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week 6 - ellen zhang

7/18/2022

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​Last Tuesday, as a part of our weekly enrichment activity, we went to Brilliant Detroit’s headquarters to help organize their community center. Before volunteering, I had never heard of Brilliant Detroit. Founded in 2015, Brilliant Detroit’s mission is to build kid success families and neighborhoods where families with children 0-8 have what they need to be school ready, healthy and stable. They are currently in 12 different locations across Detroit, and have helped support thousands of families during the pandemic by providing food boxes, learn-at-home kits, laptops, baby supplies, winter clothing, children’s books and much more. Families impacted by the organization have also seen improvements in 75% of Brilliant Detroit’s measures of kid success including education, health, and family support. Even during my brief time volunteering with them, I could tell that everyone at Brilliant Detroit is passionate about supporting the education of children in communities across Detroit.

Brilliant Detroit was created because people saw the need for better early childhood education. Today 60 percent of Detroit children under five live in poverty with the majority of kids not ready for kindergarten. By third grade only 14 percent read at grade level. Added to this is the fact that 30,000 of the city’s kids have zero learning and care options in their nearby vicinity. Thus, Brilliant Detroit was created to coordinate and connect what works for families and kids in one centrally located, welcoming place. 

Brilliant Detroit’s delivery model is also rather unique because it uses underutilized housing stock to create early child and family centers inside the neighborhoods it serves. When a community invites Brilliant Detroit to set up a community center in their neighborhood, Brilliant Detroit often partners with the local community organization to help establish their base and provide relevant services to the community. Families work alongside staff to ensure programs and services meet the needs of neighbors and support the intellectual, social and emotional growth of their young children. In each of their locations, neighbors come together for fellowship, activities and learning to assure school readiness, and provide needed support for families. By rallying neighborhoods and families to help promote better early childhood education, Brilliant Detroit has been able to foster kid success neighborhoods and contribute to creating a better Detroit.
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week 6 - rafael adi

7/18/2022

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Please speak about another nonprofit in Detroit that is doing amazing work, but may not be as well known. What are they doing in the City, and what does their model look like?

Since its formation TechTown Detroit, the organization I have worked for this summer, has powered several smaller initiatives to help pursue a revitalization of Detroit. One of the organization's initiatives is Hatch Detroit. Hatch Detroit was founded in 2011 to give residents and aspiring entrepreneurs an opportunity to have a voice in neighborhood retail development and joined TechTown Detroit’s suite of entrepreneurial programs and services in 2022. The partnership with TTD has provided the nonprofit an opportunity to support small businesses in and around Detroit, all the while giving it a long and hopeful future.

Every year since 2011, Hatch holds a contest where entrepreneurs present their startups to win awards, cash grants, and other technical services. The Contest is an opportunity for one savvy entrepreneur to win a cash grant & package of in-kind services to open their brick and mortar retail business in Detroit, Highland Park, or Hamtramck. The contest is the biggest part of the nonprofit and works on the idea of something the organization calls “Crowd Entrepreneurship.” Once entrepreneurs submit their applications to the program, the top ten pitches are presented to the people of Detroit. Then once votes are submitted the top five pitches are presented once again for the community to vote on a winner.

Over 49 Hatch alumni businesses have opened retailers across the Detroit Metropolitan area, crediting the contest as a major accelerator in their launch. Hatch Detroit alumni have also employed hundreds of local Detroiters since 2011. This is why I have found so much interest with the organization. Not only is the organization opening new retailers within the city of Detroit, but it is also providing opportunities for locals to work in these stores. As a child I have seen the ins and outs of the retail business from my family and thus the combination of retail and nonprofit is unlike anything I have ever seen before. Hatch Detroit is doing exceptional work for Detroit and I hope TechTown continues to partner the organization for years to come.
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Week 6 - jenny yan

7/18/2022

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Dream of Detroit or Detroit Revival Engaging American Muslims provides job training, entrepreneurship training, and returning citizens’ service through sustainable redevelopment of the neighborhood. Motor City has experienced the systemic crisis of non-affordable housing and deteriorating neighborhoods. Thus, one main goal of Dream of Detroit is to build value-based communities to retain current residents, attract new residents, and remove vacant homes. Dream of Detroit understands that establishing vibrant communities can not be accomplished without opportunities for work, so it provided entrepreneurship training and created a local/Muslim business directory. It has also organized events such all-day street fair, and it is currently envisioned blueprints for its commercial corridor of Woodrow Wilson. Through home rehabs, Dream of Detroit aims to combat housing, economic, and racial injustice in Detroit’s neighborhoods.

