In response to the continuing crisis of inequity confronting Atlanta, the Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative, The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Atlanta Civic Site and The Kendeda Fund funded Prosperity Now to convene a Community of Practice (CoP) tasked with shaping recommendations for a more network of partners that are vested in tackling the racial wealth divide. After exploring the data and identifying challenges, the CoP identified the need for a deliberate, equitable strategy marked by jobs, innovation, renewed resolve, and new economic structures.The CoP proposed a leading recommendation, the need to create an organization that sat at the intersection of racial and economic justice, focused on a community wealth building agenda.
In the fall of 2017, Tené Traylor, representing the Kendeda Fund and Janelle Williams, PhD the Annie E. Casey Foundation, in concert with founding board members, launched the Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative (AWBI). These co-founders were committed to implementing stakeholders recommendation to create an independent entity charged with promoting the application of community wealth building models and elevating the engagement, capacity, investment and leadership necessary to shape a new economic narrative in Atlanta. This marked the beginning of a dynamic journey to anchor the Black wealth building agenda across the American South.
The co-founders and founding board socialized the need to invest and scale a body of work that went beyond lackluster anti-poverty efforts that often had transactional and inconsistent gains. They commissioned the “Advancing Collective Prosperity” report which provided a groundbreaking analysis of racialized economic immobility and comprehensive overview of Black entrepreneurship in Atlanta’s small business ecosystem. Their vision was focused on an audacious agenda that centered wealth building and their undergrounding philosophy was rooted in community wealth building principles. By challenging systemic bias and introducing new systems and structures of capital, AWBI aims to re-engineer and redesign Atlanta’s economic ecosystem.
In 2018, the organization engaged in a comprehensive strategic planning process and crafted a Theory of Change to articulate a high-level strategy for achieving its mission. Our Theory of Change was created as a critical response to the fact that Atlanta and much of the South still suffers from severe race-based economic inequality. Today, the median income for Black households is just one-third that of white households. This contributes to the fact that
almost 70% of Black families are liquid asset poor, meaning they don’t have enough money to cover three months worth of bills, compared to 22% of white families. The statistics aren’t much better for Latino families, which maintain a median household income of just about half that of white families. Sixty-six percent of all Latino families in Atlanta are liquid asset poor.
Longstanding inequality has resulted in a formidable racial wealth gap, which passively addressed will require greater than 200 years to closeThe organization quickly got to work! Despite the threats of a global pandemic, volatile markets and an ongoing assault on race conscious work, the organization has made a significant impact to attract over $80 million to support historically disinvested communities and small businesses. Driven by an authentic demand and in alignment with our strategic plan, it is time for the next evolution of the organization. Kindred Futures (formerly AWBI) represents the next arch of the journey as we embark on a bold collective Black wealth building agenda across the South. Without brave and daring solutions, rampant inequities will persist. It is important to emphasize that pushing Black people to the economic fringes, constrains the overall performance of the economy. Supporting Black people to build collective wealth promotes thriving communities and economies helps everyone be better off, as such, our work is grounded in models of abundance.
In taking up this cause, AWBI seeks to leverage three critical components, which when activated together they have transformative power. Those components are: ideas, people and capital.
- Ideas are advanced through thought leadership.
- People are activated through movement building.
- Capital is deployed through strategic investments.
Kindred Futures (formerly AWBI) represents the next arch of the journey as we embark on a bold collective Black wealth building agenda across the South. Without brave and daring solutions, rampant inequities will persist.
The journey started over 5 years ago, a revolutionary idea nestled within a city too busy to hate. Atlanta was consistently considered a leading city for income inequality and further examination of economic outcomes clearly revealed that Black Atlantans disproportionately held the burden of economic exclusion. In fact, when a baby is born into poverty in Atlanta, there is just a 4% chance of escaping poverty in their lifetime. Across all measures of household financial security, households of color are faring worse than White households in Atlanta. It was through this pain and hope, I co-founded at the time Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative, now know as Kindred Futures with Tene Traylor, designed to address the racial wealth divide and build community wealth. At that time, we both worked in philanthropy and continued to see lackluster economic outcomes for the communities we served. Together we sought to stretch the role of funder, especially as two Black women leading major portfolios in Atlanta, and the American South. I met Tene Traylor a few years before we co-founded Atlanta Wealth Building Initiatve. We really started collaborating when she took on a new role. I was deeply invested in developing a working relationship with her for many reasons. There were very few people in philanthropy at the time, explicitly working on racial and economic justice issues. She was also native to Atlanta and had an intimate understanding of the region, the players, and the context. We were also two Black women working in Southern philanthropy, which is still a predominantly white sector. While we are deeply values aligned, we often have diverse approaches to the work. Our distinct strengths make us a formidable partnership. Our partnership is also deeply rooted in trust. This allows us to leverage our respective talents to achieve our desired outcomes. We never question the intent of our actions because we unequivocally trust, respect, and love each other. We documented our partnership and Kindred Future’s origin story in our Black Wealth Unlocked series.
Our working relationship blossomed into a friendship, rooted in respect, commitment, and love. The origins of our partnership, friendship, and Kindred Futures intersect in a dynamic and authentic way. We created space to dream together and invited others to join the journey. We fiercely interrogated our respective assumptions, broke bread to center our humanity, and committed to making sure we always grounded this very difficult but necessary work in joy. Truthfully, our relationship became the cultural blueprint, DNA, if you will, for Kindred Futures. Healthy relationships facilitate loving accountability. We sought to launch an organization deeply rooted in love and courage to create impact. Our intent was to both acknowledge and address the stubborn race based economic inequities. As the organization was created through a partnership, our natural practice is to stand in solidarity for Black liberation.
With a data informed approach guiding us, we partnered and commissioned a third party to research wealth building strategies across the city. The research highlighted the pronounced economic disparities. For instance, even though the city was dubbed a mecca for Black businesses, 96% were considered solopreneurs and they generated roughly $56,000 in revenue, compared to over $650,000 in revenue from White businesses. While we had the data, we needed a strategy. We convened and invested in a community of practice which included multi sector representation to determine a collective path forward. As funders, we also made sure that we only participated when we were invited to engage. We wanted candid and collective feedback on what needed to be activated to change current trends, not a proposal. The network gave us a clear charge – launch a race explicit entity, dedicated to economic justice. We listened to community stakeholders, sought counsel from leaders and strategized with investors to build a relevant, sustainable, and ambitious organization. The foundation was laid with a deep bias for action.
Today, our work is more necessary than ever. White Atlantans have 46x more wealth of Black Atlantans in 2022. That is an alarming statistic because Atlanta is the second wealthiest city for African Americans after DC. If this economic imbalance is happening in Atlanta (considered to be a Black Mecca), what does this mean for over 40 million Black people that live in the United States? This issue is further punctuated by the rapidly changing demographic composition of the United States, by 2040, this country will be majority people of color. How can a country that is rapidly becoming more racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse, not deeply invest in its citizens of color? If we do not deeply invest in our citizens of color, I shudder to think about the economic future of this country. Without implementing brave and daring solutions soon, rampant inequities will magnify.