Changing the National Conversation About Poverty and Economic Mobility
28 organizations from 18 states and D.C. receive $100,000 Grand Challenge Grants
Sponsored by a Group of 8 Philanthropic Partners
WASHINGTON, D.C., June 10, 2020 – Twenty-eight organizations from 18 states and the District of Columbia will elevate diverse voices and broaden the national conversation about poverty and economic mobility at a critical moment in our nation’s history as recipients of $100,000 grants in the Voices for Economic Opportunity Grand Challenge, sponsored by a group of eight philanthropic organizations.
In light of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic early this year and the outrage against racial injustice that is gripping our nation, the effort to change the narrative around poverty and opportunity is now more important than ever. With tens of millions of people newly unemployed, many of them people of color, and many facing racism and othering each day, there is an even greater need to break down the dominant perceptions about poverty and to replace them with more accurate ones.
The purpose of the Grand Challenge, launched in September 2019, is to establish ways to offer alternatives to confusing, conflicting, and just plain inaccurate accounts about what poverty is, why it happens, to whom it happens, and how to address it. Key partners on the project have included the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Omidyar Network, Raikes Foundation, Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, and the Schultz Family Foundation.
“Equitable access to opportunity will not be possible until we address misconceptions, racial bias, racism, and stereotypes and move to action guided by shared values, history, systemic solutions, racial equity and human dignity,” said Ryan Rippel, Director of the Economic Mobility and Opportunity program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “We don’t think that this work is by itself going to solve either racism or poverty in America. Far from it. But we will not change complex systems if decision-makers are not following the voice and insight of those facing marginalization and victimization as a result of our economy and our institutions. One way to accomplish this is by ensuring that the actual stories of those who experience poverty are front and center with the goal of compelling new levels of action.”
The Grand Challenge is part of a multi-funder, multiyear plan to examine economic mobility and opportunity in this country, to create tools to help everyone better understand the systemic factors that lead to the presence of greater economic mobility in their own neighborhoods, and to craft and test strategies for changing the outlook for people experiencing poverty.
“Research shows that our country’s history of structural racism spanning generations denies economic opportunity to entire communities and subsequently robs them of their health,” said Jennifer Ng’andu, Managing Director, Program at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “In particular, Black and Latino Americans often live in conditions that move them further from opportunity and into the position where they are forced to make impossible choices about basic needs like food and shelter. This has become most apparent as the COVID-19 epidemic plays out, where families are negotiating between their family’s well-being and jobs with inadequate protections and pay. To finally create conditions where everyone can thrive, we need to come to grips with this longstanding disinvestment in communities — and move towards the solutions that support the caregivers who are striving every day to take care of their families. What’s happening today in America is a wakeup call for all of us and shows us we need to hear people’s stories, understand their challenges, and let them show us the way to confront head-on the systems and policies that hold them down.”
The grantees will gather over the next 18 months as a cohort to collaborate and learn from one another; receive access to research, coaching and other technical support; and incubate their individual projects, with an eye toward production and distribution of prototypes by the fall of 2021. The incubation effort will be led by Purpose, a social impact agency and public benefit corporation that uses public mobilization and storytelling to build and support movements to advance the fight for an open, just, and habitable world.
Grantees were selected from 1,225 submissions made last fall and represent a broad cross-section of geographies, cultures, media and scope of ideas. Each of those submissions was reviewed to determine whether they met the published eligibility criteria. The remaining applications were then reviewed and rated by a panel of more than 30 external experts with experience in film and media, social movements and non-profits, narrative and culture change, philanthropy, economics and social science. Their recommendations were then presented to the partners for final grantee selections.
The following is a list of the grantee organizations, their projects, and location. More information about the Voices for Economic Opportunity Grand Challenge can be found at the Grand Challenges web site.
SaverLife San Francisco, CA
Elevating the Voices of Low‐Income Families Through Financial Technology
SaverLife in the U.S. will connect financial data with the perspectives and experiences of low-income individuals from their online community to shift perceptions on who they are and why they are poor and help drive client-informed solutions. SaverLife’s online community supports over 330,000 low-income members across the U.S. to help them save for their futures. As a result, SaverLife has gained rich insights into the causes and effects of poverty and the household impact of social policy. They will harness these data and the collective power of this community as a tool to develop and evaluate messages and policies that better address the community’s needs. They will also distribute stories from members that explain the real barriers to economic mobility.
Arkansas Asset Funders Network Chicago, IL
Can You See Me Now?