This year marks Dream of Detroit’s sixth anniversary. The organization has successfully rehabbed 12 homes, trained 65 entrepreneurs, planted over 100 trees, and engaged 500 volunteers. Its most recent project is Project Homecoming. Located on the west side of Detroit, Project Homecoming is a renovated five-bedroom transitional home that provides housing and job training for Muslim returning citizens. The returning citizen Dawud Clark currently serves as the house manager. The transitional home is expecting four to five residents, and Clark’s responsibilities include maintaining a smoke, alcohol, and drug-free living space as well as helping residents set up. Dream of Detroit also partners with other organizations including Detroit-based Muslim Family Services which offer counseling services for residents and is paying for the house’s utilities. Tayba Foundation, another partner of Dream of Detroit, offers life skills education and re-entry and case management in-kind to the residents. Dream of Detroit also collaborates with ProsperUs as its residents participate ProsperUs’s entrepreneurship training courses. The Project plans to train the residents in construction trades so they will be able to work on nearby houses that are waiting to be renovated. The organization estimates that at least 15 more properties bounded by West Davison street, Davison Freeway, Glendale, Lodge Service drive, and 14th street will go under its impact area. It has mostly worked on single-family renovations and duplexes but is looking to transition into building ground-up. 

Dream of Detroit has not only rehabbed homes – they have changed the trajectory of blocks under their impact areas and more blocks nearby.

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Week 6 — Suzie Choi

7/18/2022

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Please speak about another nonprofit in Detroit that is doing amazing work, but may not be as well known. What are they doing in the City, and what does their model look like?


About Neighborhood Art School (NAS) 

Working on the Leadership Pipeline Project, Michael and I had an inspirational interaction with the Neighborhood Art School (NAS). NAS is a nonprofit in Detroit that provides a walkable and accessible arts education to neighbors of all ages. Not only does it have in-person learning at its physical NAS Hub where there are Artists in Residence, but it also has virtual classes. The type of arts the organization covers include music, fashion design, and fabric arts. Beyond regular classes, NAS holds many events to showcase neighborhood art projects. 


Although I have seen several nonprofits like NAS in terms of making arts education more accessible to all communities, I appreciate how NAS specifically has focused on intergenerational education—emphasizing how it is never late to pick up arts.  
 
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Organizational structure 
Above is some basic information about NAS from its website (www.neighborhoodartschool.org). But I think the unique part of NAS is in its organizational structure that is unique from other nonprofits. And it is reflective of the leaders’ unique perspective on what a nonprofit can be beyond its traditional ways of operating. Notably, one of the leaders whom we have talked with described how they do not like nor believe in the “trickle down” structure of nonprofits. The structure usually involves nonprofits (at the bottom of the pyramid) trying to get funds from philanthropies and/or foundations (at the top), which creates a particular power dynamic in the sector. And in the process, nonprofits are required to provide their accountability in the form of grant writings.  


Instead, they believe in the power of community and self-sustaining nonprofits. They believe that local nonprofits are the ones who know their communities the best and, thus, cannot be financially and emotionally discouraged by non-local sources of money. Although they recognize the necessity of money from such larger sources, they have tried to create a system that is more manageable based on the organization’s rate of growth and capacity level. For instance, they have their workshops paid for and, with that small profit, help those in financial need with scholarships. This cycle starts out small when the organization is small, but it is expected to grow bigger and generate greater benefits to the community as the organization gets bigger as well. I also loved how they mentioned this sustainable scaling and growth reduces burnout among staff naturally because everything seems manageable. 
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Week 6 - Mick Tobin

7/18/2022

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When I was a junior in high school, I founded Artivities Inc. We created art kits that economically disadvantaged children use to learn art lessons. We distributed over 600 kits, and I saw first-hand the power art can have in children’s lives. This experience instilled an appreciation for art in me, especially when used with children.

