, and your parents’ lives, and your grandparents’ lives, and we’re not accounting for that. When we make our policies, we don’t account for that historical trauma.

II: What does grantmaking paired with trauma-informed approach look like or consist of for communities of color who’ve been historically disenfranchised?

YR: Here’s what I think has happened as it relates to philanthropy. In the United States, we’ve had this system of racism starting with slavery. And we know this history, Jim Crow, Redlining, different starting points for Black people versus white people in terms of working for pay, which has led to very different trajectories for Whites as a population and Blacks as a population and now Latinos and other communities of color.. As you think about all of that piled on over time, those very different sets of life experiences, the effects can’t help but show up in nonprofits. Nonprofits led by people of color have lower budgets and fewer resources, which creates this kind of difference in capacity between white-led organizations and organizations led by people of color. And then philanthropy can say, “we can’t fund you because you don’t have capacity.”

We in philanthropy have to do something different or else we’re continuing to recreate those different trajectories. It’s about acknowledging this history of racism and saying “we’re going to invest to fix this.” To fix it, to undo it, to turn it around, whatever you want to call it. To me, philanthropy is in the best position to do that work because we have so much freedom to really do that type of acknowledgement and that investment.

II: How effective is philanthropy at investing in and supporting disenfranchised communities?

YR: I think the critique might be, in general, we’re not doing such a great job. However, I think there are some opportunities. Since the Black Lives Matter movement took off, there has been increased momentum around these issues and it has created an opening that was not there before. For me, I’m much more bold in what I talk about than I was before. I feel like I have permission now. I feel much more empowered now to talk about the truth as I see it.

There is also a group of funders in D.C. who have gone through a series called “Putting Racism on the Table.” It’s a six-part series for CEOs of foundations and trustees to learn about racism. It’s been phenomenal. Out of that a working group has formed. There are 20 plus members who are committed to figuring out what philanthropy’s response is in terms of advancing racial equity. While in general we haven’t done a very good job, there are some openings for philanthropy to do something different. I’m seeing it locally in D.C. CHF has been alone on these issues for a long time. To have other colleagues who are now committed and working together to try to figure out our role makes me really, really hopeful.

II: How would you say philanthropy can tackle disrupting this system?

YR: We have to begin asking our grantee partners, regardless of whether the organization is people of color-led or white-led, to demonstrate that what they’re doing is advancing racial equity. It’s from a very practical standpoint to begin using tools like a racial equity impact assessment tool to enable organizations to demonstrate that what they are working on, whether its advocacy or something else, isn’t hurting but instead advancing racial equity for people of color.

I would also recommend an organizational assessment tool to help an organization figure out if [the organization] still has racist practices. Is it paying attention to issues of diversity? Is it paying attention to issues of equity inside of the organization? Not what it does outside, but how it handles itself inside: Who is [the organization] purchasing from, who are [the] vendors, who sits on [their] boards, who do [they] hire? All of these internal practices need to be analyzed because this country is built on this foundation of racism and that means every organization has a taste of it and has to be working actively to undo it.

II: How does the Consumer Health Foundation self-assess and measure success and impact?

YR: We have a set of diversity and equity indicators to monitor how we’re doing as it relates to equity internally. It asks us to assess our board composition. We have to have one of the most diverse boards in this region and in the country! We use a diversity matrix to annually monitor our board composition. We also look at staffing, our procurement , and who is responding to our RFPs.

The measuring of success and impact is a little tricky. We have moved away from traditional success markers and impact markers like “did a policy change?” or “did a group of advocates win something?” We still ask those questions, but we’re more interested now in how advocates are working together and how advocates are using a racial equity lens. We care more about whether advocates have community members at the table, whether advocates are including community members voices in their work, and how they’re sharing resources with each other. We care more about how the field of advocates is working versus, “did you do this one thing?”

We want our grantee partners to use a racial equity lens, so we have provided trainings on how to apply a racial equity lens to their advocacy. It’s not just winning a policy, but determining if that policy will advance equity for people of color. If we were really asking questions about the history of racism in this country, we might come up with different policies–we might, but we’re not even asking those questions. I feel people are ashamed of that past and don’t want to go back there and so, are unknowingly or knowingly perpetuating the same inequities. Our foundation is interested in getting people to go back to stop the cycles of inequity.

II: Washington D.C. is one of the most inequitable places in the country where the top fifth of earners make $259K on average and the bottom fifth earn only $9K. This type of economic segregation also occurs in Baltimore. How does that impact your work and how can foundations help cities like D.C. and Baltimore come to grips with and address the situation? How is CHF’s endowment currently being invested to do so?

YR: Our foundation has had a history of impact investing. We deployed two impact investments about 15 years ago and they just returned the principal to us. Fifteen years ago that thinking was new, and we were trying to figure out how to do it. In December of last year, we approved a carve out of our endowment and have since made three investments. We really want to target them this time in some of the areas that we may not fund, but believe are going to help address some of these inequities.

The first one is an impact investment related to affordable housing. The second is an investment in entrepreneurship, especially among women and people of color. It’s pretty clear that many people of color are locked out of the traditional job system, whether it’s because of something like a name or a background, and entrepreneurship is a way out of these kinds of income inequities.We want to invest our endowment in those kinds of opportunities so we do just that.

The final investment is a loan loss reserve. In the case, if there is some sort of default on a loan to an entrepreneur, the foundation has taken on that risk in order to make capital available to entrepreneurs of color who would not qualify for a regular bank loan. Those are some of the ways that we’re trying to address some of these socio-economic inequities even though we’re a small foundation.

II: What is needed for comprehensive systems change and what does getting to the root really mean? What does it look, sound, and feel like?

YR: This example has been on my mind a lot lately as we’ve released our RFP with the requirement to use the racial equity impact assessment tool. I remember meeting with someone who was telling me all about a program to help people of color in the district to save money in order to buy homes because there is a realization that people of color in this city are less likely to own a home. “Let’s help people save money. They need to learn budget[ing], financial literacy, how to put their money in accounts so they can save for a home.”

However, I have major problems with that strategy. If you’re serious about getting to the root of why people of color in this city and others like it are not homeowners at the rate that whites are, you must look at redlining. You cannot not look at things like deeds that limited the sale of homes to Black people. If you’re really serious, then you would have to have a completely different strategy. A strategy that might look like something like reparations.

A group of people were denied access to homes, while white Americans built wealth with their homes. Their homes increased in value, they were able to take out loans on those homes to do all kinds of things: pay for college for their kids, buy other homes, take out money to go to school for themselves, all kinds of opportunities. Then they were able to sell their homes, make a profit, give it to their kids and their kids gave it to their kids, and their grandkids and all this wealth just keeps building. If a group of people were denied that opportunity, then there would have to be something other than helping them learn how to save in order for them to now own a home.

On another note, who can afford to live in D.C. now? I just wrote a blog about this. I make decent money and I’m looking around like, okay, how would I afford to live here? Say there was an initiative that provided every resident who made say under $20K a year in D.C. a major down payment subsidy to buy a home as a part of renewal strategy. Where would they really be able to buy that home? There would have to be other regulations related to zoning in order to make sure that there were affordable homes available.

We have to be different and do more than just help people save money. Getting to the root requires some major strategies to match the scale of what has happened to people of color in this country. These programs sound good, but they are incremental. They really aren’t attacking the root. If we’re not talking about those things then what are we doing?

II: What do we need to begin to dissect differently?

YR: For many years, we’ve been talking about income; I was one of those people. How do we get people of color to have similar levels of income as our White counterparts? Research has opened up about wealth, and now we know that’s where true thriving lies. We’ve been talking about income for so long, yet whites, on average, are doing well because of wealth. I’m not talking about millions of dollars in your bank account, I’m talking about things like a $20,000 gift you got from your grandfather to be able to put a down payment on your house. Those forms of wealth are what allow people to thrive. Income is the survival piece, but to be able to start a business or buy a home or support your kids to accomplish their dreams; that’s what wealth allows for; that’s when the thriving really begins to happen. The income conversation is part of it, but this wealth piece, that’s where it is.

Innovator Insights: Dr. Yanique Redwood, President and CEO, Consumer Health Foundation was originally published in Invested Impact on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Konda Mason, Co-Founder and CEO of Impact Hub Oakland:

My best advice is truly to start at the end. You can’t course-correct later; you won’t. You can’t sprinkle in women and color later. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about partnership with people who are different and doing that at the beginning: having all voices at the table. It makes you so much richer. If you miss out on those conversations, and you stay in your white male or even white female role, you’ve missed out on incredible beauty and will never know how much farther you can go.

