The submissions tackle issues at the heart of the community development agenda, Change Capital Fund’s primary focus.  The strategies would support safe, healthy, and affordable housing; economic opportunity through job training and creation while integrating features to enhance the livability of neighborhoods, from a public health, quality of life, and infrastructural resilience perspective. If implemented, the proposals, summarized in the report, would transform highly polluted, unused public spaces into accessible green space, create parks that both protect residents against flooding and mitigate toxic discharge into NYC’s waterways, create safe and healthy housing in basement apartments, make e-bikes safer and more available to delivery workers. Proposed projects would create hundreds of jobs in composting, energy efficiency improvements, and community solar installations.

The proposals “represent solutions to our city’s needs,” says Elijah Hutchinson, Executive Director of the Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice, which assisted many organizations and city agencies to apply to the federal government.

When one of Change Capital Fund’s grantees leveraged a modest grant into a federal award of $4 million, several of the collaborative’s members were inspired to raise a fund to enable NYC organizations to apply for federal grants. Ten grantees submitted ten proposals with the collaborative’s help, one-third of the 30 proposals submitted from New York City. The proposals were labor intensive to prepare, requiring strategies that could be implemented within three years, partnerships codified in written agreements, detailed plans, timelines and budgets. When Change Capital Fund reviewed all the proposals submitted from New York City, its funders found a treasure trove of forward-looking, actionable ideas. Their report is meant to lift up these ideas.

“We hope our report inspires continuing conversation and, ultimately, implementation of these ideas to help improve the health, economic prospects, and quality of life of New York City’s neighborhoods,” said Mike Pratt, President of Scherman Foundation and Change Capital Fund Co-Chair.

“At United Way of New York City, we believe bold solutions are born when those closest to the challenges are empowered to lead, asserts Grace Bonilla, Esq., President & CEO, United Way of New York City, “The ideas surfaced through this report reflect the ingenuity and urgency of our neighborhoods.”

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Change Capital Fund (CCF) is a collaborative of NYC’s leading foundations, financial institutions, the United Way of New York City, intermediaries and the Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity. It works to increase economic opportunities in NYC’s low-income neighborhoods by strengthening community-based development organizations.

Change Capital Fund members include: Altman Foundation; Amalgamated Bank, BankUnited, Capital One, Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, Enterprise Community Partners, Goldman Sachs, HBSC, JPMorgan Chase, LISC NYC, The M&T Charitable Foundation, Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity, ex-officio, New York Foundation, Principal Foundation, Santander Bank, Scherman Foundation, The New York Community Trust, Trinity Church Wall Street, U.S. Bank Foundation, United Way of New York City, Wells Fargo.

Change Capital Fund, a 21-member collaborative of banks, foundations and intermediaries, is awarding 10 NYC environmental justice organizations grants to help them benefit from a flood of new federal resources to realize their community’s visions for healthy, sustainability and resiliency.

The Inflation Reduction Act, unarguably the largest source of funding for climate and environmental justice solutions in U.S. history, is offering in the range of $45 billion to disadvantaged communities overburdened by pollution.  The catch is, that many environmental Justice organizations in New York City don’t have a lot of capacity to undertake the complicated funding applications required by federal agencies.

CCF’s EJ Fund will distribute $500,000 in grants to the following 10 NYC-based environmental justice organizations to enable them to hire fundraisers, coalition coordinators and the like to support their ability to qualify for the new flood of federal funds. Change Capital Fund believes that the fund has the potential to bring millions of dollars into neighborhoods that have long suffered from toxic infrastructure to help realize projects that may have been planned for years, even decades.

Should our grantees access the federal funds they aspire to, they would:

Implement long-held community plans for increased health, sustainability, resiliency

• THE POINT Community Development Corporation, South Bronx will create a community-shared solar project and electric shuttle service providing Hunts Point residents access to waterfront parks
• UPROSE, Sunset Park, Brooklyn will advance key priorities of their community’s community plan to create a Just Transition Worker Resource Center, special zoning district, pre-apprenticeship training; and to decarbonize and install rooftop solar on senior citizen centers of Sunset Park.
• NY Renews will engage with organizations statewide to garner state and city commitments to draw down of IRA/EJ funding for environmental justice projects.

 Restore and retain open space:

• Bronx River Alliance, Inc./ RAIN Coalition, South Bronx will plant 2500 trees and install and maintain green infrastructure to maintain open space.
• Real Edgemere CLT, Far Rockaway, Queens will create and implement a resilient open space plan in an area prone to flooding.

 Retrofit existing buildings to be more energy efficient and resilient:

• Pratt Institute Center for Community Development will partner with community organizations in Brooklyn and Queens to retrofit 300 homes owned by low- and moderate- income homeowners. Federal funds would subsidize a package of electrification-readiness measures, including gas to induction stove change-outs, electrification, health & safety repairs such as mold remediation and gas leaks that must be fixed before making the buildings more airtight.
• Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition, Bronx will increase weatherization efforts to integrate LEED standards in Bronx projects, training residents for retrofit jobs.
• Chhaya Community Development Corporation, Queens will partner with the City’s Housing Department to implement a basement conversion program for low- and moderate-income homeowners.

 Engage in transportation planning:

• El Puente de Williamsburg, Inc, Brooklyn will engage community members and partner with the NYC Department of Transportation to ensure that plans to update the BQE reflect community priorities for health and justice.

Train young people in the new green economy:

• Green City Force will expand their direct service programs to prepare 800 young people for green jobs; open 4 new eco-hubs (community farms) powered by a civilian climate corps, provide food to 10 frontline communities/year.