With my Art nonprofit background in mind, Arts & Scraps Detroit really connected with me. Arts & Scraps is a nonprofit that uses recycled materials to work with community members as well as to teach science, technology, and math through art innovation. The non-profit started as a place that was gathering materials that would have otherwise ended up in the landfill and making them available as a resource to teachers. Soon, their art materials became a resource for all community members, including entrepreneurs and artists. Because they were founded by a teacher, they began to teach classes and create unique education classes based on recycled materials for teaching STEM with art innovation. Arts & Scraps is such a unique place in the community that brings creativity, STEM, and entrepreneurship with people of all different backgrounds to one place. 

I especially love the variety of impacts of sustainability and STEM & art education. They use the scrap mobile to bring their programs out to schools and be in the community. They take their scrap mobile with them and it’s full of recycled scraps. Students get to come and chop for themselves to get them to make choices of material they want to take home to build something. 

Their measures of impact are very impressive. In 2021, they used 12 tons of recycled materials that would have gone to landfills otherwise, taught 5,679 children, and had over 27,000 volunteers. Using these metrics, Arts & Scraps has been financially viable through sales of art projects, corporate sponsorships, and foundation grants. Grants and institutions made up 46.5% of their income, product sales made up 16.8% of their income, and individual contributions made up 10.9%. Some of their largest partners include Ford, Sidewalk Detroit, and Green Living Science. Their model is widely used among large nonprofits, and with limited costs due to their recycled materials, they use the funds well.
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Week 6 - Megan Fong

7/18/2022

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Focus: HOPE is a non-profit organization founded in Detroit in March of 1968 by Father William T. Cunningham, Father Jerome Fraser, and Eleanor Josaitis. These three individuals founded the organization in hopes of creating a diverse community in which the people can coexist and work together harmoniously. Initially, Father Cunningham was able to repurpose the basement of his church, the Catholic Church of Madonna, as a campus to incubate this new concept but later, the organization grew into a 40-acre campus along Oakman Boulevard. The organization was initially founded in the wake of the 1967 Detroit civil unrest as an oasis in which a multitude of diverse individuals could work together to commit themselves to action to overcome racism, poverty, and injustice.  

The organization’s first project involved a widely distributed consumer survey on the food and prescription drug prices disparity between inner-city and suburban Detroit. This survey revealed that inner-city areas paid around 20% more for their food and prescription drugs than people in the suburbs, despite suburban Detroit's higher average income level. As a result of this research, Focus: HOPE became the host agency for the Commodity Supplemental Food Program for Detroit which is an organization that works to improve the health and quality of life of low-income seniors.

A major project carried out by Focus: HOPE was its coalition formed in opposition of the relocation of the Automobile Association of America in 1972. AAA was attempting to move its Michigan headquarters from Detroit to Dearborn, a Detroit suburb with a black population of less than 0.02%. Focus: HOPE filed a class action lawsuit against this move, labeling this move as one with racial motivation due to the 200 black employees that would be forced out of their job at AAA as a result of this relocation. The organization financially supported much of the legal action against AAA and in 1983 a settlement was reached for a large cash amount and a court-ordered affirmative action program to be implemented by AAA. A portion of the cash amount was put into the Housing and Transportation trust fund, founded under the mission of providing low-interest mortgages and automobile loans for black employees of AAA. While this lawsuit was going on, Focus: HOPE also funded a gender discrimination class action lawsuit against AAA which resulted in AAA’s guilty ruling.