Cheryl Dorsey, President of Echoing Green:

I believe that talent is equally distributed in this society, but opportunity is not. At the intersection of these two ideas is the work of Echoing Green. I am guided by a sense of urgency to help build opportunity on-ramps for next generation leadership who speak truth to power and see value where others see only challenges.

Laurin Hodge, Executive Director of Mission: Launch, Inc. :

Entrepreneurship is a tool to economic well-being in America. Wealth is built in this country a few ways and being the owner of a company with true market value is one. For many the dream of being an entrepreneur isn’t about becoming a billionaire. The dream is to be in control of what you can earn through cleaning houses, mowing lawns, coding websites, selling merchandise, or baking your neighborhood famous pies. Financial dignity is about having power — entrepreneurship is power.

Peter Buffett, Co-President of the NoVo Foundation:

“We recognize the power dynamic that is inherent in our position and take every measure to examine it and dissolve it wherever and whenever possible. Our responsibility is to constantly look at the structures that got us here and dismantle them (carefully) where we’re able — and always with the people with lived experience at the center of the work. We believe that girls of color are experts in their own lives and wield immense power to transform their communities and the country. We are excited to partner directly with girls of color and their advocates so that they can live in safety and peace, dream and imagine all the possibilities of their futures, access all that’s necessary to live in dignity and fulfill their dreams, and feel celebrated and seen through love and connection.”

Jessica Norwood of Emerging ChangeMakers Network:

A healthy ecosystem is fractal. In science, fractal theory is a theory based on relationships, emergence, patterns and iterations. This theory maintains that the universe is full of systems, weather systems, immune systems, social systems, etc. and that these systems are complex and constantly adapting to their environment. Therefore a healthy ecosystem is non-linear, always moving and evolving. People have a desire to have things be static and motionless because the predictability makes us feel safe and settled. But in reality, a system is most successful when it is evolving as a response to a good feedback loop. In order for us to emerge new strategies, we have to get comfortable with the constant motion of the system and we have to expect that the calls for improvements to the system can come from anywhere, at any time.

Kesha Cash, Founder and General Partner at Impact America Fund:

“From very early on my goals and my thinking have been, “How do I help others gain access who may not have it otherwise?” That’s what drives me every day. I don’t think I’m a genius by any means. But I’m a hustler and I know how to navigate landscapes and get access to resources. And so I think I’m honestly — until I figure out otherwise — I think I’m here to break down some of the barriers that prevent people from gaining access and exposing people to opportunities that they may otherwise not have been familiar with.”

Jennifer Bradley, founding director of the Center for Urban Innovation at the Aspen Institute:

I keep equity and inclusion fundamental by taking steps to learn from a range of partners, to make sure that I am inclusive myself in who I work with, partner with, invite to convenings, put in speaking roles, seek out as authors. The bottom line goal of the Center is to connect innovation and inclusion, so if I am not practicing inclusion myself, I’m not fulfilling my mission. The word “curation” is terribly overused (as is “innovation”) but one of my main roles is curating, which means making choices about what to highlight, what to lift up, and draw attention to. That’s one of my main avenues for being inclusive and making sure equity is a part of the conversations that I convene or spark.

Leah Hunt-Hendrix, Founder of Solidaire Network:

“The most important thing to remember is that individuals with wealth are just people, and have their own wounds and desires. We all want to live lives of meaning, to have a role in changing the world for the better, and to be in community. So often, fundraising is treated transactionally, and both the donor and the grantee are objectified. We try to avoid this by developing real relationships, being together in community, and growing together over time. It’s crucially important that we do this as a community of donors, and as a movement community, that bridges between donors and organizers. We are still looking for ways to avoid bringing organizers into our spaces, and instead bring our members into movement spaces.”

Sharayna Christmas, Founder and Executive Director of Muse 360 Arts:

It’s not me or any small black or female led organization that needs to change our mindset. It’s the people with the resources that need to change their mindsets. They can’t keep investing in these centers where leaders are living in poverty. Eventually those leaders are just going to have to leave, or the organizations will just fizzle away. I’ve talked to bigger organizations and realized I need to have a conversation with them and funders. I love what I do at Muse, I could do it with my eyes closed. But I need to talk to people and I have something important to say. It’s not about being confrontational, it’s about having an important conversation.

Dr. Yanique Redwood, President and CEO, Consumer Health Foundation:

To me and to our foundation, we have to begin asking our grantee partners regardless of whether the organization is people of color led or White led or whatever, to demonstrate that what they’re doing is advancing racial equity. And so it’s from a very practical standpoint that we begin using tools like a racial equity impact assessment to demonstrate that whatever you are working on, whether its advocacy or whatever, isn’t hurting and is also advancing racial equity people of color. I would also recommend an organization assessment tool to help an organization figure out if it still has racist practices. Is it paying attention to issues of diversity? Is it paying attention to issues of equity inside of the organization? Not what it does outside, but how it handles itself inside. Who they’re purchasing from, who are the vendors, who’s on the board, who do you hire? All of these internal practices need to be analyzed because if this country is built on this foundation of racism, that means every organization has a taste of it and has to be working actively to undo that.

Top Innovator Insights was originally published in Invested Impact on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I love the construct about how change happens, which was presented a few years ago in the book Switch. Essentially, the authors say that barriers to behavior changes come in three forms:

• motivation — people don’t want to change (or don’t feel it personally),

• knowledge — people don’t know what to do or how to make the change, or

• structures — the systems and supports are not in place to make it reasonably easy for people to change.

When I think about social and racial equity and how it shows up — and how it doesn’t — in philanthropy and the nonprofit sector, I wonder what’s holding us back.

Knowledge and Structures.

We know what to do, right? Or at least some of what to do: General support, multi-year grants, invest in capacity-building, support the leaders closest to the work, let people lobby on critical issues, multiple investment and funding strategies, revise application and reporting processes. Of course there’s more to call out and to change. But the ones I’ve just mentioned are among the most common recommendations, and have been for decades.

Traditions and habits die hard, and I get that. I also get that breaking habits means experimentating with how, and that experiments can be tough to sell to donors. Experimentation can sound iffy and in philanthropy, we are fundamentally stewards. Responsible stewards.

But we can also be more. Some funders are doing these things, and therefore many models exist. Just about any private funder or donor could deploy at least a portion of resources in these ways.

The need for improved performance on equity has been described by others better positioned than I, and the call for specific changes in practice and habits has been made. And experiments are being tried all over the country. If the barriers to equity and impact are about knowledge of how to revise practices or about inventing more supportive resource structures, we can tackle them.

However, another explanation is more difficult to attack and much more painful to consider.

Motivation.

What if foundation execs and donors actually just don’t want their resources to contribute to racial equity in this country? What if their (our) personal connection to the expense of poverty in this country is just too distant to be able to get it. What if.

Funders and donors (and let’s be honest, we consultants) may not be able to fully understand the impact of existing philanthropic practices via experience the daily barriers or the essential assets (somewhat related in vibe: Dream Hoarders).

I’ve been in this business long enough to cultivate a certain cynicism (and I’m an older GenX, which I understand is a BooXer, so there’s that). But I do believe that most of our colleagues in philanthropy want life to work better for more people. That’s pretty much what philanthropy is supposed to be for.

And I have to believe that we can do better. So what can we invite funders, donors, and other impact investors to do?

Step one: listen.

Listen to the individuals who live in the communities experiencing barriers and organizing efforts of strength and change.

Step two: believe them.

Believe and trust what the leaders say about their communities’ assets and challenges.

Step three: respond with money.

Respond to what the leaders say,

not with nine months of abstract questioning and back and forth,

not with parading women leaders and leaders of color around on the conference circuit for zero compensation,

not with unsolicited critique about how or from whom they raise their money, and

not with an invite to a two-day “leadership summit” on some issue only to present a new initiative that the funder’s team has already fully designed.

(You understand, I have been at this work in this sector for decades.)

Instead, respond efficiently with openness, flexibility, vulnerability, sincere engagement, and trust. And well-timed, generous funding.

It’s not just the nonprofit organizations that need help “building their capacity.” Maybe it’s foundations, funders, and donors who must work on building their capacity to work with community leaders (h/t Rodney Foxworth video mentioning this idea).

Improving the capacity of funders to invest more equitably will involve larger, longer, less restricted investments. More meaningful introductions and connective relationships. Collaboration. New and straightforward structures for increasing resources and impact. Rethinking and reframing what we mean by “risk” and talking about it powerfully with donors.

And it’s going to mean investing directly in the leadership and organizations created and led by leaders of color, immigrants, rural leaders, working organizers and activists and program developers who went to public universities — or maybe not to university at all. Genuinely looking for experience and quality in communities’ leaders means funders will begin finding them in unfamiliar places.