CCF introduced all applicants to the Fund to organizations that can help them apply for federal funding. The Environmental Protection Network, a network of some 600 former EPA career staff and political appointees from across the country provides pro bono consulting; WeACT TCTAC, which was awarded $10 million by the Environmental Protection Agency, provides assistance to groups in EPA Region 2; and, the Mayor’s Office for Environmental and Climate Justice is partnering with nonprofits to apply for federal funds.

Because of The federal administration’s  Environmental Justice 40 Initiative (EJ40), 40 percent of the benefits of federal environmental investments are being directed to disadvantaged communities. The EJ40 language originates in New York State’s own Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, advocated for by the New York Renews Coalition.

Altman Foundation, BankUnited, Deutsche Bank, M&T Bank, Principal, Scherman Foundation provided the funding for this initiative.

CCF also contributed to the Fund. It’s members include: The Altman Foundation, BankUnited, Capital One, Deutsche Bank, Enterprise, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, LISC, M&T Bank, MUFG, New York Foundation, The New York Community Trust, Principal, Santander Bank, Scherman Foundation, Trinity Wall Street, United Way of NYC, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo Bank. The NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity is an ex-officio member.

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At a recent panel, hosted by the Change Capital Fund, City officials supported the calls of Change Capital Fund’s grantees for new policies, increased investment and urgency in deploying land and buildings for community purpose, including affordable housing, community centers, and commercial spaces for neighborhood enterprises.  The panel was moderated by Alyssa Katz, Executive Editor of The City and included: NYC Comptroller, Brad Lander; NYC Chief Engagement Officer, Betsy MacLean; Mychal Johnson, Co-Founder of South Bronx Unite; and Sandra Lobo, Executive Director of Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition.

“We aren’t going to be able to build a more equal and a more inclusive economy where folks have stability in their housing, in their lives and in their families and some measure of autonomy with their neighbors if we don’t take the democratization of wealth and control seriously,” affirmed NYC Comptroller, Brad Lander.

“Top-down planning has not really helped the people who are in our communities that are suffering from displacement, health issues, economic and social injustices; so, we see planning from the ground up as necessary. We have to be the ones to develop our own path forward,” asserted Mychal Johnson, a founding member of South Bronx Unite. South Bronx Unite is seeking to redevelop the Lincoln Recovery Center, a City-owned property, which has been vacant and deteriorating for 11 years, as a cultural, educational and health center. The organization has engaged hundreds of community members in planning the new community center.

“Our people are getting displaced. Our communities are getting gentrified and, at the end of the day, we don’t own anything,” said Sandra Lobo, Executive Director of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition. The coalition has formed a Bronx Community Land Trust and are planning the development of several properties as permanently affordable housing.  “If you look in the Bronx right now, most residents live in multi-family, rent stabilized houses.  It’s not a realistic objective for them to ever own their own home unless it’s through passing the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) and they own it collectively with Community Land Trusts as partners, ensuring affordability over the long haul,” said Lobo.

“You can look at community ownership in two ways,” said Betsy Maclean, NYC Chief Engagement Officer.  “It’s a way to build equity, a way to build power… You can also think of it as a home. And to me, home is everything. Home is belonging. Home is connection to your neighbors. Home is well-being.  Home is love.”

Lander proposed that the City work to double the number of permanently affordable housing units and estimates that would get us to only 20% of all city housing stock. “That would take public policy, support on the ground and a lot of capacity building,” he said.

Change Capital Fund is investing in eight organizations and collaborations, out of more than 30 applications received from NYC-based organizations. The grantees are mostly small organizations, led by people of color, who are seeking to create new, permanently and deeply affordable rental housing or home-ownership opportunities, open spaces, community facilities, cooperatively-owned food businesses and/or food hubs. The intention is that the properties will be held as community land trusts or other forms of permanent community ownership.

Panelists: 

• Alyssa Katz (moderator) is executive editor with The City (TheCity.nyc) and a former member of the NY Daily News editorial board. Previously, she was editor of The New York World and City Limits. She has served on the Local Advisory Committee for LISCNYC and as a communications consultant with the Pratt Center for Community Development. Katz is the author of the books “Our Lot: How Real Estate Came to Own Us” and “The Influence Machine: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Corporate Capture of American Life.”
• Mychal Johnson is a founding advisory board member of South Bronx Unite. As a long-time activist and advocate for environmental, economic and social justice in the South Bronx, he is a founding member and board member of the Mott Haven-Port Morris Community Land Stewards. Mychal serves on the board of directors of the NYC Community Land Initiative (NYCCLI), the Bronx Council for Environmental Quality, and the Community Advisory Board of Columbia University’s NIEHS Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan. Mychal was also appointed as a civil society voting member of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Open Space Committee. He has been a member of Bronx Community Board 1 and was notably selected by the United Nations to serve as one of 38 global civil society appointees to the historic UN Climate Summit in 2014.
• New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was elected to serve as our city’s budget watchdog and chief accountability officer in 2021. In City Council, Lander co-founded the Progressive Caucus. He spearheaded efforts to protect workers and build a more equitable economy. He helped lead a successful grassroots effort to desegregate the middle-schools of Community School District 15, partneredwith advocates and legislators to combat discriminatory stop-and-frisk policing and helped bring participatory budgeting to NYC. Lander was one of the founders of Local Progress, now a 1000-member strong network of local elected officials advancing a racial and economic justice agenda through all levels of local government. Prior to holding public office, Lander spent 15 years in the nonprofit sector as the director of the Fifth Avenue Committee and the Pratt Center for Community Development
• Sandra Lobo is the Executive Director of the Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC), a 49-year-old member-led organization that unites diverse people and institutions to fight for racial and economic justice through intergenerational organizing. The NWBCCC organizes around health justice, environmental sustainability, school to prison pipeline, equitable economic and community development, and safe affordable housing. Before this role, Sandra was trained in anti-oppression organizing and leadership development incorporating a restorative justice framework. She served as Director of the Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice at Fordham University for 17 years, shifting the focus of the Center’s work from a charity to a justice model. Sandra has served as a board member of the Simon Bolivar Foundation and Robert Sterling Foundation Advisory Council. She currently serves as President of the Bronx Community Land Trust.
• Betsy MacLean is New York City’s first-ever Chief Engagement Officer for NYC. Appointed in 2022, she ensures that community engagement is a core function of NYC government to advance democracy, justice and belonging. In addition, Betsy led the Civic Engagement committee of NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ transition team and the Housing, Land Use & Planning committee of Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. Before City Hall, Betsy served as Executive Director of Hester Street, a national leader in participatory planning, policymaking, and design. Prior to moving into national work, Betsy was the Director of Community Development at Cypress Hills LDC in East New York, Brooklyn. There she planned and developed hundreds of affordable homes, spearheaded the community-led design and construction of Brooklyn’s first green public school, and created a neighborhood-wide planning and sustainability initiative. Betsy began her career as a carpenter. Her carpentry work brought her to Cuba where she created and led an international community development program.

