Supporting the Nonprofit Ecosystem

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In 2021, the Steelcase Foundation launched two new strategies, Elevating Community Brilliance + Expertise and Systemic Change + Movement Building to focus on hyper-local grassroots, emerging, and individual-based work in our nonprofit ecosystem, and the broad systems-level work needed to make lasting change.

Elevating Community Brilliance + Expertise supports the vision, work, and voices of leaders, community members, and smaller early-stage nonprofits that are closest to current and future needs of children and families in our community. This strategy recognizes that those closest to community are often most able to innovate and serve authentically but are doing the work on shoestring budgets or without access to capital for capacity building to deepen their impact or lighten the load of those doing the work.

We launched two cohorts of Early-Stage Operations and Planning (ESOP) grants, which provide organizations with multi-year general operating grants of $150,000 and technical assistance to support strategic and operational planning to build organizational infrastructure, recognizing that new nonprofits are often highly skilled at serving the needs of their constituents but may lack expertise in running a charitable organization.

Each ESOP cohort meets quarterly to engage in topical learning around things like affirming their mission, vision, and values, building a board, developing a fundraising plan, and shoring up programming and measurement. These sessions marry content on best practices with time to collaborate with other nonprofits to hear what’s working well and what hasn’t, to move organizations forward faster collectively than they might on their own.

Our Brilliant Leaders Initiative takes a similar approach to curate shared learning and fellowship by bringing together emerging nonprofit leaders for structured opportunities to engage outside of their day-to-day work, allowing them to build supportive relationships with others along similar journeys, and to reflect and re-energize from the emotionally heavy work they do.

Members of both the ESOP and Brilliant Leader cohorts have affirmed the power of these opportunities to connect, grow, and learn together. Their shared experiences have allowed them to develop deep, authentic relationships and a sense that they aren’t alone in this work.

Systemic Change + Movement Building focuses on initiatives led by the Foundation, often alongside philanthropic partners, to leverage our power and influence to inform philanthropy and policy or use our expertise to drive and support larger-scale social change. Initiatives through this theme often recognize the power of collaboration and use our positionality to bring to light inequities and make space for those at the table with the lived experience or direct knowledge to best inform how we partner with and support community for lasting change.

On a macro-level, we’ve worked to support the broad knowledge of how nonprofits can operate, collaborate, and in some cases, engage politically to advocate for their respective missions without fear of overstepping into lobbying work.

To lay the groundwork to better support and advocate for families in our region, we approved a 10-year $10 million project, called the Investment in Families Initiative, which partners with Black and Latina mothers who are heads of household and transitioning out of ALICE (asset limited, income constrained, and employed) status with a goal of positively changing the behaviors of systems and policies to maximize well-being for their families and others in similar situations throughout Michigan. The initiative seeks to reduce the cognitive load for families through a guaranteed basic income and child savings accounts, a dedicated coach and Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) caseworker to help navigate challenges and systems as they arise, mental health and wellness services, and cohort building among the mothers and families to increase social capital and collective impact. We hired Stacy Stout to lead this charge, and established partnerships with DataWise Consulting, the Women’s Resource Center, and MDHHS to endeavor together toward change. Our strategic vision addresses the needs of the nonprofit ecosystem both large and small, near term and into the future, to ensure that our vision of a community where all can participate, grow, and thrive becomes a reality.

To support the needs of our nonprofit grantmaking partners, we added our first program officer, Trudy Ngo-Brown, to help us deepen our relationships with those seeking funding through our traditional grantmaking process, offering greater capacity to answer questions and engage in conversation around potential partnership. By having a dedicated contact with time and space to support our grantees and spend more time rooted in community, we’re closing the power dynamic between grantee and grantor, helping us to be a better partner and support projects that are both more mission-aligned and reflective of community needs.

We’ve also made space for our nonprofit partners to share stories in their own words through compensated blog posts and short videos to provide insights and learnings from those who know best, uplifting the brilliance of those doing work in our community. Their insights are prominently featured on our website and throughout this Annual Report in hope that we can all listen and learn from our brilliant community partners.