Jewish Community Action CI Report – Final

What has been most instrumenta to your progress?

One of the crucial components to the work was convening community conversations with a variety and diversity of community members and stakeholders. The ten community listening sessions we held on both sides of the river were instrumental to all of the work that we did, and to the progress we were able to make. Getting the community engaged and involved, often and early on, is a really key part of the work and should undergird the strategy going forward into the future. Our community group really allowed us to better understand exactly what was happening, what to focus on, and better tailor what would be included in the report that would be delivered to both cities.

The natural follow up to the community tables that we held, was the community survey that we created and distributed in relationship with the University of Minnesota. We sent surveys to around 300 community members, organizations, and stakeholders talking about what was happening in their communities, and what they wanted to see from the banks that the cities contracted with. This was crucial to building the report we delivered to both city governments, and additionally brought people into the work in a powerful way. Bringing people’s voices directly into the call for their cities to restructure their work in a way that directly benefits people was and is crucial to this work. That information then continues to be useful outside of just this work as well, and can continue to build and inform the work we do.

The more intentional community building portion of our work was crucial, not only building strong relationships with our allies and partners around the table – but also pulling together community leaders and elected officials and building deep and trusting relationships. The community portion was key in our application, and unsurprisingly turned out to be crucial to the success of our work. Without the intentional and early engagement with our partners and leaders in both Minneapolis and Saint Paul we wouldn’t have seen such a strong success in both cities. We really intentionally increased the number of both JCA members and other residents in the community who were involved with, engaged in, and excited by this work – and that made all the difference both in the term of this grant, and in our work moving forward. The combination of working together with our allies and putting specific emphasis on building long term and trusting relationships made the work what it was.

Key lessons learned

One of the key lessons that we learned over the grant term was that the city governments are often reluctant to hold banks accountable in the ways we were looking for. We really began to understand over the course of the grant term that cities need a lot of time, involvement from all parts of the community, and a lot of conversations to move this work forward. Challenging the structures of banking and city practice is a big task, and cities often lack the capacity and initiative to take the steps that we know will directly benefit the community. We learned about the challenges around accountability and capacity this work really uniquely presents, but also we learned what we have to do to make progress. Shifting systemic process around large scale investments like banking contracts is a big deal and takes time and a long term investment in time from policy makers.

While this work wasn’t really a failure in any capacity, it certainly didn’t go as far in the grant period as we hoped it might. We were not able to have either city create a system that requires banks to submit more thorough and transparent information. As an end goal we still think that it’s possible, but we weren’t able to achieve it during this grant period. But, because we were able to build so many solid jumping off points, it leaves the door wide open to continue doing this work. The community table that’s been convened in Saint Paul in particular is a great foundation to the broader work. In our community innovation request we hoped to implement an evaluative infrastructure to monitor banking work in an ongoing fashion, which wasn’t something we were able to get specifically – but something we think is more likely in the future now. I think the lesson drawn from this echoes our first answer – this work can be slower than expected, and navigating the city policy is even more different from organizing.

Reflections on the community innovation process

The most crucial part of the community innovation diagram for our work was the gears of community process. This work was not only done in strong coalition with our allies and partners, but community input, knowledge, and leadership was crucial to the work we completed. Community work was crucial through all of the work we did in this grant period because it grounded our work, informed the strategies we pursued, and helped us build power to reach our goals. We tried to make every opportunity to connect to the work inclusive and empowering, and everything we accomplished was because of our resourcefulness, and the resourcefulness of the people we were working with. I think that was distilled so clearly by the creation of the community review council in Saint Paul, the community work and emphasis will continue to make Saint Paul’s banking contracts accountable to the needs of the communities most heavily impacted by those investments. The same is true with the small business navigators in Minneapolis, real and concrete investments in the community were both a crucial part to the daily work we did, and in the final product.

Other key elements of Community Innovation

The key piece to this work was community organizing, and transforming community capacity (listed on the diagram) into real community power. The community innovation, the real breakthrough that led to new small business navigators, community input, and a wealth of new data and information, came down to organizing people and helping ourselves and our partners build power. To test and implement solutions we had to get policy passed through city councils, which meant organizing votes and constituents to help make that happen. We worked across the river and across organizational lines to build collective power that will bolster all of our work, and the power of residents in the metro area. The process of building power and capacity was intertwined and parallel to engaging community stakeholders and innovators.

Progress toward an innovation

We achieved big break throughs in both Minneapolis and Saint Paul. In Minneapolis we helped create new small business navigators that will be resources to historically marginalized individuals creating new and innovative small businesses. We know that opening a new business is a process awash with stumbling blocks depending on your race, income, and even where you live in the city. These navigators will ideally help to decrease that gap and bring more people into contact with the resources they need, and have help advocating the often confusing process. The presence of new navigators will help build community wealth, help people gain access to tools they would not have otherwise had access to, and drive a more equitable small business ecosystem. In St.Paul we helped to create a new, community based process that allows community input on new banking contracts. This was probably the closest step we were able to take in making banks more accountable to the communities they’re serving through contracts with cities. The community based process requires banks submit proposals and that a representative community table will review those applications to make recommendations.

What it will take to reach an innovation?

What’s next?

We’re continuing to work towards a Twin Cities that closes wealth and income gaps, provides housing for everyone, and creates equal opportunties for people to succeed. Currently we’re working on affordable housing in the metro area including Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and eight west metro suburban communities. We’re also working with the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) to build a campaign around bank accountability, and leveraging a large bank in the region into creating a far reaching community benefits agreement for Minneapolis. Previous Community Benefits Agreements have sent billions of dollars of investment into communities that banks have rarely invested in before. We’re continuing our work with clear objectives and goals, building on the success in Minneapolis and Saint Paul to help empower the next stages in this work. The wins during our CI grant term continue to play a role in the work that we’re doing, and hope to build on them as we work with NCRC to bring banks to the table and agree to community benefits terms as well.

If you could do it all over again…

If we could go back and talk to ourselves and the team at the very beginning I think we’d impress the importance of really cultivating champions in the community and city councils, and building stronger alliances with policy makers and people in the city governments. We really thought people in positions of power were going to be more supportive and easier to bring along with us than they ended up being. In terms of building strong and sound organizing strategy that could calm nerves around key votes, it would have been helpful to understand the lay of the political landscape more clearly earlier in the process. Additionally, while community work was really central in our organizing, we would still go back and tell ourselves to focus on those relationships even more and begin them earlier.

One last thought

This was powerful work, and the policy changes in both cities we achieved is a big deal, and there is still more work to be done. We’re committed to continuing to fight for real changes that encourage banks to be accountable to the communities they work within, and are working to continue funding and growing that work. Bush’s foundational investment in JCA’s work has changed the landscape for traditionally marginalized people opening small businesses in Minneapolis, and brought community voices into the banking process in Saint Paul. Bush’s investment has also created new data, new scaffolding, and will continue to enable this work far into the future. We hope you’ll continue to invest in this work, and are excited to continue growing a more just and equitable future together with the Bush Foundation.