Change Capital Fund’s grantees:

• East Harlem/El Barrio CLT is completing rehabilitation of distressed city-owned properties as tenant-run, permanently affordable housing with land to be owned by the community land trust.
• The East New York CLT has taken stock of every vacant parcel in East New York, Brooklyn and has identified several potential development sites for permanently affordable housing. They also seek to establish a preservation pilot program to model alternatives for tax-distressed homeowners to help them avert foreclosure.
• Interboro Community Land Trust, a collaboration between the Center for New York City Neighborhoods, Habitat for Humanity New York City and Westchester County, the Mutual Housing Association of New York, and the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board is a citywide CLT. With over 400 apartments in their pipeline, they will dramatically increase the stock of permanently affordable homeownership and wealth-building opportunities available to low- and moderate-income and BIPOC households.
• Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition is advancing three affordable housing projects on land to be put into the Bronx Community Land Trust.
• ReAL Edgemere CLT is a new organization that was awarded 62 vacant lots to create affordable, two-family homes, open space and commercial space on the Rockaway Peninsula, an area that had been devastated by Hurricane Sandy.
• RiseBoro Community Partnership and the Central Brooklyn Movement Center are collaborating to open the Central Brooklyn Food Coop as a Black-led, consumer- owned food store which will do business with several Black-owned food-based worker coops to foster an integrated, neighborhood-centered local food economy.
• South Bronx Unite seeks to renovate and repurpose the city-owned and abandoned Lincoln Recovery Center as a new H.ealth, E.ducation, and Arts hub for neighborhood connection and activities, a culinary arts kitchen, performance and co-working space as well as affordable space for local nonprofit organizations.
• Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice (YMPJ) will develop empty space under the Bruckner Expressway, Bronx as the Soundview Economic Hub to create a vibrant community space hosting food and cultural programming, clean soil distribution, employment, job training opportunities through incubator space, and intergenerational programs and activities for residents.

Change Capital Fund, a 20-member collaborative of banks, foundations and intermediaries, recently selected a new round of grantees which are advancing projects to repurpose un- or under-used public land or buildings as community assets. The eight projects, led by communities of color, will create new, permanently and deeply affordable rental housing or home-ownership opportunities, open spaces, community facilities, cooperatively-owned food businesses and/or food hubs. The projects will be controlled by community members.

These developing projects are manifesting the vision of a growing movement for community ownership which has been gathering momentum in New York City and across the country. The movement is animated by the belief that ownership is a source of power and a way to reshape communities that have been severely impacted by racism, under-investment and, more recently, gentrification.

Change Capital Fund will strengthen the community organizations leading these efforts through grants, capacity building and funds for project-specific technical assistance consultants. Contributing institutions include:  Altman Foundation, BankUnited, Capital One, Deutsche Bank, Enterprise Communities, Goldman Sachs, HSBC Bank USA, JPMorgan Chase, LISC, M & T Bank, MUFG, New York Foundation, The New York Community Trust, Principal Foundation, Santander Bank, Scherman Foundation, Trinity Wall Street, United Way of NYC and Wells Fargo Bank.

Lisa Talma, Deutsche Bank believes, “CCF grants will provide critical resources at this time when, after years of organizing, these organizations are successfully gaining control of public land and transforming it for public purpose in line with community needs.”

Over the next four years, Change Capital Fund members will distribute approximately $8 million to eight grantees selected through a request for proposals process. Grantees will receive $150,000 per year for four years. They also will have access to a technical assistance fund to support specific project costs and will benefit from peer learning during the four-year grant cycle.

Grantee, David Shuffler, Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice says, “YMPJ is poised to transform the underside of the Bruckner Expressway into a vibrant community hub while addressing the longstanding community need for food access, economic development, and intergenerational programming. This four-year grant will go a long way to making that happen.”

Rickke Mananzala, New York Foundation, says, ““the next four years will be pivotal as these groups see the fruits of their organizing for racial and economic justice lead to vital assets owned by and for community members.”

Yajaira Lopez, Tri-State Region President, Santander Bank says: “Santander is thrilled to be part of this public/private partnership to support communities in shaping their future.”

