Amongst our 104 Field Catalyst and Fulcrum Fellowship participants and alumni, leaders are experimenting with bold ideas in pursuit of systems change. In a new series of interviews with some of our alumni, we will look closely at what this work can look like, and how it’s playing out on the ground. We’ve previous highlighted Damon Burns and his work to develop climate-resilient affordable housing in New Orleans and Ja’Net Defell and her efforts to build wealth while revitalizing commercial corridors in Chicago.
This month, we spoke with Donovan Duncan, a member of the first Field Catalyst cohort. Donovan is the Executive Vice President for Urban Strategies, Inc., a national nonprofit leader and transformative force in community development, championing equity and innovation across 45 communities in 28 metropolitan areas, including two territories. Urban Strategies Inc. takes a holistic approach to community development, holding that the sustainable transformation of communities involves not just building spaces, but also nurturing the people within them.
Supporting Ecosystems of Opportunity: An Interview with Donovan Duncan, Executive Vice President of Urban Strategies
What is Urban Strategies?
We are a think and do tank. We think about, “What are the ecosystems of opportunity for people who have been marginalized in communities across the country?”
The doing part of our work takes three forms: Our practitioner work, which is the work that we do every single day on the ground in communities to make their traditions of well-being better. Our economic justice work takes root in our CDFI, where we’re standing up our first $50 million fund to invest in emergent businesses of color. And our third stratus is policy and influence work: how do we signal to the sector about promising practices that are happening around the country that can be scaled, and what are the political levers we need to push to create a better ecosystem in those communities?
I know you’re working on a couple of projects in partnership with other CCI Field Catalysts, Allison Allbee in Stockton and Robin Brule in Alabama. Can you tell me about them?
One project is our work with the Edge Collaborative in Stockton. San Francisco is growing into Stockton, and Sacramento is growing into Stockton as well, so Stockton is well-positioned to have a major change in the near future. How do you support communities of color, how do you support businesses of color, and how do you create an apparatus that’s predicated on the needs of communities in advance of all this growth?
What does that look like?
We’re working with two organizations: BUFA, the Black Urban Farmers Association, and Little Manila Rising, which is a CDC within Stockton. BUFA really wanted to think through Black urban farming, and we realized that they have a tremendous amount of potential but needed to do
some refinement to get their infrastructure strengthened before lending could happen. So we gave BUFA a seed grant to start to work through that.
And Little Manila Rising was trying to think about its administrative headquarters in a building that they bought. They had some really strong ideas about their campus, and we came in and said, “We agree with those ideas. But let’s look at the financing tools very differently, and we will bring in our expertise to help you unpack a proforma that potentially works for you to get your building done. And are there ways to think about the community needs that could be included in that building?”
What’s going on in Alabama?
The Alabama work is really interesting because we’re working in Selma with a community-based organization that is trying to commemorate the events that happened on Bloody Sunday [1965]. We’re thinking about the economic apparatus that needs to be created for all individuals who call Selma home to thrive.
Selma experiences two to three million visitors a year who come to take a picture in front of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, but none of that foot traffic or car traffic stays. So how do we harness and accelerate economic development and create a venue where the bridge and its history can be used as a marker of economic opportunity for the city? And on top of that, how do we leverage democracy?
We have a partnership with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is thinking about how to activate, harness, and leverage democracy, like voter registration, voter turnout. It’s thinking about the economic apparatus in conjunction with the democratic apparatus and merging those two things so that we can create a different, bigger and more robust ecosystem.
Can you share a bit more about the connection between those two systems? How can capital shift the system?
It’s hard for folks to believe in freedom and democracy when they’re hungry. Locally, the connection is really folks being compensated for their thought leadership around democracy and voting – hiring ambassadors to talk about the nuances of democracy and voting – and then thinking through where are the economic engines of the local region and how to tie them back specifically to tourism, and leveraging that for the betterment of residents who call Selma home.
So your partnership is specifically working to get folks compensated for their work?
Yes. Getting them a stipend to get people out to vote, to talk about democracy, to leverage Selma’s power toward a greater ecosystem. Folks should get compensated for their genius.
Has the Capital Absorption Framework guided you in any specific ways?
The whole framework is something that guides our work and how we connect it to results. We’re thinking about scaling enterprises of opportunity that capitalize on economic justice – that’s the pipeline. We’re thinking about the shared priorities across the system, focused on democracy, economic justice, housing, and community development. And we’re thinking about the environments necessary to make sure the results can be achieved. So, yes. The whole frame is embedded into our theory of change
What have you learned about how to work with communities?
We all as professionals believe we know what’s right for folks, but it’s a different skill set to allow spaces to be created that are rooted in the success of those individuals, and for that to happen organically. It’s not for us to layer on our ideology about what needs to happen for a community to thrive. It’s for us to partner authentically, get out of the way, and allow for the folks who are closest to the issues to be closest to the solutions.
Additionally, it’s disingenuous for us to ask people to believe in a system that doesn’t benefit them. Every single day, we do that. We ask people to believe in change that might never come. We need a bigger pie – but how long does it take for the pie to bake? Every day, the pie that we have is being split up in a way that leaves people hungry.
People need a timeframe, a timeline, and a structure that tells you when that pie will be done. The small economic victories allow people to see change.
