Catalyzing Community Giving

In 2019 Grand Rapids Community Foundation received a Catalyzing Community Giving grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The Community Foundation has invested those resources into building trust and relationships in Black and Latinx communities. Incredible volunteer partners and community feedback informed the establishment of our Somos Comunidad Fund and our refocused Black Legacy Fund.

Each fund’s advisory committee has extensively thought through how to connect the Community Foundation’s position, resources and philanthropic tools with Black and Latinx communities’ legacy of community care, expertise and culture. The advisory committees seek to balance the need for immediate community resources with creating a legacy available for future generations to distribute. Their new community engagement process is informing their grantmaking priorities. They have created innovative ways to ensure that resources reach new partners, community organizations and more.

For example, they’ve intentionally invested efforts and resources to reframe who is celebrated as a philanthropist. The Community Foundation has a century-long legacy of incredible support from people in this community who are passionate about caring for people. We recognize, though, that our legacy has been largely shaped by resources from primarily white communities, including those with generational wealth. We have missed the opportunity to partner with and highlight the deep history of community care in communities of color and among people from every socioeconomic position. Catalyzing Community Giving is one way for the Community Foundation to reconsider how to build trust and relationships with communities who have not been our partners previously.

SOMOS COMUNIDAD FUND

Lea Tobar has been an advocate and leader in the Latinx community since she moved to Grand Rapids in 1961, and an active volunteer on the Somos Comunidad Fund Advisory Committee since 2019. She is passionate about ensuring the fund is accessible and inclusive of people from every part of the community.

Muchas veces somos (la comunidad latina) una comunidad invisible. Cuando estamos en las reuniones de Somos Comunidad, yo insisto mucho que tenemos que llevar la información a la gente, porque están en la obscuridad. Hay un dicho que dice: ‘que si tu no tienes conocimiento, no tienes poder.’ Mientras más información tu tengas, mas poder vas a tener de involucrarte en la comunidad.

-Lea Tobar

Lea Tobar

(Translation: I see in our community, many times we are an invisible community. When we are in the Somos Comunidad meetings, I always insist we must bring this information to the community because often they are in the dark. There is a saying, ‘if you don’t have knowledge, you don’t have power’. The more information you have, the more power you will have to get involved in the community.)

Somos Comunidad Fund will award its first competitive grant round in January 2023. The advisory committee will grant up to Somos Comunidad Fund will award its first competitive grant round in January 2023. The advisory committee will grant up to $75,000 to programming that serves Latinx communities, with specific focus on areas highlighted in community engagement sessions. “We are spending it in this way because it is what you [our communities] said was important,” says Sergio CiraReyes, committee member. “So we are asking community to continue building into this effort so we can continue to respond to community.” Somos Comunidad Fund is striving to raise $250,000 by summer 2024 so they can continue making significant grant awards.

BLACK LEGACY FUND

Over 15+ years, Black Legacy Fund has shifted its name and refocused its purpose, but never wavered from its passion for investing for and by Black communities. That investment will continue with their largest-ever competitive grant round, where the advisory committee will award up to $300,000 in January 2023.

The fund has seen incredible partners—volunteers, donors, nonprofits and more—who are committed to uplifting Black brilliance and Black joy throughout Kent County. One such community hero is Jewellynne Richardson, known by many as Mama Jewel. She’s a mother, grandmother, chef, ordained minister, cosmetologist through MS Jewel’s Natural Hair Care, owner of The One Stop Culture Shop and founder of West Michigan Jewels of Africa. Mama Jewel is the picture of philanthropy, truly leveraging her gifts to care for those around her. Supporting Black Legacy Fund through a financial donation is just one of many ways she chooses to share her resources.

“I am community, I am love. I am here as support. I want to show Ubuntu, which means your problems are my problems and that we can make it through together,” says Mama Jewel.

Jewellynne Richardson and her granddaughter