Change Capital Fund’s grantees are:

• East Harlem/El Barrio CLT is completing rehabilitation of distressed city-owned properties as tenant-run, permanently affordable housing with land to be owned by the community land trust.
• The East New York CLT has taken stock of every vacant parcel in East New York, Brooklyn and has identified several potential development sites for permanently affordable housing. They also seek to establish a preservation pilot program to model alternatives for tax-distressed homeowners to help them avert foreclosure.
• Interboro Community Land Trust, a collaboration between the Center for New York City Neighborhoods, Habitat for Humanity New York City and Westchester County, the Mutual Housing Association of New York, and the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board is a citywide CLT. With over 400 apartments in their pipeline, they will dramatically increase the stock of permanently affordable homeownership and wealth-building opportunities available to low- and moderate-income and BIPOC households.
• Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition is advancing three affordable housing projects on land to be put into the Bronx Community Land Trust.
• ReAL Edgemere CLT is a new organization that was awarded 62 vacant lots to create affordable, two-family homes, open space and commercial space on the Rockaway Peninsula, an area that had been devastated by Hurricane Sandy.
• RiseBoro Community Partnership and the Central Brooklyn Movement Center are collaborating to open the Central Brooklyn Food Coop as a Black-led, consumer- owned food store which will do business with several Black-owned food-based worker coops to foster an integrated, neighborhood-centered local food economy.
• South Bronx Unite seeks to renovate and repurpose the city-owned and abandoned Lincoln Recovery Center as a new H.ealth, E.ducation, and Arts hub for neighborhood connection and activities, a culinary arts kitchen, performance and co-working space as well as affordable space for local nonprofit organizations.
• Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice (YMPJ) will develop empty space under the Bruckner Expressway, Bronx as the Soundview Economic Hub to create a vibrant community space hosting food and cultural programming, clean soil distribution, employment, job training opportunities through incubator space, and intergenerational programs and activities for residents.

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Over the next four years, Change Capital Fund members will distribute $8 million to advance affordable housing, community facilities and economic development projects that are owned and designed by community-based nonprofits. CCF issued a Request for Proposals on June 30 (proposals are due 9/14/22), and will select six to ten organizations by the end of 2022. Selected organizations will receive $150,000 per year for four years. To get special help from partners and consultants with appropriate expertise, they also will have access to additional money via a designated technical assistance fund.  CCF will prioritize funding for community organizations that are BIPOC-led and serve communities that have been impacted by racial and economic inequities.

Contributing institutions will include:  Altman Foundation, BankUnited, Capital One, Deutsche Bank, Enterprise Communities, Goldman Sachs, HSBC Bank USA, JPMorgan Chase, LISC, M & T Bank, MUFG, Mizuho, New York Foundation, The New York Community Trust, NYC Opportunity, Principal, Santander Bank, Scherman Foundation, Trinity Wall Street, United Way of NYC and Wells Fargo Bank.

Patricia Swann, New York Community Trust Program Director and a Co-Chair of the Committee, says: “Dozens of groups in New York City are organizing community members to gain control of some of the last remaining development sites in their neighborhoods.  CCF’s funding will help them do just that.”

Marc Jahr, a veteran reinvestment banking official and former head of the City’s Housing Development Corporation, will chair a specially created subcommittee to help grantees access financing and development expertise. He says: “This public/private partnership has the potential to be a game changer for community-based organizations looking to shape their communities’ future.”

It’s anticipated that the projects supported through this fund will include housing and commercial community land trusts, limited equity coops, worker coops, community investment trusts, community-owned solar initiatives, and other forms of community ownership.

Change Capital Fund is well-positioned to give a meaningful lift to the growing movement for community control of land. Its innovative capacity building feature and four-year funding cycle create the right framework for these aspiring efforts. And it builds on Change Capital’s previous investments, since a number of the organizations working to create land trusts and other vehicles for collective ownership have received CCF grants in current or past funding cycles.

Carson Hicks of the Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity said, “NYC Opportunity is delighted to continue our work with the Change Capital Fund.  The new focus on community ownership dovetails with our efforts to promote community-driven solutions to reduce poverty.”

For more information, please visit: www.changecapitalfund.org

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The report, Essential But Invisible: Community Organizations in the Time of Covid, details the essential services provided by community development corporations amidst public health, racial and economic justice crises.

“Community-based organizations are as essential to their communities as firehouses,” states Steven Flax, Administrative Vice President of M&T Bank and Co-Chairman of the Fund. CCF’s grantees provided $11.5 million of emergency services to more than 125,000 people in the first six months of the pandemic. The majority of those receiving services have incomes below the poverty level. The emergency services included counseling, food delivery, distribution of masks and other personal protective equipment, even financial support for burials.

This unusual and long-standing collaborative of financial institutions, community development intermediaries, foundations, United Way of NYC and the NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity pool funding to increase the resiliency, reach and efficacy the city’s community development corporations. Change Capital Fund’s grantees provide a combination of affordable housing and housing services, social services, workforce development and community organizing in high-poverty, neighborhoods populated mostly by people of color.

Patricia Swann, Senior Program Officer at The New York Community Trust  and CCF Co-Chair, says, “Like all of us, the staff of these community organizations worried about their exposure to COVID, about their out-of-school children, about elderly parents and other family members who were vulnerable to the virus due to pre-existing conditions.  But they put those worries aside and devoted their energies to taking care of their communities. They delivered food and needed supplies, they consoled and comforted grieving family members, and they also organized to demand that government systematically address the needs of those most hurt by Covid.”

Change Capital Fund urges other funders to join them in supporting these organizations that are needed in good times as well as in the inevitable next crisis. They need flexible, multi-year funding, such that Change Capital Fund provides, as well as support for advocacy and organizing, minimal reporting requirements and maximum investment in internal evaluation.

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CCF, which provides flexible grants and technical assistance in four-year funding cycles, will help four organizations increase their performance management capacity to address persistent poverty more effectively.  This second cycle builds on the accomplishments of CCF’s first four grantees, which increased their scale and impact while generating new funding for their organizations. The accomplishments of CCF’s first cycle are documented in five evaluation briefs and a final report by MDRC [forthcoming, September 2018] and a CCF report, Smart Organizations, Strong Neighborhoods.

