Clara Benson, founder of a nascent South Carolina nonprofit that connects Black residents with health and wellness resources, got an intriguing call last September.

The caller told Benson to check her email. Her organization, Community Resources for Enduring Wellness, was receiving a grant. The new Southern Power Fund was giving money to Black-led, grassroots groups like Benson’s. The nonprofit didn’t have to apply. The fund already knew about the organization’s work and its potential and wanted to help.

While Benson’s organization, known as CREW, had recently received charity status from the IRS, it had no budget. Benson had compiled a list of Black mental-health care providers in South Carolina, which she posted on social media. The list was in response to requests from people looking for help coping with the racial inequities revealed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the police killing of George Floyd.

Benson, then a senior at Rock Hill’s Winthrop University, was majoring in psychology. She was busy with classes when she received the call. There was no rush to open the email she assumed would tell of a grant of “$1,000, if we got lucky.”

CREW needed substantially more money to get up and running.

“$40,000!” Benson shrieked with joy and disbelief after opening the email several hours later. “This took CREW from an idea with a 501(c)(3) to an actual organization that can position itself to get funding.”

Ash-Lee Henderson, co-executive director of Tennessee’s renowned Highlander Research and Education Center, had placed the call to Benson. Highlander is one of the organizations that helped launch the Southern Power Fund as the nation was reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and Floyd’s murder. Highlander, along with Southerners on New Ground, Project South and Alternate Roots, were responsible for distributing the grants.

The Southern Power Fund wanted to raise at least $10 million to send to grassroots organizations, no strings attached, to address immediate community needs. The goal was to quickly get the money to small, primarily Black-led groups, which foundations often overlook. The group planned to develop an ecosystem of grassroots organizations and link them with experts who could help them fill in gaps, such as fundraising skills.

The fund saw the potential to create long-term sustainability while developing a rarely used approach to philanthropy.

The fund exceeded its goal, raising $14 million, primarily from foundations. The Ford Foundation, which gave $4 million through Southerners on New Ground, was the largest donor. The JPB Foundation, financed and led by the philanthropist Barbara Picower, provided $1 million, while the Democracy Frontlines Fund, JPB Foundation, Resource Generation, and the Solidaire Network gave about $1 million each through their donor networks.

So far, the Southern Power Fund has awarded $9.7 million to grassroots organizations. Most of the roughly 250 grants were for $40,000, and beneficiaries received wide discretion in how to use the money.

“It gets the money out of the hands of institutional philanthropy and into the hands of people who actually know what is happening and are doing the work — in ways that are not restrictive,” Henderson said. “There were a lot of intersecting crises and many of the organizations we funded were the social safety net that was literally saving people’s lives.”

Nat Chioke Williams, executive director of the Hill-Snowdon Foundation, which supports nonprofits fighting for social and racial justice, said inherent in the no-strings approach is the drive by Black-led grassroots organizations to have more say in how to use philanthropic dollars. The foundation gave $75,000 to the fund.

“There is resistance of foundations to support social justice, social change, etc., at a level that actually penetrates and does something about the inequities that almost all foundations list in their missions as something they want to change,” Williams said. “What they often support is more aligned with charity that, despite its best intentions, maintains the status quo and doesn’t bring about change.”

Research shows philanthropies routinely fail to fund the types of groups that Southern Power Fund is committed to supporting. A 2020 report by the Bridgespan consultancy and Echoing Green, which provides support to leaders of emerging social enterprises, found nonprofits led by people of color are awarded less grant money than white-lead groups, and the money they do receive has more restrictions on its use.

Last year’s seminal events, which motivated the country to examine the longstanding socioeconomic dimensions of racial inequality, drew attention to the funding issue. Henderson said many people with large funding groups may have been shocked by disparities, but grassroots groups weren’t.

“It was a catalytic moment for philanthropy,” Henderson said of Floyd’s murder. “Philanthropy had to see that we were telling the truth for years. It should be shameful that it took this much cumulative Black deaths to prove to philanthropy that there was a level of crisis that needed to be paid attention to.”

Benson’s group and most of the nonprofits that received support through the Southern Power Fund didn’t have to apply for the grants. Chantelle Fisher-Borne, project director of Out in the South, an initiative of Funders for LGBTQ Issues, provided expertise to the fund, including on nonprofits in the region worthy of support.

“These groups were doing some beautiful and amazing and creative and critical work that is completely underresourced,” Fisher-Borne said. “We just want to move resources in a way that is actually useful to organizers on the ground.”

CREW is using part of its grant to create a database of Black health and wellness providers, an idea that partially grew out of Benson’s personal need for help.