Focus: HOPE has continued to commit itself to social good and currently operates multiple community and economic development efforts. Furthermore, they also dedicate themselves to neighborhood improvement efforts such as blight removal, illegal dumping prevention and park restoration.
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week 6: Kai Chen

7/17/2022

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While Jenny and I are working at Green Garage, Steve Tobocman working at Global Detroit stopped by and greeted Joanna. Joanna then introduced Steve to us and told us about what Global Detroit does.  For our storytelling project with Eutan, who prefers to have a French interpreter present during our interview, the interpreter comes from Global Detroit.  

Global Detroit was founded in 2010. They are working for immigrant inclusion, specifically “develop and implement inclusive strategies to drive the growth, revitalization and broadly shared prosperity of Detroit and Southeast Michigan”. They divided their work into five subcategories: research & policy, talent, entrepreneurship, neighborhoods, and inclusive institutions. Under the category of research & policy, Global Detroit conducts research on the impacts that immigrants brought upon and recommends strategies for different areas. Regarding talents, Global Detroit proposed the Global Talent Retention Initiative, helping companies connect with global talents.  In addition, their Global Talent Accelerator program prepares those talents, primarily students given that Michigan has the ninth largest international students in the United States, for those jobs.  As in Entrepreneurship, Global Detroit helps international founders create jobs in SE through their Global EIR (Global Entrepreneur In Residence) program, and connect them with the extensive support and resources that the city has to offer, which is part of their Growing Small Business program.  In terms of neighborhood, Global Detroit’s Opportunity Neighborhoods program helps connect business owners to “homeownership and home repair programs, foreclosure prevention, small business support, community engagement opportunities and other resources.”  As mentioned previously, Global Detroit developed strategies that could be served as models in other regions. That also extends to the private sides, such as business and nonprofits. Some examples include “ developing outreach and recruiting strategies, navigating the visa process, creating an immigrant-friendly workplace culture”

As an immigrant myself, I thought that my family would benefit greatly from Global Detroit. My parents have been in the States for almost ten years and neither of them is able to speak English fluently, which means that they could not work for 99% of the jobs in this country. They told me that they do not feel comfortable leaving their comfort zone, this social circle with only people working in Chinese restaurants in Nevada, which further discouraged them from learning English and participating in any job that does not have existing Chinese employees.  They are hard working people, but they just never had any resources for career readiness, and I believe many other families in Michigan suffer from the same problem.

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Week 5 - Mick

7/12/2022

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Starting this summer, I felt confident about my nonprofit industry knowledge. I have founded and led numerous nonprofits over the past few years and thought I did not have much more to learn. Looking back now, I see how wrong I was. My journey with TechTown this summer has taught me lessons I could not have imagined. This stems because of the environment of Detroit, size of TechTown, and people at TechTown.

I have learned much from my experience with TechTown and the dozens of staff interviews I have had with TechTown staff. Three stand out to me. First, I learned that instability is the norm in nonprofits. Covid-19’s move to virtual work, funding confusion, and new hires can change quickly, which affects organizational structure and priorities. On that note, I found the importance of the resilience needed to work with limited resources. While making recommendations, we have had to adapt many of them so they can be feasible executed with TechTown’s budget and staffing constraints. Secondly, I discovered how scalable nonprofits are. I always pictured nonprofits as organizations with small teams, limited funds, and small service or product offerings. TechTown rejected this stereotype. Its services are diverse and extensive, and their team has many, impressive moving parts. It has encouraged me to pursue nonprofits now that I understand that they can be large and scalable. Thirdly, I learned how important community engagement is since nonprofits serve community members. For instance, Ellen and I were tasked with interviewing entrepreneurs and TechTown Alumni, which has been incredibly useful. By reaching out to community members, TechTown entrepreneurs feel heard and appreciate us understanding their problems. Additionally, the connection with the community has been super helpful in identifying and fleshing out recommendations to improve TechTown programs. These lessons will be invaluable in how I run future nonprofits and startups.

All in all, my experience with TechTown has surprised me. Entering the experience, I felt like and expert, but I learned new things about the creativity and user input important to nonprofits in a chaotic nonprofit world. I look forward to finishing this summer at TechTown, and, more importantly, taking these lessons with me going forward.

