Grand Rapids Community Foundation is proud to serve the people of Kent County. We envision a magnetic and interconnected West Michigan community, one where barriers to opportunity, prosperity and belonging are eliminated for everyone who calls this place home. To make an impact on a local level, it is important to have strong relationships with other philanthropic organizations so we work collaboratively to create systemic change.
We spoke with some of our close partners from a variety of organizations to gain their perspectives on how these relationships make an impact on programmatic collaborations and move the philanthropic sector toward more equitable outcomes. Read excerpts from those conversations with philanthropic leaders in West Michigan.
Collective Impact
Partnerships with private, family and other community foundations have been critical to many local initiatives, including COVID-19 relief and recovery efforts, the Nonprofit Technical Assistance Fund, foreclosure prevention programs, education initiatives and many more. With varying perspectives, missions and leadership, these relationships require trust, vulnerability and effort to make possible.
We acknowledge in philanthropy: we don’t have the answers. We have resources. And our job is to get those resources into community where the answers— and the true experts—are. How do we together ensure that we are funneling our resources to community in a way that doesn’t add extra burden to community? In a way that feels cohesive and is truly responsive, respectful and pushes forward community goals with racial equity at the heart of it?
Tracie Coffman, program officer, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, a private foundation
The families and organizations that come together to philanthropically support this community are vastly different: different beliefs, diverse values, different lived experiences. But all of us have an innate love of this community and a desire to have every person in every zip code achieve their life’s potential. We share the ultimate goal of making this place the best possible place to live on earth.
Holly Johnson, president, Frey Foundation, a locally-based family foundation
There is something about philanthropy, regardless of the type or size, working together to solve some of our most complex issues - there’s power in it. Community foundations are uniquely positioned to not only leverage great grantmaking strategies but also engage in direct lobbying to support policies that empower the residents they serve. We all have tools in our toolbox that we should be leveraging collectively to advance the greater good and systems change in our respective communities, and certainly at the state and federal level.
Regina Bell, chief policy officer, Council of Michigan Foundations
Learning Together And Making Structural Change
Local funders have created space to grow together on their individual journeys toward advancing more community-focused and racial-equity centered practices. As they work toward a common goal, relationships and collaborations within the sector allows these organizations to challenge and learn alongside each other.
The secret sauce is the convening power that community foundations have to strengthen or develop a collective response effort and mobilize strategic partnerships both in immediate terms, but also to address longer term issues. They are able to bring business partners, resident leaders, others in philanthropy all to the table to have one conversation. They commit to rebuilding in ways that channel resources to areas that have the greatest needs, by coming together to talk about opportunities and challenges and push each other on their equity journeys.
Regina Bell
When operating in trust-based philanthropy, it means acknowledging by your actions, not just the words, that grantmaking has to look differently. Partnerships with communities have to look differently. We’re not just trying to change external systems and structures. We are the system and structure that has to change.
Tracie Coffman
Investment isn’t just us sending nonprofits general operating grants every year. It’s us actually sitting at their table and understanding where these systems interfere with each other and how they sometimes prevent the right philanthropic capital getting to the right people in the community.
Holly Johnson