She posted on social media last year about how she had been struggling emotionally. Benson described it as more than feelings of pandemic isolation. The racial inequality that the pandemic and Floyd’s death highlighted brought on her distress.

Benson, who has enrolled in a master’s program in public health, said she was outraged by the health disparity issues raised by African Americans dying of coronavirus at higher rates. When people asked her if she knew of any Black psychologists and other mental-health professionals, she started compiling a list.

She spent several days working on the list, primarily by combing the websites of health systems and other providers in South Carolina. She then posted what she had found on social media.

Now CREW is using the grant, the first it has ever received, to create an online database that will be expanded to include other Black health-care and wellness providers, eventually also in North Carolina and Georgia. Some of the grant will be used to get professional expertise in compiling and designing a searchable database.

“The goal is really to be like the Green Book of public health for Black folks,” she said referring to the guidebook used extensively by Black travelers during segregation to find safe places to eat and sleep.

Latia Curtis of Greenville, S.C., was distraught by last year’s events for reasons similar to Benson, as well as for racial wealth inequality issues. The owner of a makeup and hair service for film, television, and print clients, Curtis said the fledgling CREW resource list has already helped her find a new therapist.

“I wanted a Black woman therapist,” Curtis said. “I had been to a white therapist, who could understand superficially but wasn’t able to empathize and help me find the language to deal with microaggressions and those types of things.”

In Alabama, as in other parts of the country, people were being released from jail last year in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Once released, they often couldn’t rely on a heavily strained social safety net, according to Rodreshia Russaw, executive director of the Ordinary People Society, or TOPS.

What’s more, Russaw said, people who had lost jobs due to Covid-19 were having difficulty collecting unemployment benefits, and food pantries were overwhelmed. TOPS saw a gap and sought to fill it.

“We wanted to make sure the communities that we serve got what they needed,” she said.

The 20-year-old group based in Dothan, Ala., is using its grant to provide housing, food, personal hygiene products, and social services to 50 people who had been released from prison. The grant is also paying for a staff member to handle the increased caseload at the group, which had revenue of about $535,000 in 2019,according to Internal Revenue Service data.

“One of the greatest lessons of the Southern Power Fund is that it showed us that when you put trust in the hands of the folks that are doing the true work on the ground, we can help our people,” Russaw said.

The Southern Power Fund uses an approach to grant making that doesn’t follow most philanthropic norms, such as an extensive application process and detailed reports on how the funds are spent.

“We have seen firsthand how organizing and advocacy that takes place in the South can transform lives and impact the entire nation,” Jerry Maldonado, who oversees grant making at Ford for projects that focus on specific cities and states, wrote in an email.

Meanwhile, grantees say the trust that the Southern Power Fund showed in making the no-strings funding, motivates them to be meticulous with how they use the money.

Benson, in South Carolina, not only hired an accountant and other professionals, she also is building relationships with more experienced nonprofit leaders in hopes of learning from them. This is the first time CREW has operated with a budget, and Benson knew this novice status left her vulnerable to mistakes.

“I wanted to first make sure I was a good steward of the money,” Benson said. “My main concern was that we are able to do the most with this money to make this organization and this project as sustainable as possible.”

In Alabama, Russaw said her organization takes photographs and videos of activities of grant-funded programs. She and her colleagues then share them on social media as a way of documenting how the money is being spent.

Henderson recalls the pleasant surprise from many grassroots leaders when she called to tell them about receiving the grants last year.

“That was my favorite part of the whole darn thing,” Henderson said.

Many grantees were convinced that the news of the grant was a prank.

“They couldn’t imagine that there was a fund that would have connections to the grassroots and radical legacies and traditions of Southern organizing that really was just giving them money with no strings.”

___

This article was provided to The Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Olivera Perkins is a senior writer at the Chronicle. Email: olivera.perkins@philanthropy.com. The AP and the Chronicle receive support from the Lilly Endowment for coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The AP and the Chronicle are solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

San Antonio’s Metropolitan Health District received a $9.7-million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday that will go toward reducing high infant mortality rates and other problems related to pregnancy and mothers’ health in Bexar County.

The grant will provide about $2 million per year over the next five years to expand Metro Health’s Healthy Start services. Three new Healthy Start offices in three areas of need – the near West, the Northeast, and the Southsides – will open by the end of the year. The grant will also fund research into mental and behavioral stress during pregnancy and promote father involvement.

Representatives from Healthy Start and the March of Dimes, who are partnering in the effort to improve the health of babies, gathered at the Urban Ecology Center at Phil Hardberger Park for a joint press conference announcing the grant and its contribution to Healthy Start, which aims to prevent infant mortality in 87 communities with infant mortality rates that are at least 1.5 times the national average, which is about six deaths per 1,000 live births a year.