What’s Holding Us Back? was originally published in Invested Impact on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Connie Evans is a visionary leader, strategist, activist, and social entrepreneur who has founded three urban microenterprise development and finance organizations. Currently, she serves as the President and CEO of the Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO), the national nonprofit organization and business trade association representing the US microbusiness development industry. AEO has nearly 400 member organizations that provide training, technical assistance and resources to entrepreneurs across the United States.

A pioneer of one of the first Individual Development Account programs in the nation, Evans is dedicated to providing minority entrepreneurs with the resources they need to succeed. She spoke with Invested Impact about some of AEO’s innovative practices and what they learned from their 2017 report Tapestry of Black Business Ownership in America.

II: How did you arrive personally/professionally where you are today? How does your experience inform your day to day work?

CE: I am the product of a self-employed mother and the youngest of four children. My father died two weeks before I was born of a brain tumor and my mother put four kids through college running a catering business. My mother had a high school education, I went to private school, she bought our home, and as Rosa Evans’ daughter, I could go anywhere in town and sign my mother’s name for credit. When I started the Women’s Self-Employment Project in Chicago in 1986, which was the first and largest microenterprise program in the country at one time, I did not know anything about lending. I was not a business major (bachelor and masters in psychology), but business just seemed to make sense to me having watched my mother. I understood that women could use their own talents to start and run a business that could take care of their families. It was what I had seen all my life so the idea to start a program for low income, low wealth women and provide small loans just made sense to me. I had an incredible mentor, Mary Houghton, one of the founders of Shorebank. When we started WSEP, conventional wisdom was that white men with college degrees were who ran successful businesses and that low-income women were not creditworthy. We busted those myths and I have been working on this issue ever since.

People can do amazing things for themselves when given opportunities and tools. I believe in an inclusive economy. I believe in harnessing the marketplace for everyone and given the opportunity, more people can become producers of wealth, not just consumers.

II: Starting off as a psychologist working with community mental health, how did you shift into microbusiness support? What connections do you see between the fields?

CE: As a master-level psychologist, I always worked in low income communities and used to provide “therapy” sessions to individuals and groups referred by some system. What I quickly came to realize was that if people had money they could handle many of their own issues. Now that is not to say that there is never a need for clinical intervention, but overwhelmingly what I saw was that people needed money and the lack of financial resources put so much stress on people, that their actions were not made from a place of conscious thought and insight. I worked with my employer at the time and we started economic development programs in public housing that had residents starting resident-owned businesses. These were low-income women who started a company that eventually took over the management of the multi-million public housing site. That was when I really saw the amazing strength of low-income women, who people in Chicago had mostly written-off because they lived in public housing.

II: What’s your North Star/Guiding Vision?

CE: I guess you can say that my guiding vision is that people can do amazing things for themselves when given opportunities and tools. I believe in an inclusive economy. I believe in harnessing the marketplace for everyone and given the opportunity, more people can become producers of wealth, not just consumers.

II: How have you seen the landscape of microbusiness change in the past eight years you’ve been with AEO? How have the challenges business owners face changed/evolved?

CE: I think there have been three big changes in the landscape of microbusiness. First, I think we have experienced a paradigm shift in microenterprise in the United States. We have gone from talking about “microenterprise” (a concept most associated with informal businesses in developing countries) to a recognition of “microbusiness” as the largest segment of businesses in this country. They make up more than 90 percent of all businesses in the U. S. The media, funders, legislators, and most people in the industry now use the term microbusiness, which I think is important and a very good change.

A second change has been the disruption in the financial markets caused by the recession. According to [former] Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, there are 8,000 declines per day for business loans by financial institutions. That is a real market failure for people on Main Streets and cross streets across this country. This disruption has changed the landscape of microbusiness and microfinance in a number of ways. For example, it has created the wild, wild, west in fintech or online small business lenders. That innovation has had positive and negative consequences for owners of Main Street and microbusinesses. At AEO, we have used cross-sector partners to get the best of these innovations into the microfinance community.

A third change that I believe is significant and worrisome is an uptick in the criteria of CDFI small business lenders, which is driving them to serve a more upscale market. Some of these mission-focused lenders have significantly high decline rates. Which leaves me to wonder who is being left behind? AEO believes that we can help address this problem by getting a larger set of products that meet the realities of more customers out into the microfinance or microbusiness marketplace. We created DreamFund since I have been at AEO, in part, to identify and license products that can be used by any CDFI small business lender. Our first product is a short-term uncollateralized working capital loan that not determined by simple FICO scores. Further, we are working to bring two more loan products to the microfinance market place: a line of credit and a capital product that will take the place of friends and family capital among Black start-ups.

We found that the interplay of the wealth gap, the capital gap, and the trust gap is what is keeping Black business owners from reaching their highest potential with their businesses. We think this is quite significant for practitioners who are trying to develop and deploy solutions. It means that if we think we can solve the problem [of] Black-owned businesses not reaching their potential by just applying more capital, we are wrong.

II: You’ve said that the report set out to reframe the conversation about Black-owned businesses. Did any of the information or insights that surfaced as a result of the research presented there surprise you?

CE: We knew that business ownership was an important path to wealth building. I was surprised, however, when we learned that that the median wealth gap decreases to a multiplier of three when comparing Black and White business owners. Successful business ownership by more Blacks can seriously narrow the racial wealth gap.

II: What’s the most valuable takeaway from the report?

CE: I think there are two most valuable takeaways. First is the fact above that business ownership can significantly reduce the racial wealth gap. The second extremely valuable takeaway is that we found that the interplay of the wealth gap, the capital gap, and the trust gap is what is keeping Black business owners from reaching their highest potential with their businesses. We think this is quite significant for practitioners who are trying to develop and deploy solutions. It means that if we think we can solve the problem [of] Black-owned businesses not reaching their potential by just applying more capital, we are wrong.

II: What has the response been to this effort?

CE: The report is being received well by a broad spectrum of people, including those in government, philanthropy and particularly Black business owners themselves.

II: Who’s best positioned to use the data in this report and how?

CE: We are hoping that practitioners use the report to consider new approaches to their interventions with Black businesses. We really need innovative practices that can address this interlinkage of the three barriers. Although we want to see more Blacks start and/or buy businesses in higher revenue sectors, we also need more innovation on how to scale businesses in the lower growth sectors where the vast majority of businesses are located.

We are making a special effort to get new discussions on this topic and with this data within the philanthropic and investment community. We are working with ABFE (Association for Black Foundation Executives) and Minneapolis-based, MEDA (Metropolitan Economic Development Association) to advocate that business ownership should be a strategy embraced by more philanthropists who care about combating poverty, unemployment, and the racial economic divide.

II: How is AEO innovating on capital access and financial products?

CE: AEO is focused on changing the way capital and services flow to underserved low-wealth small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. We have launched TILT Forward as a national initiative to develop and launch technology‐led product, capital and marketing solutions for mission‐focused lenders and business‐service providers. The TILT Forward Initiative is building new industry infrastructure to support lower cost product and service distribution, as well as to promote innovation. For example, I mentioned DreamFund above. DreamFund creates scale benefits to support lending to small businesses in low‐wealth communities. These benefits accrue to small businesses, CDFIs and investors alike. It does this by performing two functions: 1) licensing products from third parties and making them available at below‐market rates to qualified applicants; 2) aggregating capital from funders seeking to target their investments and limit their risk (and diligence) to the prospective performance of the loans. DreamFund’s unique structure mimics the safety and security of a for‐profit Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) within a 501(c)3 tax‐exempt charitable organization.

Another example is Project CUE, which is a multi-bank customer referral marketplace. Seed money for proof of concept resulted from AEO winning the US Treasury “Innovation Challenge.” Follow-on investment is from JPMorgan Chase Foundation. Project CUE is now on track to deliver 3,000 customers/month to Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) by end of year that banks cannot serve — part of that 8,000 per day decline by financial institutions.

Lastly, we have the TILT Forward Network: the largest and most diverse group of CDFIs and entrepreneur support organizations in the US. Network serves as “skunk-works” and knowledge-sharing network for our innovations work stream at AEO.

Business ownership should be a strategy embraced by more philanthropists who care about combating poverty, unemployment, and the racial economic divide.

II: What can we learn about the longevity of black owned businesses?

CE: I do not have data since we did not ask that question in our study. What I will point to however, is a passage that is in our Tapestry of Black Business Ownership report. We inserted the playful and disturbing allegory described in the 1952 literary masterpiece, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. AEO asserts at the end of that piece, “Yet despite all of these obstacles and impediments, a strong community of Black entrepreneurs has, nevertheless, persevered, and an impressive entrepreneurial spirit continues to flourish in Black America.”

II: What inspires you to come to work every day? What gives you hope?