Each of the new grantees will receive up to $800,000 over four years and access to technical assistance as they implement new and refined strategies and develop tracking systems that will equip the organizations to demonstrate their results in a funding environment that pays for success. The CDCs, working in the South Bronx, Central Brooklyn, the Lower East Side of Manhattan and Staten Island, were selected through a competitive process.  The four organizations in the first cycle will receive extension grant funding of $100,000 each.

Many of the very low-income neighborhoods where CDCs have worked over some four decades have experienced a dramatic reversal of the disinvestment of the 1970s to 1990s, spurred, in part by the CDC’s physical redevelopment of abandoned buildings. Now these organizations are engaging residents of limited economic means in planning and organizing to enable them to stay in their neighborhoods and to thrive through access to affordable housing, education, and jobs.

CCF has found that siloed funding and data systems inhibit the potential impact of neighborhood-focused organizations that act as anchors to a constellation of local, government, and private partners and funding streams.  CCF funding will help grantees evaluate their own progress and support the integration of services and programs to increase outcomes. For example, residents of affordable housing may increase their financial literacy and job skills; residents engaged in organizing and neighborhood planning efforts may be engaged in increasing their English language skills.

The donors selected these four organizations to participate in the second cycle.

• Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association, Inc. will better coordinate and evaluate its housing, social services, health and organizing to increase its impact in the South Bronx.
• Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation will strengthen its partnership with Bridge Street Development Corporation (BSDC) and IMPACCT Brooklyn to create neighborhood-level economic and community development improvements in two high poverty census tracts in Bedford Stuyvesant, while also expanding these opportunities across Central Brooklyn neighborhoods.
• Good Old Lower East Side will learn to use data to better connect its direct services, public education, community organizing, community-based participatory research, and coalition building; thereby increasing its impact for the residents of the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
• Make the Road New York will increase the ability of Staten Island residents, particularly immigrant families, to enforce their legal rights, access educational and work opportunities, and achieve broad-based policy change by increasing internal evaluation and coordination of its services and organizing.

Each grantee has been awarded a $200,000 grant, renewable for three additional years. Lili-An Elkins Management Consulting will provide technical assistance to the grantees to strengthen their theory of change, select key metrics, create cross-program MIS systems, strengthen the data-oriented culture of the organizations and, ultimately, to use their data to improve programs and demonstrate public benefits. Grantees will also be able to choose additional consultants to support this work.

Matthew Klein, Executive Director, NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity & Senior Advisor, NYC Mayor’s Office of Operations said, “Complex challenges require multifaceted solutions, and so we are proud to be part of this cross-sector collaboration that is supporting integrated, data-driven strategies to address poverty in New York City.”

Patricia Swann, Senior Program Officer at the New York Community Trust and CCF Co-Chair said, “The New York Community Trust and our funding partners are committed to investing in community development because these organizations are demonstrating that they make a difference for individuals, families and neighborhoods.”

Beth Gilroy, Director of Corporate Social Responsibility for the Americas at MUFG Bank said, “Our participation in CCF gives us the chance to make larger and longer-term grants and to exchange knowledge with our peers in the field. We are proud to be part of this donor collaborative.”

Non-Profit Organization Management Consultant, Chief Strategy Officer at ROCA, and Associate Professor at Columbia University, Lili Elkins said that, “CCF funders have taken on an important challenge by helping organizations to build their performance management capacity. Using performance based management allows nonprofits to work more strategically and to make clear and convincing arguments in support of their services. Strong performance management enables nonprofits to focus on the work that generates the most effective outcomes and leads to better run organizations that can effectively compete in today’s environment.”

According to a brief by MDRC entitled, Beyond Reporting, Using Data as a Performance Management Tool, “Maximizing the effectiveness of services that meet the needs of low-income residents in each of the CDCs’ neighborhoods is a matter of urgency. What makes CCF unusual compared with other community initiatives is its investment in building the capacity of its grantees to use data for performance management. CCF’s approach is helping CDCS transform their use of data.”

About the Change Capital Fund

Over a period of 20+ years the donor collaborative now called the NYC Change Capital Fund (CCF) invested over $30 million in philanthropic dollars to strengthen the capacity of non-profit Community Development Corporations (CDCs). CDCs pioneered the revitalization of distressed communities throughout New York City by creating and preserving housing and repairing the fabric of neighborhoods across the city. The CCF recognizes the importance of strong neighborhoods to New York City, and particularly to the prospects of the city’s low-income residents.

Evolving from the Neighborhood Opportunities Fund, which began in 1996, the donor collaborative launched CCF in 2013 to help CDCs retool and refocus on disrupting persistent and concentrated poverty. New and renovated housing, revitalized shopping districts, safer streets, and restored civic pride prove the benefits of coordinated philanthropy that supports entrepreneurial, community-based nonprofits.

Participating donors

Altman Foundation; BankUnited; Capital One; Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation; Enterprise Community Partners, Inc.; Local Initiatives Support Corporation; Mizuho Bank USA; MUFG; M&T Bank; New York Community Trust; New York Foundation; Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity; Santander Bank; Scherman Foundation; and United Way of New York City.

About CCF’s New Grantees

Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association, Inc., was formed in 1977 when residents of the South Bronx came together to confront the disinvestment resulting from decades of structural racism and inequality in the forms of redlining, urban renewal, planned shrinkage.  Today, Banana Kelly works to revitalize the Community Districts 2 and 3 of the South Bronx through the development and management of affordable housing and a combination of social services, community organizing, and advocacy. Its Residents Council, a core group of residents that informs internal policy decisions and housing campaigns, has been a sustaining force for the organization, reflecting its community-driven approach. Banana Kelly is committed to keeping housing affordable.  It operates 55 buildings with 1350 units, provides Medicaid Services Coordination, eviction prevention, school and afterschool programs and other social services.

Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation is the nation’s first community development corporation with a track record that spans half a century. An anchor in the community, respected coalition builder, and direct service provider reaching over 60,000 annually, Restoration’s mission is to relentlessly pursue strategies to close gaps in family and community wealth to ensure all families in Central Brooklyn are prosperous and healthy. Restoration is pleased to partner with two high performance partners like Bridge Street Development Corporation, a faith–based not-for-profit organization whose mission is to build partnerships with businesses, government, and other community stakeholders to provide civic and economic opportunities to the residents of Central Brooklyn, and IMPACCT Brooklyn, a community development corporation committed to helping residents build and sustain flourishing communities in Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Bedford Stuyvesant, Crown Heights and Prospect Heights.

Funding from the Change Capital Fund will support Restoration as the lead organization and partners Bridge Street Development Corporation (BSDC) and IMPACCT Brooklyn to create neighborhood-level economic and community development improvements in two high poverty census tracts, while also expanding these opportunities across Central Brooklyn neighborhoods. The Initiative’s goals are to:

• maximize sustainable community development and growth by providing housing and services that contribute to neighborhood affordability, stability, and diversity;
• develop effective employment, economic and education programs in response to resident needs; and,
• organize, engage, and empower residents to work together to define neighborhood solutions and build community agency while creating neighborhood conditions that advance racial equity and opportunity.

Good Old Lower East Side Good Old Lower East Side, Inc. (GOLES) is a grassroots organization that has served the Lower East Side of Manhattan since 1977.

GOLES serves, engages, and empowers low- and moderate-income residents of the LES/Loisaida, specifically people of color, through community organizing, public education, direct services, community-based participatory research, and coalition building.  Our work focuses on six interrelated issue areas: housing, land use, disaster preparedness and environmental resiliency, healthy aging, job readiness, and youth.

Make the Road New York Make the Road New York builds the power of immigrant and working-class communities of color to achieve dignity and justice. Recognizing that real and lasting improvements will be achieved only when all New Yorkers have sufficient power to enforce their legal rights, access educational and work opportunities, and achieve broad-based policy change, Make the Road NY supports and enables residents’ efforts to access education and legal services and to shape policies that affect their lives.

Make the Road NY’s model integrates four core strategies:

• Legal and Survival Services to tackle discrimination, abuse and poverty;
• Transformative Education to develop community members’ abilities to lead our movement and society;
• Community Organizing to transform the systems and structures impacting our communities and win policy changes that benefit millions;
• Policy Innovation to rewrite unjust rules and make our democracy accountable to all of us.

The organization applies its multifaceted approach to issues critical to its community: workers’, immigrant and civil rights; environmental and housing justice; justice for TGNCIQ people; and, educational justice. Make the Road NY has over 23,000 members in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester.

CCF’s first grantees are receiving extension grants in 2018-19; these include:

• Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation;
• Fifth Avenue Committee, Inc.;
• New Settlement Apartments; and,
• St. Nicks Alliance.

— Flexible Funding, Centralized Data Systems Key to Developing High Impact Programs and Demonstrating Results —

(New York, N.Y.)—Change Capital Fund (CCF), a collaborative of 17 public and private funders that invests in community development organizations to increase economic mobility in persistently low-income New York City communities, today released public benefit rationales that demonstrate that its grantees’ programs are highly effective and have a huge return on investment.  The release, part of a final report on grantees work, comes as CCF concluded its most recent four-year, $4 million funding cycle.

From 2014 to 2018, CCF invested in four organizations to develop new program models and increase their ability to use data to demonstrate the benefits of their strategies. The grantees are St. Nick Alliance, Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, Fifth Avenue Committee, and New Settlement Apartments.

Impacts for selected programs include:

o   St. Nicks Alliance’s Literary Immersion Model Pilot Project increased the percentage of third graders in their after school program who were reading at grade level from 7% to 31% in a nine-month period.  Third graders who read at grade level are four times more likely to graduate from high school than those who do not.

o   CHLDC Student Success Center participants have higher high school graduation, college enrollment, and college persistence rates than a comparable group of similar students. Eighty-seven percent graduate high school, compared with 59-72% of comparable students; 85% enroll in college, compared with 38-49% of comparable students; and 83% complete their first year of college, compared with a CUNY rate of 68%.

o   Similarly, New Settlement Apartment’s College Access Program participants exceeded CUNY persistence and graduation rates. Ninety percent completed their first year of college compared with 66-68% of CUNY students; 81% percent completed two years compared with 55%; and 59% completed college compared with 47-50% of CUNY students. Because we know that education decreases poverty and increases income, New Settlement projects that each dollar invested generates $66 in benefits seen in increased lifetime earnings.

o   Fifth Avenue Committee’s Employment Training Bridge pilots provided remedial math and English tutoring to help participants meet requirements for job training programs. In one pilot, 83.3 percent of participants were able to achieve the required level for the training programs; and in the other, 82% attained that goal. With an investment of just $144 per participant, participants without a high school diploma or equivalent are projected to earn additional lifetime earnings of $340,994  more than they would have had the bridge program not been available to enable them to participate in sectoral employment training..

 “All of the grantees have been able to demonstrate scalable, measurable impact that translates not only to improved outcomes for residents in their communities but also significant return on investment for government and philanthropic funders,” said Patricia Swann, New York Community Trust and CCF co-chair. “The grantees and CCF funders collaborated to build organizational capacity while setting ambitious goals for their program outcomes—increasing the number of people served and the achievements of their participants. And we did it!”

While communities throughout New York City have experienced revitalization, deep pockets of poverty persist. Community Development Corporations are anchors in these neighborhoods, retaining and producing low-income housing, building on-ramps to living-wage employment, improving schools, and supporting higher education attainment.

