Maya Gwynn
With KVCR Public Media, I'm Maya Gwynn with Black Perspectives IE, a show where we learn about the amazing things members of the Black community are doing in the Inland Empire. My guest today is Felicia Jones, Managing Director of Programs and Operations at Social Good Solutions. Their mission is to advance transformative social change by operationalizing equity within philanthropy, nonprofits, public agencies, and higher education. So nice to meet you.
Felicia Jones
Nice to meet you. I'm so delighted to be here.
Maya Gwynn
So I wanted to start with, how does Social Good Solutions define its role in strengthening the Black-led organizations, and what does building sustainable infrastructure for those organizations look like in practice, in your opinion?
Felicia Jones
So, Social Good Solutions is a Black-led organization. It's a firm that's mostly majority woman-led, Black woman-led organization, and we work at the intersections of philanthropy, community, and racial justice. And so, since our launch in 2014, we've really tried to work with philanthropy to resource community-led solutions, and so we're in the work of advancing community change. And we believe that community-based organizations and Black-led organizations specifically are drivers of really important solutions happening in our community, but they are oftentimes not adequately resourced,
Maya Gwynn
Yeah.
Felicia Jones
And so we are working with philanthropy to make sure that those dollars flow to Black-led organizations, and they can continue to do their incredible work. But sustainability is a real challenge because there has been structural underfunding of Black-led organizations, and so we have crafted a number of initiatives to support how resources flow to Black-led organizations. The Black Equity Collective is one of those organizations. The Black Equity Initiative Inland Empire, also now known as M.E.C.C.A IE, is another one of those networks.
Maya Gwynn
And I wanted to talk about the Black Equity Collective. What is the core mission of the Black Equity Collective, and what specific challenges have you seen facing Black-led organizations is it designed to address?
Felicia Jones
Yeah, so the Black Equity Collective is really an ecosystem of Black-led organizations and funders who really have come together to support the long-term sustainability of Black-led organizations, and they are doing that by investing resources into - we call it resiliency building. We want to make sure that organizations are healthy and strong, and so we support those organizations with regrant resources. So we fund them. We also connect them to technical assistance providers, who help them cover a number of challenges. Many of them don't have strong back office. Many of the organizations who are certainly emerging as nonprofits don't have an accounting arm. They haven't completed financial audits. All the things that really impact their ability to compete for funding and also to sustain themselves. Those are some of the core challenges. Yeah, other things like just having communications infrastructure. How do they talk about their work? How do they spread the narrative of their work and the impact of their work? They don't often have infrastructure for that, so these dollars help with those costs and really bring those critical resources so that they can grow and essentially sustain themselves.
Maya Gwynn
What gaps in traditional philanthropy are you working to address through these initiatives?
Felicia Jones
Yeah. All of the funds that we manage, including the Black Equity Collective, are addressing structural underfunding. We know that Black-led organizations, unfortunately, have not had a history of receiving a lot of philanthropic investment. And so, what we do is really work with philanthropy to close that gap. And we also know that there's a regional gap. In fact, there's a data point from Mapping Black California that says that there's like $200 per capita for nonprofit organizations in the Bay Area, and when you think about those organizations in the Inland Empire specifically, that's only $37 per capita for investment. So there's a huge disparity in terms of how resources flow. We're trying to close that gap, and what we've been able to do, fortunately, is marshal over $72 million to Black-led organizations across Southern California, which is we're super proud of. It's a lot of work, but philanthropy is is trying to listen, and certainly these initiatives and ecosystems of Black-led, Black-empowering funds have made that possible.
Maya Gwynn
Definitely. What role does collective strategy play in addressing systemic inequities in the Inland Empire, and how does MECCA IE balance immediate community needs with long-term system change?
Felicia Jones
We recognize that the region as a whole, and California, as a state, has a number of challenges. But regionally, there needed to be a way to coordinate these organizations so that they're pooling their collective power and directing it toward systems that they care about. So they're tackling housing injustice, they're tackling criminal justice reform, and education, but they're doing it in a coordinated way so that no one community is working in isolation.
Maya Gwynn
Specifically in the IE, what do you feel like have been region-focused problems that we have here?
Felicia Jones
Housing has been a huge issue. Some of our organizations were fighting a housing ordinance that ultimately was discriminating against mostly folks of color. So while people are coming here, they're also experiencing mass displacement. But there's also been an insensitivity to affordable housing in the region. So there has to be more education, more community engagement, more advocacy to make sure that housing is both accessible and affordable. I think the other thing is that you know we are considered, unfortunately, prison town, and that a number of folks who are leaving prisons are coming into the Inland Empire community, and they need access to jobs. They need access to housing. So we have folks who are fighting and have banned the box, and and who are also hiring formerly incarcerated folks, so that they have access to work, or advocating for housing, or even creating housing themselves. So communities creating solutions and trying to fill those critical gaps, and they need to be resourced. It is our Black-led organizations that's doing that work.
Maya Gwynn
Definitely. We're gonna move to our rapid fire portion. If your work had a theme song, what would it be?
Felicia Jones
Right now, I think it would be "Fight the Power".
Maya Gwynn
Oh, I love it! If you had to teach a masterclass or give a TED talk on a random skill you have besides the work you already do, what would it be?
Felicia Jones
Most people would say that I am good at framing, being able to sort of see big picture and also frame and contextualize our work.
Maya Gwynn
I love that. What's your favorite IE restaurant or landmark that reminds you of the Inland Empire?
Felicia Jones
The place that I love the most is a little Italian restaurant off a Baseline called Alberto's.
Maya Gwynn
Yeah! And how can people keep up with you guys and support the work you're doing?
Felicia Jones
Follow Social Good Solutions on our website socialgoodsolutions.com. You can also check out the Black Equity Collective at theblackequitycollective.org, and then we're hosting the M.E.C.C.A. IE Fund through the Inland Empire Community Foundation. So you can always go to iegives.org for information about M.E.C.C.A.
Maya Gwynn
Awesome! Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate this conversation.
Felicia Jones
Thank you!
Maya Gwynn
Felicia Jones is Managing Director of Programs and Operations at Social Good Solutions. Find this segment and others at kvcr.org/bpie. Support for this segment comes from the M.E.C.C.A IE Fund at the Inland Empire Community Foundation, advancing racial equity and supporting long-term investments and Black-led organizations in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Join us again next week for Black Perspectives IE. For KVCR Public Media, I'm Maya Gwynn. Thank you.