CE: If AEO can bring these innovations to scale that I have mentioned, we can help transform the microfinance industry into one that is robust, scalable reaching millions of underserved entrepreneurs with products and services they need to succeed, and is sustainable. That is worth getting up for every day!

Innovator Insights: Connie Evans, President and CEO of the Association for Enterprise Opportunity was originally published in Invested Impact on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

According to a report released in June 2017, many nonprofit and foundation leaders assume that people of color either do not aspire to be leaders, lack the proper education credentials, and/or have inadequate technical skills to be leaders within the sector. These assumptions are wrong. It is naive for these organizations to assume that the talent does not exist rather than confront the circumstances that lead to and maintain a homogeneous leadership pool.

The Building Movement Project, which works to “support and advance the potential of nonprofit organizations as sites for progressive social change” aims to bring to light the current inequalities that persist in the nonprofit workforce. In their report, Race to Lead: Confronting the Nonprofit Racial Leadership Gap, the Building Movement Project asked respondents of color and white respondents about their views on leadership and training in the nonprofit sector.

This report found that the education levels of people of color and their white counterparts is comparable. Further, people of color are actually receiving upper level degrees (PhD, JD, MD) at higher rates than white respondents (nine percent versus seven percent). This data shows that people of color are achieving academic success despite the current assumptions that are being perpetrated throughout the nonprofit sector.

Another claim is that people of color simply do not seek out upper level leadership positions. Again, the Building Movement Project found this assumption to be false. People of color respond “Yes” to the question “Are you interested in Becoming an executive director/CEO (or another leadership role) of a nonprofit someday” at higher rates than white respondents (50 percent versus 40 percent). Though the desire to hold these positions is clearly present, the opportunities to obtain these positions are not.

When asked about training in project goal setting, financial management, and self care/wellness both groups had comparable levels of expertise. Though people of color and white people in the nonprofit sector have similar skill sets, the lack of “technical training” is often a response to the fact that people of color feel like they need to obtain additional training to be respected and accepted within the nonprofit workspace. Focus groups conducted by the Building Movement Project found that aspiring leaders of color believed that they had to obtain levels of technical skills higher than that of their white counterparts to be confident in applying for top level positions.

Not only are many hiring processes discriminatory in nature, once people of color are within the workforce, there are many prejudicial practices that lead people of color to leave the sector prematurely. People of color overall are experiencing these inequalities, but the Association of Black Foundation Executives (ABFE) produced a report specifically highlighting the hardships of African Americans in this field. The Exit Interview: Perceptions on why Black professionals leave grantmaking institutions looks to find the root reason for high rates of African American professionals leaving grantmaking institutions.

One sentiment that causes African American professionals to leave the sector is the feeling that there is a cap on their upward trajectory within their organizations. When asked to choose which statement best reflects employment trends in the philanthropic field for African American professions, 72 percent agreed with the statement, “They are making some progress as staff at grantmaking institutions, but leadership roles are not substantial.” The retention rates of African American professionals within the nonprofit sector are dismal. The walls of bias and discrimination are often so high that they impede individual growth within an organization.

Many professionals of color found that once they obtained a position within a philanthropic institution, they felt that they were required to represent their own race both internally and externally for the organization. One of the respondents of the Building Movement Project report stated:

“[The organization] looked to me to solve all the problems of racism within the organization. By default, POC often become the face of accountability or point of feedback in such situations. It put a huge responsibility on me; over time, I spent at least 50% of my time doing that work…rather than my job description of national organizing. A lot of my work was invisible…”

Once within a nonprofit, people of color are given two types of responsibilities: the responsibilities of the job they applied for and the responsibilities of an unspoken job to be the voice of an entire community. This pressure is not only unfair due to the unpaid responsibilities associated with it, but it is fundamentally wrong to force the people of color in the room to speak to the entire experience of an extremely large and complex group of people.

According to BoardSource, only 11 percent of nonprofit CEOs identify as people of color. This is a discouraging statistic especially because people of color are just as able to lead as their white counterparts. If nonprofit, philanthropy, and grantmaking institutions aim to fight against the injustices experienced by communities of color in society, they first need to rectify the injustice of not giving these communities the opportunity for leadership within their own institutions. Investors have the tendency to trust and ultimately invest in people that look similar to themselves. Nonprofits and philanthropic institutions will continue to perpetuate the cycle of underserving communities of color and women if they do not work to diversify their leadership pool.

The Nonprofit Racial Leadership Gap was originally published in Invested Impact on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

To many, current circumstances make building the unrealized nonprofit power in communities of color more necessary and urgent than ever. Vu Le, Seattle nonprofit executive and exceptional blogger, is approaching the issue with renewed vigor. Le goes as far as to invoke apocalyptic events from one of his favorite TV shows, claiming “Winter is here,” for communities of color. However, as has been pointed out and underlined by many, the nonprofit world has something of an issue with leadership of color.

“As our world spirals into divisiveness and intolerance,” Le writes, “building the voice and power of the most marginalized is our best defense against the rise in racist nationalism, hate-mongering, xenophobia, violence, and injustice. But we can’t do that until we admit that we have not done a great job thus far.”

Le’s words ring true, borne out in report after report. Community Wealth Partners recently gathered some data about diversity in the nonprofit sector, with expectedly unrepresentative results. “While people of color represent 30 percent of the American workforce, only 18 percent of non-profit staff and 22 percent of foundation staff is comprised of people of color,” their findings explain, “for foundations, this number significantly decreases when looking at leadership and board member positions.”

Further, about a year ago the D5 Coalition published similar data in a report of its own. Therein, the numbers are placed in more or less the same area, listing disparities that are just as glaring. The D5 Coalition reports that black workers make up 11 percent of the overall workforce, and yet make up only 3.4 percent of foundation executives, amounting to a roughly 70 percent gulf in representation at the highest levels. For Asian-Americans, that gulf is closer to 80 percent, and for the Latinx community, it’s 85 percent.

Again similarly, in May 2014 the Association of Black Foundation Executives (ABFE) published The Exit Interview, a comprehensive, multi-angled study of Black leadership in philanthropic institutions, and the findings paint a clear picture. As ABFE rightfully highlights, the nonprofit sector’s skewed leadership composition is thanks in part to professionals of color leaving the field in larger numbers than those who are moving upwards within it. As the Exit Interview lays out, that flight, along with the various other diversity issues in nonprofits, stems from a series of factors that all more or less point towards a greater umbrella issue.

As Le articulates in his “Winter” blog post and beyond, what these trends of disparity are all perpetuated by in day-to-day nonprofit work is a general culture that, while not hostile, is largely disadvantageous for staff of color. Le imagines nonprofit work as a game of football, and within that metaphor examines the extra work nonprofit professionals of color must undertake. “Imagine that [as a person of color] you [actually] have two fields: One for football, and one for soccer,” he explains, “imagine that the two fields are right next to one another and on a daily basis you must run back and forth, back and forth across the fields.”

Winter is here, and we must build the power of organizations and communities of color

As Le makes plain, social and cultural hurdles make success and upward mobility in nonprofit work a much harder cliff to scale for people of color, and his prescription is as corroborated by other sources as his diagnosis.

As far as solutions to industry-wide tendencies, Le claims that change can only come with a wide-ranging suite of mitigating measures. The ABFE, Community Wealth Partners, and D5 Coalition reports all make similar assertions, each in one way or another underscoring that the nonprofit sector is a dynamic ecosystem with many moving parts, each of which must be addressed uniquely for a change in culture to take root.

A significant point of interest across the literature is training and support for nonprofit professionals of color. Le recommends “Culturally-relevant capacity-building coaching,” while ABFE stresses the need for “mentorship and coaching” for black nonprofit workers in their report. Similarly, Battalia-Winston, a search firm whose purpose is to find “a diverse and inclusive slate of candidates” for “elite executive talent,” also recommends “professional development and inclusive leadership training programs,” with added emphasis on how nonprofit employees “are less likely to receive organic mentorship and networking opportunities than their white counterparts.”

The importance of networks was iterated across the board as well. The Community Wealth Partners report talks substantially about the “self-reinforcing cycle” that stifles diversity. They mention how a large component of that cycle is the widespread reliance of nonprofits on their predominantly white staff networks. According to the report, 80 percent of nonprofits “leverage personal and professional networks” as primary sources of new talent, leading to a self-perpetuation of organizational whiteness.

Congruent with that thinking about networks, Le draws attention both to “collaboration and advocacy,” saying “we must be intentional about… strategic partnerships and work together to address systemic inequity,” and also to “operations support and shared services,” putting forward that “the era of every organization having to learn to fish needs to end if we are to have any hope of building community power.” ABFE expresses a similar sentiment with the Exit Interview’s claim that “national and regional associations of grantmakers — whether identity based, issue focused, or mainstream — can play an important role in supporting the retention of Black philanthropic professionals.”