 “With the grant money that CDCs win, they are able to use their strong community ties and deep experience to create innovative programming, but the grants do not cover crucial organizational support – meaning, money to cover associated administrative and technology costs – and that is where CCF has been able to help,” said Steven Flax, M&T Bank and CCF co-chair. “Through CCF’s substantial, long-term funding and technical assistance, these organizations now have systems in place to determine what is working, what to discontinue, and what to scale up. Their effective use of these new data systems has allowed them to make adjustments along the way, adding to improved results.”

As a result of the collaboration between CCF and its grantees, job training and placements have increased along with wages, hours worked, and benefits. Young people have increased graduation rates, college access, and college persistence. Elementary school students have drastically improved reading scores. Grantees have measured their own data against publicly available data to create public benefit arguments which compare program outcomes and costs to other programs with similar goals. As a result, all four grantees have won data-centric funding, specifically $21.98 million in new grants – 73 percent from federal, state, and city government.

“These public benefit arguments proved an enormous return on investment and showed that with small, targeted investments, children and adults can escape poverty. And, by design, these programs are scalable and easily replicated with corresponding investment. These are the kinds of proof points that translate into increased funding from government and philanthropy,” concluded Swann.

Change Capital Fund is now accepting RFPs for the next cohort by invitation and welcomes new funders to join their collaborative.

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The discussion clearly identified that City government and CCF-funded community-based organizations (CBOs) are working toward holistic, coordinated services to meet residents’ needs (e.g., housing, education, and employment services). Working across program silos, they are using data to align efforts, hold program partners accountable, and improve outcomes. An outstanding question is how to marry institutional data and community knowledge to increase collaborative CBO/City problem solving.

Below is a synopsis of the panel conversation:

Basil Reyes, Director of Evaluation and Research, Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation (CHLDC)

CHLDC, which offers educational, housing and workforce services to 10,000 residents of Cypress Hills and East NY Brooklyn each year, is establishing an organization-wide database and performance management system. CHLDC is using the Efforts to Outcomes software to improve and enhance data tracking to better understand clients’ needs and outcomes. This system and the new position Mr. Reyes’ fills as Director of Evaluation, is enabling staff to monitor and improve programs and services.

Mr. Reyes cited their High School Choices Program as an example of how CHLDC is using data to identify and address program gaps. When CHLDC looked at their baseline data, they found that none of the middle school students in the organization’s programs were being accepted into the 10 high schools that were regularly listed among students’ top choices; rather, students were attending local schools with graduation rates of less than 50%. As a result, the program director worked with the choice high schools to better understand admissions criteria.

Data collection and integration remain challenging due to CHLDC’s limited resources, a common problem in the nonprofit sector. Greatly adding to that challenge are the numerous, proprietary databases required by funders. CHLDC is required to report out program outcomes using 13 different databases. For youth programs alone, six separate data systems are required. These challenges are common throughout the nonprofit sector.

View the CHLDC Presentation

Matthew Klein, Executive Director, NYC Center for Economic Opportunity and Senior Advisor for Service Innovation in the Mayor’s Office of Operations

According to Mr. Klein, the Center for Economic Opportunity, located in the Mayor’s Office of Operations is using data as a locus for city government– creating integrated, comprehensive, cross-agency data systems that are being used to reduce inequities among rich and poor New Yorkers.

One example is the Social Indicators Report which analyzes social conditions across eight domains: education; housing; empowered residents and neighborhoods; economic security and mobility; core infrastructure and services; diverse and inclusive government; health and well-being; and, personal and community safety. The indicators are being tracked to determine what works to improve social conditions. The annual Social Indicators Report will inform the Mayor’s short and long term plans for responding to the significant disparities identified.

Starting in Spring 2016, the City will map the location of its services contracts. Additionally, more than ten agencies are creating an integrated data platform that will allow better coordination of services, which will, for example, allow them to identify and support the individuals/families with the highest multi-agency interactions.

Despite significant progress in building cross-agency data systems, the City too faces enormous challenges: it is awash in data and has to ensure the right data is being analyzed; it must ensure that all agencies are using the same defined metrics; and it must coordinate responses across many agencies.

Eric Cadora, Chief Research and Data Strategies Officer, Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ)

MOCJ is playing a coordinating role in several initiatives to reduce both crime and incarceration. Mr. Cadora stated that the agency has entered “a new age in data use in NYC” with the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety (MAPS), a nine-agency partnership that will use a multi-strategy approach to improve safety in and around selected, high-crime public housing authority developments. The MAPS initiative will undertake corner-by-corner surveys to glean local knowledge and concerns. Beginning in February 2016, residents, agencies, CBOs and Police will use and share data to problem solve.

MAPS’ Neighborhood Safety & Justice Index goes beyond crime statistics to track risk factors in targeted geographic areas such as housing instability, child trauma, educational disruption, and neighborhood satisfaction, and others. MAPS will coordinate activities to improve safety by also addressing health, employment, community cohesion and the disadvantages of concentrated poverty. For example, MAPS is changing “hot spots to cool places,” by improving the physical environment with lighting, new community centers and social events.

Challenges include translating risk factors to actionable, effective strategies and also moving partner agencies’ leadership to ask, ‘how does my agency fit into a problem solving solution for this place?’ rather than singularly focusing on pre-determined agency metrics.

David Greenberg, Senior Associate, MDRC

Mr. Greenberg posed the overarching question of what it takes to turn data into action. The cholera epidemic in SoHo, London in the 1800s provides a model example. Only by mapping where the sick lived, was it discovered that the affected were concentrated around the Broad Street water pump. What action did the government take to remedy the epidemic? It removed the handle from that pump.

