Chief executive officers from three major community development intermediaries, including NeighborWorks America, talked about renewed commitments to racial equity, new partnerships and allocating resources in the time of a pandemic as part of a virtual panel hosted by NeighborWorks. The CEOs, all people of color and together for the first time in a forum like this, shared their thoughts on the state of community development in front of 70 executives from NeighborWorks network organizations based in the Northeast. The panel was moderated by Jennifer Sun, executive director of Asian Americans for Equality Inc., a NeighborWorks organization in New York City.
During COVID-19, NeighborWorks America’s goal has been to push resources into the community through its organizations, starting with emergency COVID grants that went out in March. Properties owned by network organizations are facing many unexpected expenses related to COVID. “We have two funds that we’re raising money for,” Rodriguez said. “One is for our rental groups, a resilience fund of $30 million. And we have another working fund to help organizations who need working capital to get through this time.”
Advancing racial equity is an issue Enterprise has been talking about for a long time, said Priscilla Almodovar, CEO of Enterprise Community Partners. Now, they’re recommitting to racial equity across their platform, she said. COVID has highlighted the disparities experienced by low-income communities, particularly people of color.
Maurice A. Jones, president and CEO of LISC, says his organization, too, has recommitted to racial equity. “The combination of COVID and the recession and what I am hoping is a newfound momentum for the continuation of America’s unfinished work in the Civil Rights Movement … led us to recommit ourselves to working more on the racial health and the racial wealth and the racial opportunity gaps in the country,” he said.
Jones believes that the focus on disparities and the need for racial equity is an opportunity to aggregate more and different partners to this work. “We’ve enhanced our aspirations in the amount of capital we think we can aggregate to work on these gaps. We’ve also broadened our view of the partners that are out there to work with. Now we’re looking at places like Lowes and Walmart and Netflix – places we were not envisioning as partners before this time.”
Rodriguez agreed. “The need is so acute that there are a lot of organizations looking to help communities. We need to capitalize on that.”
Internally, he says, they’ve been focusing on the staff. “We’ve had to give our employees that space and permission to cry, the space and permission to have tough conversations about race. That’s been the biggest test of the season: How compassionate can our leadership be? It’s making us a stronger team.”
Both Rodriguez and Almodovar said that race, equity, diversity and inclusion efforts continue across their organizations. “We’re trying to make it so it’s omnipresent,” Rodriguez said.
Conversation turned to the economic crisis of 2008, which taught all of the leaders lessons they say they are applying now, during layoffs and economic hard times. One thing that’s different with COVID, Almodovar said, is that it affects everybody.
“The Great Recession was about Main Street and Wall Street,” Almodovar said. “Even though the economy was impacted, it was insular. COVID is different. This is a shared experience. That is an opportunity.” People who had never thought about the communities that are suffering now are thinking about them, she said. The elevation of the conversation about race is also an opportunity to bring people in.
One thing she learned in 2008, she said, is that “those who are less able to speak up are the ones left behind. We have to make sure we’re working for those who don’t have a voice.”
Flexibility is important now, she says. And she, too, brought the focus back to partnerships. “I learned that during the recession and also today: You don’t try to start the partnerships when the crisis is happening. We have to forge those relationships during the good times. Because it’s in the bad times that those partnerships that are meaningful actually make a difference.”
For Rodriguez, the key takeaways from 2008 that have informed her approach to today’s challenges include:
- The importance of transparency and clear, concise communication from lenders, servicers and housing counselors.
- The importance of transparency working with community groups
- The need to work in partnership with local, state, federal and industry leaders
- The importance of coordinated outreach
- The need for scam prevention resources. During the economic crisis of 2008, NeighborWorks launched a scam prevention campaign. As COVID-related scams become prevalent, the organization has refreshed its prevention materials to help communities know what to do if they are being preyed upon.
Jones, who headed Pilot Media during the recession, said he saw community development infrastructure diminish after crisis. It’s important to be aware that the same thing could happen again and to try to prevent it, he said. “Is this the time we should be upping our game with respect to developing community development infrastructure capacity?”
The same attention should be paid to units of affordable housing that were lost during the recession when developers took advantage of low prices. “What can we do to get ahead of the risk of losing more affordable spaces for residences and businesses?”
Rodriguez said she sees the need to double down on leadership development. “I think in the next five to seven years we’re going to see a lot of CEOs and executive directors retiring out of the industry. We want to make sure we have leadership that is emerging to take on these organizations,” she said. To maintain training continuity, NeighborWorks is launching its first Virtual Training Institute this August.
Rodriguez also sees the need to invest in technology for organizations, and to look at the business models of the community development group. “I think we will always need government and philanthropic dollars. I think we are too reliant on them today.”
Joanie Straussman Brandon, NeighborWorks’ regional vice president for the Northeast Region, said she hoped the CEOs could find ways to coordinate and leverage one another’s resources. Rodriguez agreed, saying it was important for the three organizations to collectively share their stories of impact with stakeholders.
“We should all play to our strengths,” Almodovar said. “We should elevate the conversation.”
And they need to keep these conversations elevated, Jones said. “How do we make sure this isn’t simply a summer of 2020 event?” He said new partners give them a chance to make the case for sustained investment. “This has transformative potential,” he said, adding that it’s important to sustain newfound interest in “the work.”
For some reason, Almodovar said, housing hasn’t received the same attention as health care and education. But now, “people are realizing that housing is the biggest cost in a family’s budget.” She said she’s optimistic that if we keep bringing it back to the personal story, the interest will be sustained. “There’s so much at stake.”
