As part of our series spotlighting remarkable Black nonprofit leaders, we speak with Elizabeth Frederick of Avenues for Justice, a nonprofit dedicated to keeping NYC youth out of prison.
Growing up, there weren’t any women around me who had taken the same career path I did, but what they did do was instill in me a belief that I could aim high, and these Black women are still a part of my life and my story.
Charles Schwab’s annual skills-based volunteer event taps into employees’ professional expertise to build nonprofit capacity and create long-term community impact.
If we really believe in creating lasting change, we have to find ways for everyone to be part of that – not just our friends, not just the people we know, and maybe not just doing the things we can think of… 2021 is a great time for that to happen.
Skills-based volunteers from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts collaborated with East Boston Social Centers to develop frameworks for nonprofit managers to support their team’s mental health in moments of crisis.
Skills for Cities Spring 2021 is dedicated to building the capacity of Midwest nonprofits as they continue to respond to COVID-19, racial inequity, and the digital divide.
[There is] this narrative of ‘This is not who we are,’ when a lot of us, and I think a lot of folks from marginalized communities – Black, Indigenous folks, etc. – are saying, ‘This is exactly who we are, who we have been.’ I think about it like a twelve step program where you cannot really heal and change if you don’t go through the first step, which is to admit you have a problem, and we just haven’t done that. We as a nation just have not acknowledged that we have a problem here. This is who we are.
There’s been an intense focus on getting back to normal, but what this year and our Pro Bono Perspectives guests have highlighted is that normal is not okay and we don’t want to go back there. That to me is the light that is shining through the cracks: we are coming out of 2020 with a new and clear mandate for social and racial justice and a renewed sense of purpose.
It’s really important for those of us in a position of power – as a funder with nonprofit organizations especially – to be very transparent about it and not allow it to be a barrier for meaningful partnership. We’re not going to have the impact that we want to have if it’s us telling you exactly how we want you to run programs for us; it will be far more fruitful for us to have a conversation about the outcomes we seek to achieve – ideally together – and then to think about resources we have or you have and hopefully align on the impact we can have together.
“This experience helped me realize that things I see as core to my daily job or skills I employ day-to-day are still new, thought-provoking, and helpful for others to recognize the true assets that exist within their organizations.”
