Innovative Philanthropy for Tomorrow's Dallas

Innovative Philanthropy for Tomorrow’s Dallas

Data-driven and Equity-focused Grantmaking

Our Why

For nearly a century, The Dallas Foundation has connected compassionate people to the causes they care about—improving lives and making visible progress throughout North Texas. We continue to build on our track record of investing in transformational solutions and our legacy of convening, collaborating, and co-investing in what matters now, with a focus on outcomes for tomorrow.

And for tomorrow’s Dallas to become a community where all our neighbors can access the creative and entrepreneurial spirit our city is known for and have the opportunity to fully contribute to and benefit from our vibrant economy, we must address the ongoing disparities that impact Dallas’ Black and Hispanic residents, which start before birth and persist through nearly every stage of life.

This is the focus of The Dallas Foundation’s Racial Equity Fund.

Aligned with the Foundation’s strategic priorities to ensure a strong and healthy start in life and to advance equity and inclusion, the fund invests in projects and programs that are critical to helping individuals and families in Dallas reach their full potential.

Launched in 2021, The Dallas Foundation’s Racial Equity Fund aims to use the collective influence and resources of the Foundation along with those of our donors and partners to advance equity for Dallas’ Black and Brown residents by strategically and purposefully directing philanthropic dollars to support organizations that combat well-documented systemic inequities in:

• Housing & Infrastructure

• Economic Opportunity

• Education & Workforce

• Criminal Justice & Civic Participation

• Health & Wellbeing

We are very proud to have invested over $2.5 million toward this trajectorychanging work, but this was only the beginning. There is a significant need for more donors to help sustain the forward momentum necessary to provide all of our neighbors with opportunities to flourish. To illustrate the type of organizations and programming The Dallas Foundation’s Racial Equity Fund supports, we’ve highlighted four Dallas-based nonprofits who received a grant during the inaugural round of funding and how each made a meaningful difference to the individuals and families they serve.

“Equity is not only a matter of social justice or morality: It is an economic necessity. By building the capabilities of those who are the furthest behind, America not only begins to solve its most serious challenges, but also creates the conditions that allow all to flourish.”

Ani Turner author, The Business Case for Racial Equity

Photo credit: Owenwood Farm & Neighbor Space

2022 Racial Equity Fund Grant: $175,000 Case Study

HHM Health

Ashley discovered that she was pregnant under challenging circumstances. At the time, she was out of work and without health insurance. As an African American woman, Ashley was also at-risk of becoming part of the rising maternal mortality statistics. Upon enrollment for prenatal care through HHM Health, Ashley required more frequent office visits than most pregnant patients because she was at risk of a miscarriage. During a routine appointment, one of HHM Health’s Nurse Practitioners had trouble hearing the baby’s heartbeat. Out of an abundance of caution, the Nurse Practitioner sent Ashley to the in-house sonographer for a 3D sonogram, who discovered that the baby was in distress with cardiomegaly, an enlarged heart. The diagnosis required an emergency

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C-section to save the baby. Because of HHM Health’s services and high-quality prenatal care, Ashley and her baby are now happy and healthy.

Guided by its mission to provide quality healthcare to all its neighbors with love, compassion, and respect, HHM Health serves patients across 94 zip codes across North Texas, targeting those living at or below 200% Federal Poverty Level (FPL), the uninsured, and Medicaid/Medicare recipients in Dallas and surrounding counties. The nonprofit offers family health, women’s services, pediatrics, chronic disease management, behavioral health, dental, a low-cost pharmacy, imaging center, and vision care.

The uninsured rate among Latinos is still more than double that among nonLatino Whites

(U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2021).

With the support of a grant from The Dallas Foundation’s Racial Equity Fund in 2022, HHM Health completed 57,200 patient visits – a 22% increase from the previous year.

The grant also increased HHM Health’s media coverage. In 2022, HHM Health was featured on the news 52 times, highlighting the organization’s different events, support groups, and patient-focused initiatives. The coverage generated more than $1.2 million in free publicity. So far, in 2023, media mentions have generated $928,036 in free advertising. This brand awareness is helping those living below the poverty line learn about the availability of the wide array of services and how to access them. The publicity also resulted in partnerships with two local nonprofit organizations, Hope Cottage and Viola’s House, to serve their clients while fighting the rising maternal mortality rate. Those women’s clinics are slated to be open in December 2023 and early 2024, respectively.

Future Need: Given additional financial resources, HHM Health could purchase a sonogram machine for the new women’s health clinic at Viola’s House, a mobile clinic to reach residents who have difficulty accessing transportation, additional language interpretation services, and upgraded software for the vision clinic.

Photo credit: HHM Health

A 2022 research study by Texas A&M University’s Texas Real Estate Research Center estimated that Dallas has demand for more than 100,000 single-family homes in a price range affordable for families within low, very low, and extremely low-income households. Families whose household incomes fall within the workforce income category account for another 8,000 potential homebuyers.