Although most problems are not so easily analyzed and solved, with more open and available data, the work is starting to be done. For example, CCF grantees may soon be able to use a new Unemployment Insurance data law to match their clients to employment and wage data over time. Greenberg sites this effort as a case that demonstrates the requisites to make data meaningful. The Unemployment Insurance data is relevant because CCF is an anti-poverty initiative and all the grantees offer workforce programming; it is accessible; and, the grantees have ‘agency,’ that is, they have the ability to interpret data and to alter program strategy to improve outcomes.
Mr. Greenberg offered these insights about turning data into action for high-poverty areas:

● Build data infrastructure among community organizations;
● Align research to well-resourced community interventions; and,
● Be cautious about data biases, interpret change contextually, e.g, no change may signify progress in slowing a negative change whereas big changes may not be meaningful locally and only indicate national trends.

Cross-program data analysis is necessary for CBOs, government, and funders to know if integrated programming is successful.

Data Big and Small – MDRC presentation 

Responses to Panel Discussion:

Ilene Popkin from the Citizens Housing and Planning Council responded to the panel, emphasizing the importance of linking government spending to the data on location and impact of government services.

Maryanne Schretzman, Executive Director of the NYC Center for Innovation through Data Intelligence (CIDI) underscored the challenges in time: social problems take years to resolve but government wants to document results in months.

Ms. Schretzman offered a cautionary tale: in analyzing the bullet-ridden planes that came back from war, it was concluded that it is not necessary to protect the engines since none of the planes exhibited bullet holes on the engine. Of course, planes shot through the engine were not among those that came back. As with bullet-ridden planes, we need to protect the people and neighborhoods who may not readily show up in our data.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 1, 2015

Contact:
Lori Ann Doyon, St. Nicks Alliance, 718.388.5454 ext. 167, ldoyon@stnicksalliance.org
Jaime Williams, on behalf of CCF, 914-325-8877, jaime@anatgerstein.com

BROOKLYN, N.Y. (Oct. 1, 2015) — St. Nicks Alliance, a local Brooklyn community development organization, today unveiled a new model, NABE 3.0, to address poverty in North Brooklyn, and showcased 63 new affordable apartments in the Williamsburg neighborhood.
NABE 3.0 uses transformational coaches who help individuals and families access housing, employment, and education services through partnership with schools, nonprofits, and government agencies. Through NABE 3.0, St. Nicks Alliance’s transformational coaches and other staff provide afterschool programming at PS 18 and intervene with at-risk students referred by the school; place individuals in employment and enrolls adults in literacy classes; organize tenant associations and prevent families from falling into homelessness. They do this with the help of partners in government.
The NABE 3.0 initiative is made possible through a $1 million investment from Change Capital Fund, a collaborative of funders investing in the development of new, data-driven strategies created by community organizations. Change Capital Fund believes that nonprofits with strong community ties and core competencies in housing, education and jobs are well positioned to change the outcomes for individuals and families otherwise stuck in poverty.
“We need to support more data-driven strategies that identify cost-effective solutions to reduce poverty and inequality. One of the best ways to do that is to support sophisticated community-focused nonprofits. That’s why CCF is investing in St. Nicks and NABE 3.0,” said Sam Marks, Executive Director of LISC New York and member of Change Capital Fund donor collaborative.

Kate Dempsey, Director of Strategy and Operations at the NYC Center for Economic Opportunity, which serves as an ad-hoc member of the Change Capital Fund, said, “The de Blasio administration is very interested, and has already invested significant resources, in neighborhood-level strategies to address inequality. Community based organizations, like St. Nicks, have an important role in coordinating strategies on the ground and providing critical services to communities in need. The City’s Center for Economic Opportunity is especially interested in evidence-based programs that have an impact beyond the individual served, which is also CCF’s agenda: to create communities of opportunity.”

“Government spends billions to address poverty and we need to find more effective strategies,” said St. Nicks Alliance Executive Director Michael Rochford. “NABE 3.0 combines evidence based strategies with innovative techniques that offer a new community approach that enables children to succeed in school, families to find safe affordable housing, and adults to secure a living wage.”

“For 40 years, St Nicks Alliance has been among the leaders in building community and becoming effective in transforming the lives of our community,” said St. Nicks Alliance President Joseph Robles. “We celebrate our past accomplishments with new ideas. On behalf of our active board and staff, we have collaborated to test new ideas and find innovative approaches to creating opportunity and success.”
St. Nicks Alliance’s efforts to address the housing shortage for local low-income families include two affordable developments, the North Brooklyn Opportunities Project and Kings Villas. Both projects, which are scheduled to be completed in 2016, will provide a combined 63 affordable units in North Brooklyn. These developments are part of St. Nicks Alliance’s long history of affordable housing development. The organization manages over 1,100 units of affordable housing and in 2014 alone renovated 12 buildings with 199 units.
These projects will house dozens of families thanks to financing from New York City Housing and Preservation Department, Capital One Bank, and Local Initiatives Support Corporation-National Equity Fund.

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ABOUT ST. NICKS
St. Nicks Alliance transforms the lives of low and moderate income people through employment, education, housing, and health care. St. Nicks delivers impactful services with measurable outcomes to children, adults, and the elderly. As a civic anchor we carry out this mission within the context of building a sustainable community for all people through the arts, environmental advocacy, and urban planning.

ABOUT CHANGE CAPITAL FUND
The Change Capital Fund (CCF) is a collaboration of 15 foundations and financial institutions dedicated to the revitalization of distressed New York City communities. Members of the CCF donor collaborative are: Altman Foundation, Capital One, Citi Foundation, Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, Enterprise Community Partners, F.B. Heron Foundation, Local Initiatives Support Corporation, M & T Charitable Foundation, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Mizuho Bank Ltd, New York Community Trust, New York Foundation, Scherman Foundation, United Way of New York City, and NYC Center for Economic Opportunity.