Hope Matters and Outcomes Matter Too: Investing in Southern Communities

Greetings from Atlanta, Georgia! I am here, in Southwest Georgia and Birmingham, Alabama, meeting with community leaders and government officials until the end of the week, asking what role philanthropy can play in helping them unlock the opportunity in seismic shifts underway in the region: the transition to a zero-carbon economy, digitalization, and a resurgence of advanced manufacturing.?

Metro Atlanta has changed since I grew up here, but much has remained the same for many rural surrounding communities. The usual patterns remain of slow population decline combined with a pride in place by those who stay behind. New industries are moving into the South. There is a sense that new beginnings are possible but that the capacity and resources are only sometimes there to meet them. This is where philanthropy can and should be playing a role.?

Last week, the Digital Equity and Opportunity Initiative (DEOI) grantees gathered in person for the first time. The excitement was palpable as stories were shared of communities across the South and Southwest uniting to leverage federal funding for high-speed internet. This once-in-a-generation national funding opportunity to close the digital divide has provided hope from Arkansas to South Carolina and New Mexico. But it has taken philanthropic support to provide the resources and capacity to materialize the potential of that hope. I am proud that I played a role as a philanthropic advisor and network weaver, bringing the DEOI into being. I am grateful to the foundations that took a leap of faith a year ago to shape this emergent strategy in the world.??

Next year, I'll partner with another philanthropic collaboration on clean energy and sustainability in cities across the country at the intersection of the racial wealth gap. Many lessons we've learned through capacity-building support on the?Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act?(IIJA) are relevant to the?Inflation Reduction Act?(IRA). I have yet to write entirely about those lessons outside my clients and peers, but I plan to do so soon.

One of the most consistently clarifying experiences I've had over the past year working with the philanthropic sector on the IIJA implementation around high-speed internet is how straightforward but under-appreciated the impact and outcomes are to hold this work together.?

I have witnessed how rooms with different kinds of stakeholders at other times have discussed once-in-a-generation federal funding without ever mentioning the impact on communities. Sometimes, accessing the massive wave of federal grants is an end in itself as opposed to the means to some downstream end. Our inability to connect the dots between federal funding opportunities and outcomes may be one of the reasons that so many community members have yet to see something at stake in these investments for them.?

I love what the?National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)?did when they connected digital equity to specific outcomes. It has been fairly simple to translate in communities what broadband infrastructure expansion and digital equity mean for improving the material conditions that community members experience daily.?

One of my passions is making data collection and evaluation toward outcomes fun and engaging for people. This is important to me precisely because measuring outcomes helps re-ground us in why we do the work in the first place, or at least why?I?do the work in the first place.?

Today, I'm heading to Birmingham, Alabama, to think about what the boom in clean energy manufacturing due to the IRA means for good family-sustaining jobs and what high-speed internet funding means for improving recidivism rates for people reentering the community after incarceration. I invited my Dad to tag along to give him insight into what his son is up to, traveling the country frantically. It's good to be home in the South.?