2022 Racial Equity Fund Grant:

Builders of Hope Community Development Corporation

Keiara waited years to own her own home, and in August 2023, she moved into a newly built residence in West Dallas, the community where she was born and raised. She is one of 20 in Builders of Hope’s “Revitalize West Dallas” plan, which builds affordable homes in partnership with cooperative banks and the City of Dallas, including down payment assistance to eligible home buyers. As a result, Keiara established $200,000 in equity the moment she walked in the door, the difference between what she has borrowed for her mortgage and the appraised value of her new home.

Often a family’s single greatest source of wealth and the ability to pass that wealth onto the next generation, is owning a home. Unfortunately, that opportunity is threatened or completely out of reach for families with

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limited financial resources. In 2018, the City estimated it had a shortage of approximately 20,000 affordable housing units. Six years later, the pressure on Dallas’ housing market has only increased as a steady influx of new outof-state residents create more demand and inflate median home sales prices across the metroplex.

Guided by their mission to transform Dallas and surrounding communities by building and preserving quality affordable housing, developing thriving neighborhoods, and creating opportunity for economic mobility, Builders of Hope (BOH) focuses its efforts on creating a more equitable Dallas where legacy residents are free from the fear of displacement and have a chance at economic mobility

Following the Dallas City Council’s unanimous vote in 2022 to adopt the recommendations set forth by the Racial Equity Audit of its Comprehensive Housing Policy, BOH requested support from The Dallas Foundation’s Racial Equity Fund to develop a citywide AntiDisplacement Toolkit that serves not only as a guiding policy document for the City’s displacement strategy, but as a resource for all Dallas residents and neighborhoods. The toolkit seeks to shine a light on where displacement is happening in our city and offer up a roadmap for meaningful policy changes. In fact, a recent report released by D Magazine in June 2023 listed the top 10 Texas Zip codes with the highest increases in home prices, five of which were in Dallas. Three of those communities scored the highest on BOH’s vulnerability index within the Anti-Displacement study.

BOH has been able to leverage The Dallas Foundation’s investment to secure an additional $500k in funding for the Anti-Displacement Toolkit initiative as well as several major media news articles and new partnerships with local academic institutions, and philanthropic foundations.

Future Need: Builders of Hope has recently partnered with The Dallas Foundation on a tax displacement pilot program in the 75212-zip code. By paying the property tax increment above 2022 levels for ~1,000 homeowners, the pilot aims to help families realize incremental value appreciation to support the growth of generational wealth or asset-building and gain valuable insight for ongoing policy discussions. Additional resources would foster other innovative approaches to promoting and preserving home ownership in our city’s most vulnerable neighborhoods.

Photo credit: Builders of Hope Community Development Corporation

2022 Racial Equity Fund Grant: $85,000 Case Study

Dallas Education Foundation’s

Call Me Mister Program

Reflecting on the value of being able to participate in the Call Me Mister Leadership Institute—traditionally aimed at college-level students seeking a degree in education—Tyler shared his excitement for the many ways he plans to take the skills he learned and apply them to his extracurricular activities as well as his pursuit of an education degree, following in the footsteps of his mother, grandmother, and other family members. “Without the right village, support system, and team, it is nearly impossible to push forward.

At the end of the day, the person standing on the podium is a reflection of those who provided support and helped you become successful. I believe that this program has really emphasized that.”

Tyler, a student scholar and rising senior at Hillcrest High School, was one of more than twenty Dallas ISD students selected in 2022 to participate in the District’s Call Me MISTER (CMM) initiative, a teacher recruiting, training,

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and mentoring program focused on increasing the pool of highly qualified teachers from racial backgrounds that mirror those of the students they teach. As part of the program, Tyler joined five of his fellow DISD students on a week-long visit to Clemson University, where CMM was developed.

Beginning in Summer 2022, DISD identified 20+ male, BIPOC high school students in the Education Pathway of the district’s P-TECH/ECHS (Pathways in Technology College High Schools/Early College High Schools) and enrolled these students in the CMM program. CMM focuses on workshops, coursework, and mentoring, and guides students through the Education Pathway beyond classwork and curriculum. It is anticipated these students will earn their four-year degree in Education, with immediate opportunities to teach in Dallas ISD. Additionally, upperclassmen assist in recruitment efforts of underclassmen to establish a pipeline of students and future Dallas ISD BIPOC educators for years to come.

Black students randomly assigned to at least one Black teacher in grades K-3 are 13% more likely to graduate from high school and 19% more likely to enroll in college than their same-school, samerace peers.

(National Bureau of Economic Research).

Dallas Education Foundation is the nonprofit, philanthropic partner of Dallas ISD. The Dallas Foundation’s Racial Equity Fund grant to the Dallas Education Foundation provided the sole philanthropic investment in Year 1 of the Call Me Mister program, which was recognized as the only K-12 school district in the country designated as a CMM partner last year. This early investment in the careers of these young men place them on a trajectory for success in their pursuit of a teaching career while furthering Dallas ISD’s goal to hire more teachers from gender and ethnic groups that are under-represented among its teaching workforce and over-represented among its student body.

