A report issued by Change Capital Fund, a collaborative of 15 funders, demonstrates the life-saving contributions of community-based organizations during the intersecting crises of the past year.

The report, Essential But Invisible: Community Organizations in the Time of Covid, details the essential services provided by community development corporations amidst public health, racial and economic justice crises.

“Community-based organizations are as essential to their communities as firehouses,” states Steven Flax, Administrative Vice President of M&T Bank and Co-Chairman of the Fund. CCF’s grantees provided $11.5 million of emergency services to more than 125,000 people in the first six months of the pandemic. The majority of those receiving services have incomes below the poverty level. The emergency services included counseling, food delivery, distribution of masks and other personal protective equipment, even financial support for burials.

This unusual and long-standing collaborative of financial institutions, community development intermediaries, foundations, United Way of NYC and the NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity pool funding to increase the resiliency, reach and efficacy the city’s community development corporations. Change Capital Fund’s grantees provide a combination of affordable housing and housing services, social services, workforce development and community organizing in high-poverty, neighborhoods populated mostly by people of color.

Patricia Swann, Senior Program Officer at The New York Community Trust  and CCF Co-Chair, says, “Like all of us, the staff of these community organizations worried about their exposure to COVID, about their out-of-school children, about elderly parents and other family members who were vulnerable to the virus due to pre-existing conditions.  But they put those worries aside and devoted their energies to taking care of their communities. They delivered food and needed supplies, they consoled and comforted grieving family members, and they also organized to demand that government systematically address the needs of those most hurt by Covid.”

Change Capital Fund urges other funders to join them in supporting these organizations that are needed in good times as well as in the inevitable next crisis. They need flexible, multi-year funding, such that Change Capital Fund provides, as well as support for advocacy and organizing, minimal reporting requirements and maximum investment in internal evaluation.

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