Certain areas of Bexar County, including the near West, Northeast, and Southsides, have consistently experienced higher infant mortality rates according to Christus Santa Rosa Health. Some have reported almost twice the national average, said Michael Lu, associate administrator of maternal and child health in the U.S. Health Resources and Service Administration.

The leading causes of death for infants and children are conditions originating in the perinatal period, which starts when a woman is 22 weeks pregnant and ends when a child is seven days old, including birth trauma and infections.

Prematurity is the leading cause of death before age one, and 1,037 babies are born prematurely in Bexar County each year, with 658 born weighing less than five pounds, said Alice Gong, a neonatologist with the University Health System.

According to Bexar County and Metropolitan Health District data, the infant mortality rate was 6.5 infants per 1,000 live births in 2012, with 8 infant deaths per 1,000 among African-Americans, 6 infant deaths per 1,000 among Hispanics, and 5 infant deaths per 1,000 among whites – the highest reported rate since 2008.

“We want to give every child and family a fair shot of reaching their full potential,” Lu said.

The Healthy Start program also addresses high rates of low birthweight, preterm birth, maternal mortality and maternal morbidity, which are serious conditions resulting from or aggravated by pregnancy and delivery.

Dr. Thomas Schlenker, public health director at SAMHD, said the San Antonio’s Healthy Start program is now a regional leader of the movement to improve infant mortality.

San Antonio Metropolitan Health District Public Health Director Thomas Schlenker speaks about Healthy Start’s regional leadership in reducing infant mortality. Photo by Katherine Nickas.

“We also are implementing new and innovative strategies in this area that coincide with a neighborhood approach, concentrating on neighborhoods that struggle,” Schlenker said. “The entire neighborhood and community plays a big role in birthing healthy babies. We are thankful to the March of Dimes, which nationally has been focusing on this for years and is part of the entire effort.”

Kelly Bellinger, health program manager with San Antonio Healthy Start, emphasized the neighborhood approach of the program. Photo by Katherine Nickas.

Kelly Bellinger, health program manager with San Antonio Healthy Start, said the neighborhood approach would involve activities created through neighborhood conversations.

“Any neighborhood group, whether it’s a community garden or a small business co-op to spur economic development, comes from the passions and interests of the families involved,” she said. “Our own Healthy Start families have told us they love the information they get, so we will be training them, as well.”

Martha Martinez, the program services committee chair with the March of Dimes, said $400,000 has been invested at the University of Texas at San Antonio Health Science Center for a cure for pre-term labor and reducing pre-term babies born and also to provide services to high-risk women.

Applicants for the Healthy Start program, which began in 1991, are required to undertake specific activities under each strategy:

Improve women’s health, with a focus on access to care

Promote quality services

Strengthen family resilience

Achieve collective community impact

Increase program accountability

The Healthy Start grants awarded to San Antonio are at levels 2 and 3, meaning it will provide the Enhanced Services Healthy Start Program to improve programs at the community level and the Leadership and Mentoring Healthy Start Program to improve outcomes at the regional level.

San Antonio will join 14 other grantees to form a Collaborative and Innovation Network (CoIIN) to develop national strategies to reduce infant mortality.

Healthy Start also leads the Healthy Families Network (HFN), a consortium to strengthen community partnerships and linkages to reduce infant mortality and support successful birth outcomes in Bexar County.

Martha Martinez, program services committee chair of March of Dimes, talks about the partnership with Healthy Start. Photo by Katherine Nickas.

In the HFN, three work groups focus on specific areas including epidemiology, reproductive life planning initiatives, and healthy outcomes through perinatal education and support.

The last work group serves as an advisory board for several parents as teachers through home visiting programs, in which members of the Healthy Start program visit women in at-risk areas to provide support and education.

One of the women involved in the program is Chelsea Rodriguez, mother of 9-month-old Amber, now works for Healthy Start after participating in the initiative for about a year.

“They can really help you out with everything – I am so proud to be a part of it,” she said. “I am now visiting homes and helping women who don’t know how to get the resources, teaching them to better themselves and providing them with general information from month-to-month visits, providing needed supplies, and more.”

Related stories:

Children’s Hospital of San Antonio Designed with Family in Mind

Health Care Summit Reveals Bexar County Challenges sept 25

Labor Day Rally to Highlight Failing Health Care System

Teen Pregnancies Falling in San Antonio, But City Still Lags Nation

How One Strong Woman Promotes Early Mammogram Screenings