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week 5 - ellen zhang

7/11/2022

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​To be honest, I was pretty intimidated by my project during the first week of the DukeEngage program. My expectations going into TechTown’s office on the first day was that I would be working on evaluating TT’s major entrepreneurship programs and providing some recommendations for improvement. That was what was written on my one-paged project description that I received earlier this summer. However, when I met with my supervisor, Angeline, again on the first day, she handed Mick and I a ten-page document outlining all of our tasks for the summer. Besides evaluating TT’s entrepreneurship programs, I was also expected to organize a database of alumni contacts, improve TT’s alumni engagement strategy, help define success for TT, create a client journey map, and write a checklist of requirements for TT’s programs.

I clearly remember feeling overwhelmed with all my new tasks. It also seemed to me like TechTown wanted me to shift away from evaluating their flagship entrepreneurship programs and focus more on improving alumni engagement. So very early on I had to pivot the focus of my project and juggle multiple different tasks at the same time. This seems to be a common occurrence with nonprofit consulting projects because I know I wasn’t the only one in the DukeEngage cohort having this struggle. After talking to other project teams, I found that their projects had also changed somewhat in scale or focus. I think this is to be expected in the nonprofit world because the work and projects community organizations undertake must change to match the changes in the needs and priorities of their community.

I was also pleasantly surprised with how informal TechTown’s work culture is. On the first day when I went into the office, I also had the chance to sit in on TT’s monthly staff meeting. The meeting’s atmosphere was very relaxed, people talked freely and joked with each other, and I could really see TT’s strong sense of community. Unlike private sector jobs that follow a more rigid and formal work culture, I learned that working in the nonprofit world is really about teamwork and strong interpersonal relationships. Even after just a few weeks of working with TechTown, I feel like I am truly a part of the TechTown family, and for that, I feel extremely blessed.
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Week #5 - Michael Mohs

7/11/2022

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Prompt: Nonprofit work is unique work. What have you learned about how nonprofits operate this summer? What is something you didn’t know? What is something that has surprised you?  

     When I first arrived in Detroit, I was naïve to the true nature of the nonprofit sector. I had an extremely idealized vision of what the nonprofit sector was like. My experience was almost entirely based on interactions I had with nonprofits through running charitable actions at my high school and church. These interactions did not allow me to see the inner workings of the nonprofit and the stresses connected to the nonprofit sector, particularly when it comes to the Executive Director role.
     At the Executive Director and Director level, the level of interaction with the board was something I did not expect. It has been very interesting for me to learn the impact a (good) board can have on the direction of the nonprofit. The board plays a very direct role in budget approval, ED succession plans, and directing the ED’s larger decisions.
     After this summer, I have a newfound appreciation for the stress Executive Directors have to deal with in their day-to-day operations. There are many stressors that make the job less enjoyable than I thought. Executive Directors have the responsibility to bring in funds to keep the nonprofit going. Connected to this, everyone on the team’s livelihood is dependent on them being successful to bring in enough funds.  This responsibility is oftentimes carried by them alone, leaving them in a lonely place and with many sleepless nights. As well, the competitive nature of the nonprofit sector pits the leaders against other nonprofit leaders. They are all trying to help similar groups pursue the same limited funding sources. Also, the fact that funding sources (such as foundations or corporations) oftentimes only give funds to the top few nonprofits out of an incredibly long list of nonprofit organizations applying for grants only increases the competitive nature of nonprofit work. All of this stressful work is void of a lot of the direct rewards and feelings of satisfaction that these leaders are used to. The leaders went throughout their career in the nonprofit sector being rewarded by seeing their efforts have a direct impact on the communities they serve. Their separation from the programming aspect of operations - due to them having to focus on team management and fundraising - removes them from this rewarding aspect of nonprofit work.
     I would not say in any capacity that I view the nonprofit sector in a cynical manner now, but I have a more realistic understanding of the sector at every level. As I enter my career and weigh different options, this newfound understanding will certainly be something I base my career path decision on.
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