Nicole Taylor, CEO - East Bay Community Foundation
One of the programs of the East Bay Community Foundation is it’s public/private partnership program. We thought you might want to know about this, so we asked questions on your behalf.
What is the Foundation’s public/private partnership program?
Based on the reality that neither government, business, the non-profit sector nor the philanthropic sector alone possesses the resources to resolve our most pressing challenges, our partnership program is dedicated to forming partnerships that pool resources from different sectors to develop solutions to specific problems. Specifically, we look to partner with the private and public sectors. To make significant change, we need to go beyond the power of one. We need the power of many.
Does this initiative provide funding for local non-profit?
Funding for local non profits who focus on our two priority issues — advancing economic opportunities for adults and families in need and on ensuring very young children are successful in the education system — comes primarily from our grantmaking program rather than from our partnerships program.
What is an example of a public/private partnership that has exceeded the Foundation’s expectations?
We are developing a program aimed at purchasing foreclosed homes in Richmond, rehabilitating them, and offering them to first-time home buyers who are low-to-moderate income families – thereby reducing neighborhood blight and creating financial assets for families. If that program comes to fruition and if we are able to implement it at a significant level of scale, it will exceed our expectations.
How does this program impact communities of color in the East Bay?
The foundation is focusing on two issues – advancing economic opportunity for adults and families in need and ensuring very young children succeed in the education system so they will have economic opportunity when they become adults. These issues disproportionately affect communities of color.
Because of that disproportionate impact, these two issues we focus on are directly aimed at communities of color in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. The public and private partnerships program is currently working primarily on the issue of economic opportunities and development in communities with high need for job creation, job training, and asset-building strategies. The communities we work in through these efforts are primarily communities of color.
Learn more by visiting the East Bay Community Foundation online at www.ebcf.org