Getting capital flowing in the right volume to the necessary places is paramount to Le as well, which lead to his proposal of “partnership fundraising” as a powerful tool. “We need our community leaders out there mobilizing and organizing people,” he implores, using his own organization’s ‘Community Alliance’ as a model for bringing community interests and capital interests into each other’s awareness.

Right here in Baltimore, work to that effect is sorely needed, but the need is being filled to greater and greater effect each month. As the demands of the cultural moment turn more and more with Le toward elevating community voices, the touch points between the ‘community’ and the ‘power’ become crucial spaces to navigate. At Invested Impact, we understand that, and we’ve staked out a front row seat.

Innovators Face Challenges in Breaking Down Barriers to Capital for Underserved Entrepreneurs - Locavesting

Nonprofit work is a necessary pillar of strength in the places that need it most, and creating a community of practice around that is imperative. Invested Impact has had the privilege of working closely with groups across Baltimore who understand this necessity, and have been working tirelessly (to great effect) to realize a positive vision of it. In community discussions on topics ranging from urban innovation to social action, Invested Impact has seen firsthand what kind of hands the future of community power within Baltimore is in, and there is nothing but promise.

In our unique position between funding, entrepreneurship, and philanthropy, Invested Impact has seen what it will take for Baltimore to embrace the wisdom that Vu Le and so many others are coming around to. The good news is that that future is bright, and so is Baltimore’s.

Community Power, Nonprofit Diversity, and Us was originally published in Invested Impact on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Impact Investing is a relatively young field. Having been conceptualized within the last decade — and having broken into the mainstream even more recently — there’s much about the practice that’s still up for discussion. Objections and the need for clarity are par for the course, even around the more theoretical elements of impact investing, to say nothing of its concrete application (a process still in its early years).

Needless to say, among practitioners and detractors alike, there’s plenty of room for a lively discussion. Assertions have been made that impact investing as a field is bad business, bad philanthropy, and even a bad mix of both. These are all complaints that, while certainly not toothless, can each be addressed in their own way with some simple clarifications. Impact investing needs improvement, but it certainly isn’t bunk altogether. What’s missing from most discussion of impact investing, especially of its pitfalls, is the how and why of incorporating affected communities into the business and the work.

Of note is Nathan Schneider’s article in America Magazine, wherein he talks about the pitfalls of private philanthropy in a broad sense. His core assertion, argued through the lens of Catholic philosophy (it is, after all, a Jesuit magazine), is that the generosity of private actors isn’t a sufficient driver of real, lasting social good. He takes specific aim at Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan’s relatively new LLC, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), for mixing supposedly dubious pretensions at helping people with a structure that forgoes “even the tax code’s spacious definition of philanthropy,” and “would remain chiefly accountable to profit-seeking investors.”

Noting CZI’s congruity and connection to the impact investing world is not a wholly original observation, but it’s certainly key here. The central dynamic is a very similar one, in which goals for positive impact are married with goals for positive returns. In itself, that concept is much too broad to dismiss outright, and Schneider stops short of going so far. Theoretically, impact investing’s focus on mutual benefit could produce a more lasting kind of good than a one-time act of charity, but the devil is in the details.

Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and The Case Against Philanthropy As We Know It

Schneider raises the issue of accountability, very importantly drawing attention to how there is little public input on what is essentially a project for public enrichment. “There is as yet little reason [that Zuckerberg] and his wife should be entrusted with the sway over our systems of health and public education that they are in the process of claiming,” he explains, terming the actions of Zuckerberg and many in his position “self-canonization and attempted do-gooding.”

Schneider’s moral incredulity here is commendable, and this is undoubtedly a pitfall of private philanthropy done wrong. There is always the risk of falling out of touch or otherwise losing sight of the spirit of a project’s goals in any philanthropic undertaking or impact investment. However, Schneider also manages to find a philosophical answer to his issues with CZI: democratization. He cites a number of tech startups that provide of models for expanding democratic control of various ventures, but as a core tenet he identifies the much more basic idea that making sure affected communities get a proper voice in decision-making is paramount. To Schneider, anything else as a starting point is on the wrong path. That is, in fact, the key component to a better kind mission-driven work. Empowerment and an increase in community vitality can only be assured by giving those affected as strong a voice in philanthropic work as possible.

That need for maintaining voices is also glaringly missing in impact investing’s negative appraisals from some in the more traditional investment world like Phil DeMuth. Several years ago DeMuth penned a dismissive op-ed for Forbes on the burgeoning field. His decision about impact investing is as negative as it is snide and disingenuous. His main contention is that impact investing is a business idea made of fluffy nothing, a fiscally ill-advised medium between philosophically pleasing charity and the lucrative world of traditional investment.

“It sounds like mush,” he says of impact investing, relying on Adam Smith to do his heavy lifting, “surely impact investing is precisely ‘affecting to trade for the public good.’ It’s not as easy as it sounds. Dollars send price signals. If you pay someone to dig a hole and pretend this is a job, you create a distortion in the economy. [But if] hole-diggers added utility, the economy already would have found employment for them with no extra push from people bent on doing good.”

DeMuth’s argument is simple: investments and enterprises cannot promote social good and still be profitable, or they would already exist. Of course, this view ignores the structural realities that have historically kept many interests from wielding the influence the market would otherwise have provided them. Markets don’t exist in a vacuum, and they aren’t immune to the structures of racism and sexism. There is no way to separate markets from the communities, cultures, and policy landscapes responsible for their existence. As cities across America very clearly illustrate, markets are in fact often the medium through which the issues and injustices already present in society make themselves tangible. In situations of unjust denial of resources and untapped potential for growth, corrective investment is usually a necessary step.

Understanding and Undesigning the Redline

But DeMuth misses a point even more essential to impact investing (or rather, the smartest way to practice it). In the boldest statement of his oversight, he encourages his readers to “invest in companies to make money, not to feel virtuous,” as if investing is necessarily a choice between the two with no other factors involved. Considering his line of work — he’s an investment advisor, so lucrativity is all he needs to worry about — , it could be forgiven, if not totally empathized with, that DeMuth seemingly hasn’t thought of investment as something greater than a personal choice. The issue with his forceful dismissal of impact investing is that a broader mindset is exactly what’s required to make the practice work, nevermind the fact impact investments often outperform traditional investments.

What DeMuth’s approach to investment misses (or intentionally looks past) is the idea of economies as symbiotically connected to the communities that they have the power to affect. Only with that kind of sense of community and a commitment to input from affected populations can impact investments be grounded and contextualized in the ways that maximize positive results in society. Although to see it, one will need to look past strategizing to build their own wealth, which seems not to be something DeMuth and his crowd care much to do. However, there are many interested parties that don’t share his priorities, but do share his business sense, and their concerns about impact investing are compelling as well.

In perhaps the least moralistic and most measured objection to impact investing, Larry Kramer of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation carefully breaks down why he believes impact investments are a poor choice for foundations. He explains that there are two different kinds of impact investments — concessionary (meaning they only promise below-market returns), and non-concessionary (meaning they are more lucrative) — with which he’s concerned, each carrying different expectations and desired outcomes. Ultimately, the concerns he raises for both concessionary and non-concessionary impact investments find their way back to the idea that the market for them is too crowded, and foundations ought not to waste precious resources on them.

“A large proportion of new and emerging philanthropists seem interested chiefly in market-based solutions and show little or no interest in supporting traditional nonprofits,” intones Kramer, questioning if it’s right for traditional foundations to muscle their way into the field, “there is considerably more money looking for concessionary impact investments than there are such investments.” On non-concessionary investments, his mood is equally incredulous. “We can expect ordinary investors to put resources into these precisely because they generate market returns, which makes foundation support unnecessary. Actually, make that inappropriate.” To say nothing of how dismissing impact investing offhand as ‘inappropriate’ squanders a huge opportunity to reaffirm foundations’ missions inside their untapped 95, there are shadows of something bigger. With Kramer’s argument there is again an oversight of that same, very necessary element to good impact investing. He has not factored in how a community-based mindset, rather than the macro-thinking of foundation dollars, can make some of the issues he raises moot.

Impact Investing is a Win-Win

It’s crucial to understand that while the market for impact investments generally could definitely be seen as oversaturated, the current landscape of firms doing mission-driven work is hardly a reflection of all communities in need of greater investment. Region by region, a deeper, more robust connection between communities and capital can lead to the right kind of investments being made, and it behooves foundations to become a part of such an ecosystem of virtue.

