Place Really Matters: Reflections and Why We Care

by Leon T. Andrews, Jr., President and CEO, Equal Measure

Panelists at the JobsFirstNYC CommunityINC Funder Briefing

Back in March, I had an opportunity to explore “place”—what it means, why it matters, and how highly collaborative community initiatives can touch the lives of young people and their families. I attended a funder briefing led by JobsFirstNYC and its CommunityINC program. Place-based initiatives are at the core of JobsFirstNYC’s work in New York City. They work with communities to create localized solutions that respond to the unique needs of neighborhoods with high numbers of young adults in historically under-resourced communities. At the briefing, I facilitated a panel focusing on the importance of investing in place-based solutions with two Equal Measure clients—Monique Miles of the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions and Lori Boozer of Robin Hood—and a longtime field colleague, Eshauna Smith of Ballmer Group. It was a powerful dialogue—informed by the nexus of the personal and the professional, and how that deep connection to place drives our work. I’d like to share a few reflections from that conversation.

Place Really Matters: It’s about our Personal Story

The personal link to place—to community, neighborhood, and family—has been an impetus for the professional journeys of Lori, Monique, and Eshauna. It is also very personal for me, as I reflect on growing up on Jefferson Street in Washington, D.C., and living in the same house my grandmother bought when she moved to this country in the 1960s. My wife and I are now raising our three daughters in that same house. Lori grew up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, NY, raised by her great aunt, in a community that is 70% Black, and one of the most underinvested communities in New York City. Monique was raised in a Spanish Harlem—El Barrio. And Eshauna was raised in inner city Los Angeles, after her family left Asbury Park, NJ. Each left their communities to pursue higher education and successful careers—what Lori described as “living, breathing testimonies of what happens when you invest in place.” Lori, Monique, and Eshauna consider their professional work as opportunities to give back and strengthen these communities, to invest in the community as a whole, so that more young adults can attend college, and families can live and raise their children in healthy environments.

Place Really Matters: It’s about Racism

We cannot talk about place without acknowledging racism. Racism is a system that was intentionally created with a hierarchy that placed White people at the top of the system and Black people at the bottom. As we defined ethnicity in this country, Hispanic, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, and other people of color were identified in that hierarchical system also below White people. I know this can be difficult and uncomfortable to name so explicitly, but it is critical if we really want to understand why place matters. Policies, practices, and procedures were created to benefit White people and disadvantage everyone else. When we talk about place, we need to contextualize that groups of people did not end up where they ended up by accident. Naming racism as a system allows us to connect the personal as we understand the importance of building trust.

Place Really Matters: It’s about Trust

Another theme that emerged from our conversation is that building community infrastructure is all about building power and trust—enabling community members to truly exercise voice and authority. You can’t invest in place without direct contributions from, and collaboration with, those who live there. And those collaborations, when meaningful and authentic, bring trust. Monique shared a highly resonant example from the Aspen Opportunity Youth Forum’s (OYF’s) work with tribal communities. She noted that the tribal partners have made clear that data sovereignty matters; that they must self-determine what is important to them; and that they must measure for themselves the outcomes that are culturally relevant to their tribes, their identity, and their land. “If they are part of our national network, then we must hold these metrics as well. We must support communities to self-determine metrics in ways that also help us think about an outcome story over time.”

Place Really Matters: It’s about Targeted Universalism

One way community collaboration, and power, manifest themselves is through lifting up many through a more direct investment—what john a. powell characterizes as “targeted universalism.” Monique shared a related story from the Aspen OYF’s work in Los Angeles, focused on career pathways for foster care youth. The Los Angeles Opportunity Youth Collaborative, through its cross-sector partnership with the Alliance for Children’s Rights, iFoster, municipal government, and local employers was able to leverage the American Rescue Plan funds to broaden its focus to foster youth in the K–12 and postsecondary systems, as well as for undocumented families tied to the foster care system. Though the investment targeted youth in foster care, the collaboration elevated an even larger population.

Place Really Matters: It’s about Taking Risk

I noted trust as one central theme from our dialogue. Risk is important too—and the combination of risk and trust, when it comes to philanthropic investments in Black and Brown communities, is critical to seeding opportunities for change. Eshauna shared her experience as a Black woman trying to grow and scale a national organization. She recalled conversations with funders, who considered her organization’s budget as good enough, and shied away from investing additional dollars—what she described as “thinking and failing money”—to take risks, innovate, and further support the community she served. Eshauna also noted that while only 3% of nonprofits reach $5 million in revenues, that percentage is even less for organizations led by people of color. And she cited that of the 800 Black-led or Black-founded nonprofits on the Giving Gap platform, “more than 50% of those have annual budgets of under $250K.” Lack of investment in organizations led by people of color, in communities that need those resources the most, is real, and I celebrate Eshauna’s call to “think about how we shift power, really think about how we give those [leaders] the capital and the opportunities they need to lead at place-based partnership tables.”

I’d like to conclude with a reflection from the opening keynote speaker, Geoffrey Canada, founder and president of the Harlem Children’s Zone, and a trailblazer in place-based work. Geoffrey raised one of the central questions inherent in collaboration: How do we make sure that when we come together, we’re actually more powerful and more productive than when we worked in isolation? Making that happen, he explained, requires trusting relationships, open communications that leads to real conversation, and transparency about “what’s in it for each of us.”

I think Geoffrey Canada is spot on—because ultimately, investments in place are only as successful as the power, trust, risk, and perseverance that fuel the local partnerships and drive change that improves lives for children, young adults, and families in these communities. That’s why my Equal Measure colleagues and I are passionate about this work, and why we have embraced the belief that place really matters.

To view my panel conversation, watch the video below.

To view the full briefing, visit the JobsFirstNYC YouTube channel.

You may also check out some Equal Measure publications focusing on place-based work:

Community Inspired Network for Change (CommunityINC) is JobsFirstNYC’s networked communities initiative that—through a cross-sector, multi-stakeholder approach—seeks to build a single-system strategy for advancing economic mobility and workforce equity.