Future Need: Dallas Education Foundation would focus additional financial resources on Career Connected Learning, a continuum of programs and experiences for students from pre-K through high school that connects interest, excitement, and aptitude to create a pathway to post-secondary student success, immediate entry into the workforce, and economic mobility.

Photo credit: Call Me Mister Program

2022 Racial Equity Fund Grant: $100,000 Case Study

Students who regularly attend high-quality afterschool programs over two years demonstrated gains of up to 20 percentiles in standardized math test scores, compared to peers who were routinely unsupervised during afterschool hours (Afterschool Alliance).

White Rock United Methodist Church's

Owenwood Farm & Neighbor Space

During a recent diaper distribution event at Owenwood Farms and Neighbor Space, in one of the hottest months of the year, a young woman experiencing homelessness walked up needing feminine hygiene products and toiletries. Ms. Janice, the Diapers, Etc., coordinator, graciously welcomed her into the facility and provided the items she requested. The young lady repeatedly expressed her appreciation to Janice for supplying her with these essential items. Their reputation as a welcoming and safe space for area youth and their families, many of whom lack the financial resources needed to meet their most basic needs, is propelling Owenwood toward its vision of becoming a productive resource hub for their neighbors in far East Dallas.

Owenwood Farm and Neighbor Space works alongside nonprofit partners and

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neighbors to serve the 75228 zip code, an under-resourced community in far East Dallas rich in diversity but suffering from significant needs. 34% of the population lives below the poverty line, over 31% of adults over age 25 lack a high school diploma, and more than 91% of students in local public schools are eligible to participate in free or reduced lunch programs.

Owenwood’s youth programming was supported by The Dallas Foundation in the past with a $25,000 grant from the Annie L. Stevens Fund in spring 2022. This support helped make an afterschool coding pilot program at a diverse, underserved, and under-resourced elementary school—Dallas ISD’s S.S. Conner Elementary—possible.

Equipped with their learning from the pilot and additional support from The Dallas Foundation’s Racial Equity Fund, Owenwood has since partnered to launch two highly successful afterschool programs at Truett Elementary and Uplift White Rock Hills Preparatory School that now benefit over 60 students. Of the 60+ local children served, 100% of these students were nonwhite, and, based on Dallas ISD data, 97% of students at the two elementary schools served are financially and resourcefully challenged.

These two programs include a literacy-focused afterschool program through Project Transformation and an East Dallas pilot of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Young Musicians Program – two highly successful ventures that the Racial Equity Fund partially funded. By addressing the racial literacy gap – particularly at the crucial age of eight for most reading predictive measurements, the program contributes to future learning and achievement as a key partner for local schools and families. The partnership with the Young Musicians program enables students from under-resourced schools to engage with music literacy and instruments at a young age, with knowledge and aptitude that can serve as an opportunity to gain entrance to arts and music schools and potentially colleges down the road.

Future Need: The collaboration with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Young Musicians Program has been a resounding success, providing music literacy and instrument instruction to students from underfunded Dallas ISD schools. As the program plans to expand from thirty to seventy-five students by January 2024, additional funding support is essential to nurture and sustain this thriving initiative.

Photo credit: Owenwood Farm & Neighbor Space

Join us on this journey.

Tomorrow’s Dallas requires us to invest and innovate today. Amplify the power of your philanthropic resources by joining like-minded, impact-oriented donors in this collaborative effort to create meaningful and lasting change in Dallas.

We invite you to donate to The Dallas Foundation’s Racial Equity Fund to help us close this gap. To discuss your investment in the Racial Equity Fund, contact one of our philanthropic experts:

Angela Woodson Senior Director, Strategic Initiatives awoodson@dallasfoundation.org

Mackenzie Causey Director, Strategic Partnerships & Donor Engagement mcausey@dallasfoundation.org

The Dallas Foundation Racial Equity Fund 2022 Grantees:

AES Literacy Institute Incorporated | Bachman Lake Together | Beacon Hill Preparatory Institute | Big D Reads

Black Heart Association | Builders of Hope Community Development Corporation | Dallas Black Dance Theatre

Dallas Education Foundation | For Oak Cliff | Frazier Revitalization, Inc. | H3 Diversity | Healing Hands Ministries

IF Institute- Young Leader Strong City | Impact Ventures | Los Barrios Unidos Community Clinic | MEASURE

Owenwood Farm and Neighbor Space | Pasos for Oak Cliff | Puede Network | Rosa es Rojo, Inc.

Southern Dallas Progress Community Development Corporation | Texas Pride Impact Funds

The Concilio | Union Development Corporation DBA-Project Unity | United to Learn

Thank you to the Leadership donors to the inaugural funding cycle of

The Dallas Foundation’s Racial Equity Fund:

Leland Fikes Foundation, Jaggers Family Fund, NexPoint Philanthropies, The Rainwater Charitable Foundation, The Reis-Bisor Foundation, The PKW Fund of The Dallas Foundation, Harold Simmons Foundation, Texas Capital Bank, Truist Charitable Fund, and the Paula Walker Fund of The Dallas Foundation, among other major donors.