Many naysayers touch on valid misgivings, and some raise genuinely troubling issues with impact investing, but they all, similarly to impact investing’s proponents, seek to define the field categorically on their own terms. This is the step that must be separated from the others. The ideal kind of impact investing must be made distinct from the form built solely on the top-down dictates that Schneider shows concern about, the unserious fluff that DeMuth imagines, or the misguided money choices of which Kramer is wary.

In all of those instances, we find the answer lies in two things: purpose and people. This very necessary work has to be rooted in the communities it aims to serve, not the whims of disconnected do-gooding mega-rich or the ploys to stay marketable from the unconcerned. A community-based approach to impact investing has the potential to marry the positives of the business and philanthropy worlds, while eliminating the supposed drawbacks of diluting either one with the other.

With the Right Mission, Impact Investing’s ‘Flaws’ Shrink was originally published in Invested Impact on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Earlier this month, Invested Impact partnered with the Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers (ABAG), Baltimore Community Lending, and Humanim to host the Baltimore Impact Tour. The event included a bus tour of the various community investment accomplishments that Ours to Own has achieved in just over a year since its launch. With investments that start as low as $20, Ours to Own makes investing accessible and community-centric. The initiative connects investors with projects, organizations and businesses working to support local schools, critical community projects and thousands of units of affordable housing while earning a financial return. The campaign channels money into the community to promote optimal community impact. Since its launch 18 months ago, Ours to Own has raised over $5 million in investments from small $20 investments to upwards of a million dollars.

Here’s a quick overview of the event along with pictures and tweets from various participants of the tour:

Calvert Foundation on Twitter

We're kicking off #BaltImpact2017, a tour of our Baltimore investments, at @Humanim HQ, sampling food from #socent @cityseeds

Humanim:

The tour began at the American Brewery, home to Humanim. Human creates economic opportunities for those who face barriers to employment. With a focus on workforce development and a focus on promoting minority owned businesses, Humanim launched City Seeds, which houses the School of Food.

School of Food is a business and training program that walks food and beverage business owners through the process of transitioning a business from something small like a farmers market stand to an organization with a mature business model.

Eula McDowell and Juan Nance, alumni of the School of Food, provided the various participants with delicious snacks and spoke to the audience about how they would like to expand their ventures moving forward. Mr. Nance thanked Humanim for allowing him to dream bigger, and potentially be the ‘black naked juice’. Other major Humanim social enterprises include Details Deconstruction and Brick + Board, whose warehouse was our last stop on the tour.

Calvert Foundation on Twitter

Stop 2, City Arts, bringing #affordablehousing to Baltimore's artists #BaltImpact2017

City Arts 1 & 2:

City Arts apartment buildings were the next stop on our tour. These apartment buildings aim to revitalize the neighborhood while trying to avoid the negative effects of gentrification. The buildings were created in response to the plethora of vacant homes in the neighborhood, but also to keep costs low for people that already lived in the neighborhood. The residents of the building must be making 60 percent of the area’s median income (a statistic generated from the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development). City Arts provides affordable housing to a selections of artists who show a commitment to their art form. The establishment caters to visual and performance arts with galleries and dance studios located on the premise.

Calvert Foundation on Twitter

On North Ave, checking out @ImpactHubBalt and @MdFilmFestival's Parkway Theatre #BaltImpact2017

Impact Hub and The Parkway Theater:

On the bus, our founder and CEO Rodney Foxworth discussed developments on North Avenue, including Impact Hub Baltimore, home to Invested Impact offices, and the new Stavros Niarchos Foundation Parkway Theatre where the Maryland Film Festival is located.

Calvert Foundation on Twitter

@SWP_Baltimore is trying to develop West Baltimore Street into a destination. Sno-cones included! #BaltImpact2017

Southwest Baltimore Partnership:

The Southwest Baltimore Partnership aims to create “an awesome, healthy, architecturally beautiful, diverse, cohesive community of choice built on mutual respect and shared responsibility.” During the Summer Impact Tour, the bus stopped at a property that the Southwest Baltimore Partnership was able to acquire through the help of Baltimore Community Lending. Their goal is to bring West Baltimore Street “back to life” and increase foot traffic, which they are doing by creating retail storefronts and residential homes. As part of their revitalization plan, Southwest Baltimore Partnership is creating jobs for minority contractors and employing them in geographically under-resourced neighborhoods that participate in the partnership.

Calvert Foundation on Twitter

A great site visit at Remington Row, part of the larger movement to revitalize the neighborhood #BaltImpact2017

Remington Row:

When we arrived in Remington, Thibault Manekin, co-founder of Seawall Development met us in front of the newly created Remington Row apartment buildings. Mr. Manekin discussed the development of an open source idea that provides the neighborhood with amenities that are useful for the community. He discussed R. House, a food hall located just up the block from Remington Row. Seawall wanted to create a launchpad for chefs in Baltimore. Since its opening, R House has created a couple hundred jobs, and many of the restaurants are seeing more success than they originally anticipated.

Calvert Foundation on Twitter

Ending #BaltImpact2017 at Brick + Board, another @Humanim #socent that salvages the materials from deconstructions for reuse

Brick + Board:

Details Deconstruction and Brick + Board are both Humanim social enterprises focused on the deconstruction the vacant homes in Baltimore. After the homes are deconstructed, the materials are salvaged to be resold. When we went to visit the warehouse for Brick + Board, they were housing a Made in Baltimore pop up shop, which featured various furniture pieces that artisans created from the salvaged wood. while simultaneously adding to the recycling culture of Baltimore city Brick + Board provides living-wage jobs for Baltimoreans that face barriers to employment.

The Summer Impact Tour showed various investors and community members the real benefits that socially conscious investing can have. We toured a wide range of places from housing to office spaces, showing the abundance of innovation and enormous potential that can be found in Baltimore City.

Investing to Impact Baltimore was originally published in Invested Impact on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Sharayna Christmas is a dancer, writer, and educator. She has been dancing for more than 25 years. Her ballet training began at the Dance Theater of Harlem (DTH) at the age of three. She has performed the works of many choreographers including Ulysses Dove, Robert Garland, and Geoffrey Holder. At 16, she participated in the Marie Brook Pan Caribbean Dance Company to perform in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. Sharayna credits her passion for the community to her mother, who has been a community activist in New York and New Jersey for more than 35 years. In 1998, Sharayna moved to Baltimore to attend Morgan State University where she received her B. S. in Finance. In 2011, she was the recipient of the Rising Star Award from the Living Classroom Foundation for her work in the community. Sharayna also received the “Leading Women” Award presented by the Daily Record in 2013.

Sharayna Christmas never meant to stay in Baltimore. And her parents never meant for dance to define her life. Yet here she is, engaging youth, families, and whole communities through literary, visual, and performing arts. As Founder and Director of Muse 360 Arts, Sharayna has her eyes to the future and her goals set high. Muse 360 Art’s mission is to provide Baltimore youth of diverse backgrounds with high quality artistic training and experiences that inspire them to reach their full potential.

Their three signature programs, Rayn Fall Dance Studio™, Spark of Genius: Youth Entrepreneur Project™, and New Generation Scholars: Youth Leadership Program™ each address differing aspects of personhood. The dance studio works to build strength, grace and discipline; Spark of Genius teaches business preparation, financial literacy and nutrition; New Generation Scholars travels domestically and internationally to study the African Diaspora, introducing youth to the arts and cultures that shape our world and connecting current and historical events to develop the critical thinking skills needed to make the impacts they choose to have.

II: How did you arrive where you are today?

SC: I’ve always been a dreamer. I’d always have a vision and think: Oh, we can do this and that! No one could tell me we couldn’t do something at that time. Muse 360 didn’t happen right away, I started teaching dance first and met another artist who was older than me and she said you should start a nonprofit.

Now, I didn’t know anything about the nonprofit world.

We did it together and she actually left me; she left the program and Muse 360 happened in about 2004. It was a lot because I was still working as a finance professional. I quit that in 2007 and wanted to get more experience in the nonprofit world, so I started working at a small nonprofit so I could financially support myself.

That’s how I landed here, but my experience, and I’m able to say this now because I’ve evolved over the last 12 years, my experience has helped my day-to-day work from when I was younger. Knowing what it’s like to grow up and not be noticed. Knowing what it’s like to grow up and have skills and talents. Saying, “hey I can do that too.” That’s what informs my day to day work. Wanting to be treated like a human being. Me connecting to people. I relate to people on a basic level, I don’t look at people based on what they look like.

The human experience of love is how I inform my work, it’s cliché but it works; at the end of the day the human experience is all we have. I just know what it was like to be overlooked so that’s how I work with my people, with my young people, their parents.

II: What is your North Star/guiding vision?