Arrowhead Business Group Foundation Fort Apache, AZ
Elevating Native American Voices
Brandeis University Waltham, MA
Cascading Lives: Stories of Loss, Resilience, & Resistance
Center for Popular Democracy, Fair Workweek Initiative Brooklyn, NY
Amplifying Working Families’ Voices to Educate the Public about the Racial Economic Impact of Unstable Work Hours, Exacerbated in a Time of Pandemic
Center for Public Interest Communications Gainesville, FL
The Radical Communicators Network New York, NY
Changing the Poverty Narrative by Changing the Voices
Institute for Policy Studies Washington, DC
Working with the Poor People’s Campaign to Change the Pervasive Narrative that Blames Poor People in this Country for Their Own Poverty
Metropolitan Planning Council Chicago, IL
"Good" Neighborhoods: Shifting Segregation Paradigms
National Center for Families Learning Louisville, KY
Families Leading the Way: Stories of Leadership, Advocacy and Strength
National Domestic Workers Alliance New York, NY
Offering Stories from Domestic Workers to Drive Forward the Conversation about the Value of their Work and to Improve their Economic Opportunities
National Women’s Law Center Washington, DC
Show Me the Receipts
Outside the Lens San Diego, CA
Project Re_Line
Partners for Rural Transformation, led by Fahe Berea, KY
Our Story: Changing the Narrative of Persistently Poor Rural Places
Sojourners Washington, DC
Creating Messaging to Mobilize People of Faith to Address the Economic Security of Marginalized Communities, Exacerbated in a Crisis like COVID-19
Strengthen ND Minot, ND
Through the Threads of Homesteading
Three Sisters Kitchen Albuquerque, NM
Using the Unique Influence of a Local Food Space in Activating Narratives to Shift Community Perspectives and Policy and Stir Action on Poverty
UNC Greensboro Greensboro, NC
Disrupting Dehumanizing Narratives of Black Men in Poverty
University of San Diego Children’s Advocacy Institute San Diego, CA
Fostering Fairness
US Dream Academy Columbia, MD
Children of the Incarcerated: Our Time is Now
Vera Institute of Justice Brooklyn, NY
Transforming Rural America by Ending Mass Incarceration
Voz Workers’ Rights Education Project Portland, OR
Strengthening the Worker Defense Clinic to Help Overcome Barriers to Economic Mobility for Day Laborers and Temporary Workers
Wayne State University Detroit, MI
Shifting Urban Narratives
West Virginia Community Development Hub Charleston, WV
Rural Community Development Innovation
Women’s Way Philadelphia, PA
Elevating the Firsthand Stories of Women with Lived Experiences to More Impactfully Address the Root Causes of Economic Insecurity
YMCA of the Coosa Valley Gadsden, AL
Community Protectors: Poverty and Racism as Christian Calls to Action
Young Women’s Christian Association of San Antonio San Antonio, TX
“Why Can't They Just...”
YR Media Oakland, CA
Speak Your Truth: A Youth Voices Project
Grand Challenge Partners
About the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all people—especially those with the fewest resources—have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. Based in Seattle, Washington, the foundation is led by CEO Mark Suzman and Co-chair William H. Gates Sr., under the direction of Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett. For further information, contact Ed Wyatt, edward.wyatt@gatesfoundation.org or media@gatesfoundation.org.
About the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
For more than 45 years the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has worked to improve health and health care. We are working alongside others to build a national Culture of Health that provides everyone in America a fair and just opportunity for health and well-being. For more information, visit www.rwjf.org. Follow the Foundation on Twitter at www.rwjf.org/twitter or on Facebook at www.rwjf.org/facebook. Media contact: Melissa Blair, media@rwjf.org or (609) 627-5937
About the James Irvine Foundation
The James Irvine Foundation is a private, nonprofit grantmaking foundation dedicated to expanding opportunity for the people of California. The Foundation’s current focus is a California where all low-income workers have the power to advance economically. Since 1937 the Foundation has provided more than $1.98 billion in grants to organizations throughout California. With more than $2 billion in assets, the Foundation made grants of $105 million in 2019. For more, please visit www.irvine.org.
About the W.K. Kellogg Foundation
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF), founded in 1930 as an independent, private foundation by breakfast cereal innovator and entrepreneur Will Keith Kellogg, is among the largest philanthropic foundations in the United States. WKKF works with communities to create conditions for vulnerable children so they can realize their full potential in school, work and life. WKKF supports work throughout the U.S. and with sovereign tribes, and in Mexico and Haiti, concentrating up to two-thirds of grantmaking in priority places: Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico and New Orleans in the U.S., Chiapas and the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, and in Central and South Haiti. For more information, visit wkkf.org.
About the Omidyar Network
Omidyar Network seeks to create a more equitable economy, promote responsible technology that improves lives, and discover the emergent issues that will shape our future. Established in 2004 by philanthropists Pam and Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, Omidyar Network has committed more than $1 billion to innovative for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations to catalyze economic and social change. For further information, contact Beth Kanter at bkanter@omidyar.com.
About the Raikes Foundation
The Raikes Foundation works toward a just and inclusive society where young people have the support they need to reach their full potential. For further information, contact Molly Watkins at Molly.Watkins@raikesfoundation.org.
About the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation
The Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation (WRF) exists to relentlessly pursue economic, educational, social, ethnic, and racial equity for all Arkansans. Governor Winthrop Rockefeller’s commitment, courage, and collaboration created systemic change in Arkansas. This is the legacy WRF was founded on more than 45 years ago and the inspiration for AR Equity 2025. WRF envisions an equitable Arkansas in which all Arkansans have jobs that pay a livable wage, a quality education, and the chance to thrive and prosper. For more information on the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, go to www.wrfoundation.org.
About the Schultz Family Foundation
The Schultz Family Foundation, established by Sheri and Howard Schultz, aims to unlock America’s potential, one individual and one community at a time. It is building a world where all young people are valued, engaged, and inspired in their lives and in their communities. Investing in innovative, scalable solutions and partnerships, the foundation focuses its efforts on communities with enormous promise. For further information, contact Yeri Yun at yyun@schultzfamilyfoundation.org.
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