Month: May 2022

Where the Road Leads

By Nichole M. Christian

When the Center for Cultural Innovation launched Ambitio US four years ago, the bullseye became neon clear: Identify the alternative economic trailblazers in BIPOC communities and find new ways to lift and strategically support their culture changing ideas. And let’s do it fast, in 10 years.

The initiative was forged with the anticipation of major demographic and social disruptions, it did not anticipate a seemingly unending global pandemic. After a long pause in travel the Ambitio US team hit the road on a nine-day, five-state, concert-like, road tour of the U.S. south to see and hear from these visionary leaders first hand. Needless to say — we were blown away.

Ambitio US grantees are planting, some literally, new seeds of economic ownership and change in cultural communities battling against systemic disinvestments and racial disregard.

The more than 1,000 miles drive started in Atlanta, Georgia (GA)and included stops in: Jackson, Mississippi (MS); Memphis, Tennessee (TN); rural Alabama (AL) and Bentonville, Arkansas (AR).

“We took this trip because we are in this work to fund people, the ideas they have, the organizations they create, and the cultures they are working to preserve and celebrate,’’ explained Fox. The visits included: Ekvn-Yefolecv (AL), , Cooperative New West Jackson (MS), and Historic Clayborn Temple and Orange Mound (TN).

“Being with these thought-leaders in their communities is the best way to get to know the work and the change that is happening.’’

CCI President and CEO Angie Kim, who is also the founding director of Ambitio US , says the tour painted an important portrait which philanthropy has yet to embrace. “A new movement is happening,’’ she said. “These organizations represent a whole new generation of Black and BIPOC leaders who understand the history and the very real threat of cultural dispossession, even today, in their communities. They’re explicitly creating ownership opportunities and alternative economic approaches that are beginning to inspire others like them. It’s important to see their work and to see what needs to be done to grow the movement.’’

Want to learn more about the trip, the movement or the Ambitio US approach to change, feel free to be in touch here.

Who knows where the road will lead AmbitioUS next!

Nichole M. Christian is the Narrative Shifter at the Center for Cultural Innovation , a nonprofit intermediary that supports individuals in the arts to realize greater financial self-determination.

This article was originally published on Medium. Read it on Medium →

by habtamu

The RUNWAY to Joy

By Nicole Winthrop

Just a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending Nonprofit Quarterly’s Remaking the Economy: Closing the Racial Wealth Gap . The perspective of one of the panelists, Anne Price, President, Insight Center for Community Economic Development, has stuck with me ever since. What Price spoke of was something not normally mentioned when talking about matters of economics: JOY. She surprisingly and brilliantly linked joy as being vital to the often daunting hope of narrowing the racial wealth gap.

I knew instantly I wanted to read her latest essay, “ Doing “The Right Thing” Won’t Close the Racial Wealth Gap” (Shelterforce. February 2022). The goal, as Anne portrays in her essay is to offer a new paradigm, one that identifies and insists upon broader notions of wealth such as mental health, as safety, as collective well-being, and one that debunks the myth of individual choice as ahistorical.

For too long, the persistent rhetoric has been that investing in Black communities is too risky. Such thinking forced African Americans to segregate themselves into under-resourced urban ghettos and into easy prey for practices such as, redlining, and a long history of being marginalized from most government programs, including and most disheartening, FHA-backed mortgage loans. The Great Migration of the early 20th century among African Americans fleeing the South throughout the rest of the country led those landing in urban areas only to be corralled into substandard living conditions so as to remain segregated from the growing sprawl of white communities in so-called developed or suburban areas outside of the city and away from the black ghetto. (Read Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership . University of North Carolina Press. 2019.)

This may seem like a historical rehash but the consequences continue to show themselves today. Take for instance the way bank lenders focus on what is commonly called, the 5 C’s of Credit (i.e. Collateral, Capacity, Capital, Conditions, and Character) to determine whether or not an individual is ready for a loan. Far too often BIPOC individuals and organizations in need of lending fail to meet those standards or to fully understand the ways their very design contributes to racial exclusion.

Jessica Norwood, Founder and CEO, RUNWAY not only understands; she’s also leading a bold collective approach, rooted in deep and empowering community partnerships to dismantle practices which she declares “clear and persistent metrics of racism.”

Instead, and much like Price, Norwood invites us to show up “in right relationship with one another” to shift systems of capital in directions meant to help BIPOC communities access capital and the joy of realized dreams. In RUNWAY’s inaugural issue entitled Nourishment (September 2021), the numbers speak for themselves: From 2018 to 2020, revenue from RUNWAY entrepreneurs nearly tripled from $2.7 million to $7.8 million through the Friends and Family Loan Product, which is what initially drew Ambitio US to fund RUNWAY, a product designed as an impact investment fund that yields both positive social impact and returns to investors.

By underwriting loans based on character and “in right relation” with borrowers, investors, community-governed funds, and financial institutions, RUNWAY demonstrates a financing model that breaks away from the 5Cs of credit model so as to unlock capital for those historically marginalized from the necessary capital to scale let alone to survive. During the pandemic, explains Norwood, “It looked like Black firms were not getting access to the federal relief program PPP because they lacked bank relationships.” RUNWAY connected its entrepreneurs with PPP loans as well as provided Universal Basic Income (UBI) to provide a social safety net, cultivate a sense of well-being, and nourish mental health.

I witnessed some of the returns on that bold thinking during a recent funder briefing hosted in Oakland, California’s Historic 7th Street, at the center of the “Harlem of the West.” Oakland-based musician, Bosco Kante, spoke about “success circles,” a network of RUNWAY entrepreneurs that holds space for entrepreneurs to engage in a non-competitive way and look to one another to innovate and excel together. Bosco, founder of Electrospit, was full of visible joy as he explained the feeling of hearing his fellow entrepreneurs speak of their ability to finally manage and in some cases grow their business during the pandemic. Best of all, he said, is that he now believes even greater growth is possible. Norwood and RUNWAY are hard at work expanding hopes of BIPOC entrepreneurs and artists like Bosco by expanding their orbit as movement leaders. Theirs is an orbit that will soon include a business accelerator and cooperatively run consultancy (Uptima Entrepreneur Cooperative), a community-governed capital fund (Real People’s Fund), a public bank (Self Help Credit Union), and a community of Black entrepreneurs in Boston, Chicago, and Oakland.

To witness the work of groups like RUNWAY is inspiring. But it’s all the more inspiring to see growing evidence that Norwood and thought leaders like Price are not trailblazing alone. Nwamaka Agbo , CEO of the Kataly Foundation and Managing Director of the Restorative Economies Fund (REF), defines Restorative Economics as that which centers on healing and restoration of vulnerable communities who have been marginalized and oppressed by a polluting and extractive economy, by investing in strategies that create shared prosperity and self-determination for a just transition to the next economy. RUNWAY has demonstrated the untapped possibilities that occur when financial services center the priorities of borrowers as well as those of investors. They are able to provide this community-centered, non-extractive approach because they are “tapped into” a broader ecosystem that sustains the conditions necessary for restorative economics.

In this way, RUNWAY exemplifies the promise of alternative funding models, and most importantly, RUNWAY is making the promise of joy real.

Nicole Winthrop is Program Associate at the Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI), a nonprofit intermediary that supports individuals in the arts to realize greater financial self-determination.

This article was originally published on Medium. Read it on Medium →

by habtamu