SC: Now that I’m a mother, wanting a better life for my son. A better life not just in terms of Baltimore City, but a healthy life where he can be who he is and not be judged. And I think that a lot of times those are the thoughts that come into my mind when I’m working and out there doing the work that I’m doing. I’m so passionate because I know what it’s like to be overlooked and not have access to experiences that make you a whole person; make you a spiritually healthy person. I am very spiritual in the sense that I really try to center myself on being faithful and thinking about the unseen. That’s what guides me: I try to think that every day something good is going to happen.

II: Who are your heroes?

SC: My mother is my hero. She was a community activist in Harlem. She lives in New Jersey now, but growing up there was not a night during the week that we were just home. We’d be in the community. These things I hated when I was younger, I wanted to go out with my friends! When I became an adult, I understood why she cared so much. My mother really modeled for me what it was like to put yourself aside and serve people. My other heroes include James Baldwin. James Baldwin to me was an individual who just spoke his mind, knew how talented he was, knew that the experience of being Black in America at that time was tough. But he was going to speak on it regardless. Another hero is Pearl Primus. She was a dancer and anthropologist and extremely accomplished, traveled the world and brought the experiences of the African diaspora back to her people. She moved as a dancer very differently from most dancers and I just really idolized her. I bought everything, every book you could find. I went to the NYC public library for performing arts to look at her. She was very private so she didn’t publish a lot of her work. Katherine Dunham, because she went back to her hometown of St. Louis–she was also a dancer an anthropologist –and she opened up a creative center in her community.

So those are my heroes, I would say, that I think about often and I go to their quotes. Ella Baker was another hero and Zora Neale Hurston. I love the complexity of people and mostly of artists. They have these really wild personal experiences, but also make a lot of impact on the world. That’s when you realize that nobody’s perfect, it is what it is.

II: What is entrepreneurship to you? To your students? Their families and community? How does entrepreneurship support financial well-being in marginalized communities?

SC: Entrepreneurship is not a term I ever really heard when I was younger. Even when I was in college, I learned to get a job. I didn’t know anybody who owned their own businesses. As I got older, I started to experience and work through Muse 360 because even though it’s a nonprofit, I became a social entrepreneur. Rayn Fall Dance Studio™ is fee for service. I created a business first and then I became a nonprofit.

What people don’t know is that in Baltimore, the largest growing population of entrepreneurs is Black women.

For me, entrepreneurship is just hustling, it’s making sure and making ends meet. It’s making sure you can do what you can for yourself: cross all the t’s, dot all the i’s. That’s what entrepreneurship is in my life. I didn’t have a pocket of money and say, “Oh, I’m going to be an entrepreneur” and that’s the kind of background my students come from.

My students learn about entrepreneurship more so in learning the skillset of what it takes to be an entrepreneur. You cannot be a lazy entrepreneur, you cannot be someone who makes excuses. You have to understand that the world isn’t going to be handed to you on a silver platter.

In terms of my family and community, again [entrepreneurship] is a foreign concept. It’s a foreign concept, but then again, it’s not, because what people don’t know is that in Baltimore, the largest growing population of entrepreneurs is Black women.

The reason that we started entrepreneurship here–it was not a plan–was that I had read (twice) the Miseducation of the Negro that was written in the 1930s. It is by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, who is the founder of Black History Month. In the preface he talks about when families come into this country, so he’s talking about immigrants, he’s not talking about African Americans–he’s saying that if a Mexican, Latinx, Asian family comes to this country, we laugh and say ‘they’re over there selling oranges’ or wood figures. We laugh at them but they are doing entrepreneurship and that’s the basis of their livelihood. He called that ‘spark of genius’– and that’s why one of our programs is called Spark of Genius™. What I think that it does is, if you are in this country as a person of color, you’re never going to be at the top. This is what the system is. So I’m a major advocate of entrepreneurship. More so now than ever before because we’re looking at times where a degree does not carry you to the top.

Funding the Future: The Skyrocketing Rates of African American Women Entrepreneurs

II: How was Muse 360 started and what are the milestones that have been defined its evolution? Is there any other organization doing what you’re doing?II: How was Muse 360 started and what are the milestones that have been defined its evolution? Is there any other organization doing what you’re doing?

SC: Muse 360 develops young people creatively. People think it’s just a dance organization and it’s not. We’re high quality, more than arts and crafts. We guide [young people] in the pursuit of excellence. If you’re living an impoverished life where crime is constant, like it’s nothing anymore, you’re not thinking about it. The arts are the center of what holds communities together. If you can revive that, you can save a community. It’s a mixture of experiences I have that, without them I couldn’t be doing what I am.

Having a center smack dab in the middle of the hood where people can see themselves in a positive way, like Katherine Dunham did. And that’s kind of the legacy that I would want to have, a center that not only encompassed the creative arts, but helped people to read and helped people to connect.

II: What does success look like for you, for Muse 360, for Baltimore?

SC: Being completely invested in by not just foundations, but also getting invested in by the city. Being a trusted partner to develop youth more than just 10 kids per year that get the whole experience. Having a center smack dab in the middle of the hood where people can see themselves in a positive way, like Katherine Dunham did. And that’s kind of the legacy that I would want to have, a center that not only encompassed the creative arts, but helped people to read and helped people to connect.

II: Fundraising is obviously a huge part of starting and maintaining a nonprofit social enterprise. What portion of your time is spent raising money? What is/are the most critical challenge(s) you face when it comes to funding? Overall?

SC: The portion of time you can spend fundraising is not a lot. Maybe it’s because I have a fee for service component, maybe it’s because I have nobody to work with me. I am the only employee of Muse 360. I have teachers who come in, they’re contracted employees, but I do everything. I have to constantly execute quality. To write grants and get declined because of one part, it all comes down to the fact that I am not being invested in. I used to say ‘I don’t have any capacity’, really it’s that I don’t have any money.

When I have to go back and beg organizations for money, I need to ask them: What do you want for Baltimore? Are you going to keep investing in outsiders coming in with new programs? Why? That doesn’t work.

I’ve been asked, “you’re one person and look at all the stuff you do. What would happen if you had a staff of two people?” Why do I have to feel like a martyr all the time? I’m going in under-compensated, overworked. I’m stressed out. It’s been a rough summer. No summer funding this or last year from 12 funders. It’s disheartening, it pisses me off… it makes me want to leave Baltimore.

When I have to go back and beg organizations for money, I need to ask them: What do you want for Baltimore? Are you going to keep investing in outsiders coming in with new programs? Why? That doesn’t work.

Do I need to crumble and fall for them to say, ‘oh–we have to save Muse 360’? Do I have to die and come back another life? No. I’m not doing that. I need to understand what funders are looking for. Why didn’t you give me the full grant I asked for? My organization is there, my 990’s, my budget’s nice and balanced. I don’t know what the secret is. I am a Black led organization serving people that look like me. Why do I have to jump through hoops?

A lot of funders, they will deny you in a minute, but they won’t take the time to come in and see who you are, what you do. How do you make a decision without even picking up the phone and thinking, “let me try to get to know this person.” This is the history. Like with People’s Liberty–I understand it’s not a lot of money, but you should bring in people that got denied and ask ‘what do you really need?” You keep going this way and we’re going to constantly be overlooked and we’re going to constantly be struggling. I sit with people that give me advice all the time and I would love to go do this and that, but I have classes to go teach and programs to design.

Invested Impact on Twitter

@LightCityBmore @LabsAtLightCity Sharayna Christmas, Executive Director of Muse 360 Arts, identifies lack of access to capital as a barrier for entrepreneurs of color

How many of these institutions are led by people representative of the population? Zero. Zero percent. Maybe one percent. Maybe. Race absolutely plays a big part. I’ve never lived in a more segregated city.

[Funders] don’t know what success looks like, don’t unlock these doors, come in with no salary, work with kids and teach them ballet. Seventy to eighty percent of my budget is from fee for service. If I don’t get outside revenue, I can’t take a salary. I don’t take a salary right now. It’s not realistic. Not to toot my own horn, but this is the kind of magic that we have to create. It’s the same kind of magic that a single mother has to create when she has four kids. Me, I have hundreds of kids.

I have to remind myself that ‘you are doing good work’ because a lot of it is getting denied constantly. After this year, I really have to reevaluate some things because it’s draining me. There’s no more water left in the rag. I am rung out.

II: How many of these institutions are led by people representative of the population you serve? What are the implications of this?

SC: How many of these institutions are led by people representative of the population? Zero. Zero percent. Maybe one percent. Maybe. Race absolutely plays a big part. I’ve never lived in a more segregated city. It saddens me. That’s part of the issue with my son, he goes to a mostly Black school and has hardly any Black teachers. I sent him to a private school because I thought that it was the right thing to do. It wasn’t the right thing to do, so I thought maybe going to public school would be better. It’s not. At least now he has peers that look like him, but he’s not being taught or educated by people who understand who he is as a young Black boy. That’s a problem.

