Changemakers and moneymakers: Nonprofits meet with funders for community change

Miami Herald

a day ago

Ashley Eubanks Johnson never imagined she would find her calling on a highway off-ramp. While commuting home from work one evening in 2016, a homeless woman weaved through cars at a Pompano Beach stoplight to ask for change, her pants stained with blood due to her period.
'That really shocked me because the area we were in was down the street from a shelter,' admitted a now-38-year-old Eubanks Johnson. '[I] started calling around to different shelters, facilities and organizations that serve those that are unhoused and found little to no help or refuge for menstruators in need.'
Shortly after, she took the money set aside for her 30th birthday trip to Jamaica and kickstarted The Beauty Initiative, a nonprofit that donates hygiene essentials like pads and tampons to women and girls in need.
READ MORE: Nonprofit provides homeless women with help — and free sanitary hygiene items
In the years since, Eubanks Johnson has revolutionized period-care awareness in greater Miami, touting her nonprofit's donation of 77,000 menstrual-care products to Miami-Dade County and Broward County schools this academic year, but the road to success has been bumpy.
She has had to juggle her day job as a community liaison and database administrator for Broward County Public Schools alongside her community work for nearly a decade, occasionally dipping into her own paychecks to support the cause.
'I've done this work for almost nine years with no money, my money, and now some sponsorship money,' shares the Beauty Initiative CEO.
Neglecting local grassroots nonprofits is an oversight that the world of philanthropy and one Miami-based organization are hoping to remedy.
Changemakers and moneymakers
A self-professed 'social impact accelerator,' Radical Partners' mission is to equip South Florida changemakers with the skills and funds needed to run a nonprofit and deploy them into their communities. The organization, which was established in 2012, pushes professional development and organizational management as part of the solution through initiatives such as Leadership Labs, a five-month program tailored to leaders who identify as Black, Indigenous or people of color.
The other part of the solution? Rubbing elbows with moneymakers.
In a Neighborhood Heroes Connect conference hosted by Radical Partners at the Phillip & Patricia Frost Museum of Science in Miami on June 5, The Beauty Initiative and other nonprofits met with JPMorgan Chase, TD Bank and other corporations to discuss the gaps in grassroots-nonprofit financing.
Study findings released at the conference on the impact of Leadership Labs, whose curriculum promises networking opportunities with leaders in the nonprofit, for-profit and political sectors, revealed that the relationship between those funded and those funding is interdependent.
Results from a survey conducted by Radical Partners showed that the improvements that nonprofits sought most aligned with what funders hoped to invest in. While most surveyed organizations reported fundraising, grant-writing help and optimized operational systems among their highest needs, funders reported innovative fundraising efforts and strong daily operations as the most attractive qualities when considering which groups to finance.
'There are things that you can achieve at a neighborhood level, where there's more trust and where, culturally, people understand the individuals they're working with,' said Ana Castillo, TD Bank's Florida regional community development manager.
Castillo leverages her role to give marginalized communities in South Florida more access to traditional banking so they don't have to resort to risky financial moves such as payday loans. She says TD Bank's mission is accomplished, in part, by funding local organizations that understand their underserved neighborhoods best.
Meanwhile, nonprofits such as the Foot Forward Foundation, founded by Broward-based Christopher Sisco and Maurizo Raponi, benefit from the spotlight that tends to follow funders.
'[We want] just a little bit of visibility,' said Sisco, 41, who began the initiative in 2022 by handing out shoes from his own 'sneakerhead' collection to homeless people.
The nonprofit has since expanded to serve low-income students and has launched six shoe-donation campaigns at schools across Broward and Miami-Dade in the past 18 months.
'We do what we do because we enjoy doing it, but [we hope] for more people with big pockets to see what Foot Forward is doing.'
Creative solutions
Championing collaboration between funders and nonprofit leaders, Radical Partners CEO Joana Godoy proposes what her organization calls 'creative solutions' to long-standing obstacles in the nonprofit sector.
To alleviate the disparity between funders' donation caps and nonprofits' need for resources, Godoy suggests nonprofits share services and spaces — such as collectively pitching in for an accountant or having joint office areas — to spur teamwork while cutting costs.
How to streamline administrative work when short-staffed? She recommends nonprofits look to how the business world has used artificial intelligence.
'We might die trying [to implement these solutions alone],' urged Godoy. 'So what we're offering here is, instead of putting everything on [ourselves], meaning 'my team, my organization, my funders,' for us to approach it as an ecosystem.'
It's an outlook that changemakers such as Eubanks Johnson, who graduated from Leadership Labs' third cohort in 2019, have already begun to adopt and benefit from.
'[Radical Partners gives] us the tools we need to lead, connects us with a community of trusted collaborators and . . . [helped me] lean into my gifts and trust myself,' shared Eubanks Johnson. 'With doing that, I was able to center my work in service with so many others.'