Reminder: Direct Service Work is Advocacy & Requires Sustainable Funding

by Victoria Palacio Carr, MPP, CAPM

While many funders working to support anti-discrimination and racial equity efforts tend to favor organizations that advocate for high-level policy reform, the importance of funding community-based direct service providers cannot be ignored in the fight to make lasting change. ?

Direct service providers have a keen understanding of the issues faced by the communities they serve - the same communities most harmed by policies often identified as needing reform. Likewise, these providers are often the sole champions for people in their greatest time of need, and the trust and understanding developed as a result is crucial to pinpointing where systemic barriers need to be removed, what over-arching gaps need to be filled, and what broader policies need to be reformed. Additionally, not only do providers engage in all sorts of community advocacy to address immediate needs they see on the ground every day, but they also help mobilize the power of directly-impacted individuals to effectively advocate for themselves and the communities from which they come. Ensuring sustainable funding for direct service providers is thus essential, as is centering their and community members’ insights and expertise to effectively plan and facilitate systems-wide change.?

Legal Action Center’s No Health = No Justice campaign is built on this model, emphasizing advocacy at every level and widespread collaboration between direct service providers, community members, and other advocates to address current and historic racism in both the health care and criminal legal systems. We believe it is only through building connections, strategizing collaboratively, and listening to and amplifying the voices of those closest to the problem that we can innovate real policy solutions to turn the tide on mass incarceration and build lasting health and racial equity. Community-driven solutions are integral to successfully addressing systemic racism, yet those with lived experience are too often denied the support and access necessary to meaningfully participate. Likewise, the disparity in funding for white-led versus BIPOC-led nonprofit organizations, which are more likely to have leadership representative or part of the community they serve, is well-documented – this, despite a greater increase in demand for services from BIPOC-led organizations compared to white-led organizations over the past two years according to the Nonprofit Finance Fund. ?

No Health = No Justice partner Voices for a Second Chance (VSC), for example, is a Washington D.C.-based, Black-led organization that offers comprehensive direct services to individuals processed through the D.C. correctional system, as well as District residents returning to the community, under community supervision, or halfway houses from Bureau of Prison (BOP) facilities. VSC understands that, for these individuals, the reentry barriers associated with having a conviction record often trap them in a pernicious cycle starting with severely limited access to jobs, housing, and health care, leading to poverty, housing insecurity, and poor health, and ultimately re-entanglement with the criminal legal system. VSC thus works to help people escape this debilitating cycle and achieve economic stability and mobility, so they can take care of themselves and their families and participate meaningfully in their communities. VSC’s wide-ranging direct services allow for individually-tailored support and include: case management; stabilization services such as short-term housing in hotels and rental assistance to support transitioning to permanent housing; transportation assistance; gift cards for and provision of personal essentials; linkage to insurance enrollment and quality medical and mental health care, including individual and group counseling; vital records retrieval; referrals for housing, employment, education, training, and substance use treatment; voter registration assistance; and advocacy training. Again, the unique ability for providers like VSC to establish trust with their clients and thus garner intimate knowledge of individual and systemic needs is significant. For instance, as a result of her work with VSC, Executive Director Paula Thompson went on to found D.C.’s Reentry Action Network, an organization that brings D.C. reentry providers together to advocate around shared policy and budget priorities and has been an important catalyst for increasing reentry services in the District. ?

Tennessee-based Lifeline to Success, also a Black-led organization and No Health = No Justice partner, is another case study in the value of funding direct service organizations run by directly-impacted people of color to maximize impact. Lifeline works to provide individuals with conviction records the necessary support and tools to facilitate successful reentry, including pathways to employment, faith-based counseling and fellowship, and participation in community programming and service efforts like mentoring at schools and attending community meetings. Unsurprisingly, many Lifeline members continue their community involvement and become active advocates in their communities. Paralleling the tactics of VSC, Lifeline has helped thousands of Tennesseans successfully return home from incarceration, and through their work with individual clients, uncover and address gaps in the state’s reentry process. For example, thanks to their expertise and efforts, all individuals in the Tennessee penal system now have their identification readily available at release, an essential tool for accessing opportunities like employment and housing in reentry. Similarly, seeing firsthand so many of their clients struggle to obtain transitional housing, Lifeline has successfully established three new residential spaces in East Tennessee, is nearing construction completion of a fourth building specifically for men, and is currently scouting locations for a fifth space specifically for women. ?

While organizations that primarily use policy advocacy to fight oppression and inequity can be powerful players, excluding or overlooking direct service agencies and the communities they seek to help is more likely to yield policy solutions disconnected from the root causes of inequity and the everyday injustices disenfranchised groups face. If funders want to support meaningful, lasting change, they must acknowledge and support direct services as a form of community advocacy - and as the first true investment in creating a pipeline of directly-impacted leaders. Their perspectives are crucial to identifying the systems and institutions that need changing. ?

It’s beyond time to lift up the organizations and providers working day in and day out to defend the dignity of Black and brown people throughout our country. Understanding how individuals advocate for themselves, how they navigate systems built to fail them, and how they overcome discriminatory barriers is an essential first step to developing practices and policies that can then be advocated for, built upon, implemented, scaled, and modeled, to effect much-needed systemic change. ?