II: What could/would dramatically change this process?

SC: If we work together on a common mission then I do my part and you do your part. It’s not me or any small black or female led organization that needs to change our mindset. It’s the people with the resources that need to change their mindsets. They can’t keep investing in these centers where leaders are living in poverty. Eventually those leaders are just going to have to leave, or the organizations will just fizzle away. I’ve talked to bigger organizations and realized I need to have a conversation with them and funders. I love what I do at Muse, I could do it with my eyes closed. But I need to talk to people and I have something important to say. It’s not about being confrontational, it’s about having an important conversation.

Innovator Insights: Sharayna Christmas, Founder and Executive Director of Muse 360 Arts was originally published in Invested Impact on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It is no secret that starting a new business is hard. The process requires long hours of dedicated work, the need to establish a unique place within the industry, and the perseverance to advocate for yourself and your business, never mind the constant concerns of achieving growth and scale from peers and investors. On top of all of the struggles of any new business owner, African American women entrepreneurs face particularly steep and systemic hurdles that impede their ability to launch and grow their own enterprises.

Where the money isn’t coming from:

Venture capital is a critical source of money for startups and small businesses. Yet the landscape in which African American women entrepreneurs launch their enterprises does not provide access to sufficient funding options or opportunities. Between the years of 2012 and 2014, just 0.2 percent of businesses started by African American women received venture capital investment. In 2016, DigitalUndivided, an organization that invests in African American and Latina women tech founders released the Project Diane report, which found, on average, that $36,000 in venture funding goes to African American Women. Comparatively, $1.3 million goes to failed startups owned by white men. Investors tend to trust and ultimately invest in people that are similar to themselves. 92 percent of senior investment teams are made up of men, and less than one percent are African American. Hence, African American women are not given the advantage of simply looking like venture capital funders.

But the lack of capital isn’t due to the inaction of venture capitalists alone. African American women who are unable to obtain venture funding may turn to small business loans for financial support to launch and grow their businesses. But, according to 21st Century Barriers to Women’s Entrepreneurship, a report produced by the U.S Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, women account for only 16 percent of conventional small business loans. This statistic encompasses women as a whole group in the distinct minority; women of color represent an even smaller portion of the pool that receives these loans.

What economic growth and opportunity this money isn’t funding:

This lack of funding is having a clear effect on the number of women owned businesses that exist in the current work force. A report released by the Sage Policy Group found that the number of women owned businesses that should exist in Baltimore is short 5,036 businesses, based on the population and performance comparison metrics. This report attributes the existence of barriers in funding to: limited access to commercial credit, virtual exclusion of women-owned businesses, limited trainings, and lack of data on women-owned businesses. Though data points are not available to illustrate the financial impact of businesses founded and led by African American women specifically, the data on for-profit ventures led by African American men and women can be used as a proxy to understand social entrepreneurship’s nature and implications. Locally,

“Baltimore City would experience a renaissance — an economic renaissance — that would significantly alter [the] economy, workforce, and socioeconomic conditions… [and] produce several impacts:

• total income for all City residents would increase by over a quarter;
• over 30,000 new jobs would be created;
• housing values in the City would significantly increase; and City tax collections from income and property taxes would increase by over $270 million.”1

On a national scale, “if the number of people-of-color firms were proportional to their distribution in the labor force, people of color would own 1.1 million more businesses with employees. These firms would add about nine million jobs and about $300 billion in workers’ income to the U.S. economy.”2

Women own 30 percent of all business in the United States, 14 percent of which are owned by African American women which generates $52.6 billion in revenue per year according to the Center for American Progress. For the benefit of the overall financial market the current landscape in which African American women operate in needs to be restructured to support the creation of African American women run businesses. African American women are the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs in the nation, starting businesses at six times the national average according to Black Enterprise magazine. Despite the lack of funding, African American women are still leading the pack in terms of business launch and ownership rates; imagine their success if they were properly funded.

What’s not causing inequity:

The overall lack of funding could be for many reasons, but it is definitely not due to a gap in education. African American women founders are obtaining degrees at rates six times that of the U.S population, and these degrees are from top tier institutions. Despite the access to higher education, African American women are not benefiting from the access to the complex and well-connected web that is associated with students and professors at these institutions.

The lack of funding present is also not due to a lack of desire: the ambition African American women have to launch their own business is especially apparent:

“One of the most remarkable entrepreneurial trends in recent years is the phenomenal growth among black women. The number of firms skyrocketed.”

By the numbers:

• 30% of all U.S. businesses women now own
• 14% of all U.S. businesses controlled by black women
• 9.4 M Total number of firms owned by women
• 1.3 M Total number of firms owned by black women
• 297,500 Workers employed by black women-owned firms
• $52.6 B Revenues generated by black women-owned firms

African American women also cite the desire to create generational wealth as a reason for becoming an entrepreneur according to the Black Women Entrepreneurs report.

How to address the current landscape:

Due to the conditions in which African American women entrepreneurs work in there are extra actions that they must take to be competitive within the sector. The Black Women Entrepreneurs report provided a list of key recommendations that they believe will even the playing field for African American women business owners. Here are two examples from that list:

• Increase the number of Black women investors: Given the lack of angel investors who are both women and of color, qualified Black women should seek to become accredited angel investors for Black women-owned businesses. Since angel investors tend to fund those that look similar to themselves, there needs to be more investors of color. Increasing the number of African American women investors will ultimately lead to an increase in funding for African American women.
• Encourage entrepreneurship curricula at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and encourage universities and colleges that currently have entrepreneurship programing to expand and incorporate diverse curricula: The Historically Black Colleges and Universities present in the Baltimore community already have entrepreneurial skills worked into their curricula. Morgan State University has a degree in Entrepreneurship from the School of Business and Management with focus courses on social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. Coppin State College of Business houses the Center for Strategic Ingepreneurship which aims to “ facilitate the development and dissemination of ingepreneurial knowledge and skills through research, teaching, and practice.”

What funders can do:

• Place financial holdings in Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs). Lending products (especially for loan and venture funds) are flexible and often tailored to meet the specific needs of the borrower. CDFIs provide at least 60 percent of their basic financial services to the low and moderate income neighborhoods where they operate and are accountable to the communities they serve (residents and community leaders from their service areas hold positions on their boards). CDFIs provide financial literacy and education for all their clients, which is available free of charge. Despite operating in vulnerable communities, CDFIs have rates of default below five percent.
• Prioritize [social] entrepreneurship as a fundamental component of community economic development initiatives.
• Recognizing that entrepreneurship is critical to the long term health of the economy and that social entrepreneurs face a variety of demographic, socioeconomic and geographic barriers, institutional philanthropy can follow examples like that of the Kauffman Foundation, which has focused on reducing direct barriers to disadvantaged entrepreneurs, by prioritizing access to training, mentoring and capital, and the root causes of those barriers, such as bias, poverty, declining infrastructure, social isolation and demographic shifts.
• Expand the deployment of foundation assets: use mission related and program related investments to complement grantmaking.
• The Ford Foundation’s Board of Trustees recently authorized the allocation of up to $1 billion of their endowment, to be phased in over 10 years, for mission-related investments (MRIs).

We recently spoke to Sharayna Christmas, founder of Muse360 Arts. Sharayna is one of many African American woman founders that must overcome nearly insurmountable barriers to get their organizations off the ground. She told us about her experience being an African American Female founder in Baltimore:

“For me, entrepreneurship is just hustling, it’s making sure and making ends meet. It’s making sure you can do what you can for yourself: cross all the t’s, dot all the i’s. That’s what entrepreneurship is in my life. I didn’t have a pocket of money and say, ‘Oh- I’m going to be an entrepreneur’ and that’s the kind of background my students come from. In terms of my family and community, [entrepreneurship] is a foreign concept. It’s a foreign concept, but then again, it’s not, because what people don’t know is that in Baltimore, the largest growing population of entrepreneurs are Black women.”

Kachura, Matthew . Dashboard Report: Analysis and Metrics of Baltimore City’s African American Middle Class: Executive Summary. Associated Black Charities, Baltimore, MD,

Austin, Algernon. “The Color of Entrepreneurship: Why the Racial Gap among Firms Costs the U.S. Billions.” Center for Global Policy Solutions, Center for Global Policy Solutions, Apr. 2016, globalpolicysolutions.org/report/color-entrepreneurship-racial-gap-among-firms-costs-u-s-billions/. Accessed June 2017.

Funding the Future: The Skyrocketing Rates of African American Women Entrepreneurs was originally published in Invested Impact on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.