2021 Annual Report

NOTE FROM THE CEO

Michigan Community Resources deeply regards the importance of our core values as the guiding light that bonds our staff team to the communities we serve.

We possess a shared sense of purpose for achieving our mission. We evolve our services to support emergent community needs. We coalesce with a network of partners aimed at dismantling conventional approaches.

We hold that trusted and culturally-resonant relationships are the bedrock of supporting communities of color. We strive to transform solidarity, and we are intentional about transforming capacity building with the goal of collective power.

Most importantly, we decisively live out our values as tools to transform broken structures, power dynamics and systems. Read and listen along to learn about the many ways our values drove our work in 2021.

SHAMYLE MAYA DOBBS
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

NOTE FROM THE CPO

Our team is privileged to hold trusting relationships with hundreds of community leaders across our many programs. Especially over the last two years, this has included not just holding space to listen to organizational challenges, but also hearing personal and community challenges impacting individual leaders.

The communities our nonprofit clients serve are hurting and our community leaders are experiencing deep burnout. In recognition of this, our team and partners rallied to care for the whole person in 2021 – not just the organization they represent – through creative strategies like distributing care packages.

At a systemic level, we continually advocated with our many philanthropic partners for increased grace and flexibility for nonprofit leaders during this difficult time (things like flexible deadlines and reporting modalities). Moving forward, we are motivated to work alongside our clients and partners to reimagine nonprofit practices and culture that allow organizations and leaders to thrive.

ALISHA OPPERMAN
CHIEF PROGRAM OFFICER

MCR VALUE: TEAMWORK

We believe we can achieve the deepest and most sustainable impact when we work in authentic partnership. This means integrating deeply within communities we serve and building trusted relationships with our clients. It also means building alliances with other nonprofit and intermediary organizations with missions to enrich and equip the nonprofit sector in various ways. We believe that it is in collaboration – not competition – that we can be the most effective.

TEAMWORK as an MCR value demonstrates the awareness that no organization can tackle complex systemic issues alone, and that any action taken for a community must involve that community. In 2021, MCR worked to grow our partnership with the Kresge Foundation and Co.act Detroit. We worked together with these partners to incorporate crucial feedback from past applicant and granted organizations into the grant program. This resulted in the development of KIP:D+, an expansion and deepening of the KIP:D initiative, incorporating more communities and prioritizing community input.

MCR VALUES: SERVICE & STRENGTH

Michigan Community Resources' legal support is the oldest body of work undertaken by the organization and has been a core part of our service offerings since our founding in 1998. Today, our legal programs represent one of the most direct ways MCR manifests its value of SERVICE.

By facilitating access to legal resources and connecting organizations to pro bono legal support, MCR democratizes access to specialized knowledge and expertise. These services allow our clients to focus on what they do best: delivering their programming, advancing their missions, and serving their communities.

In line with another MCR value of organizational STRENGTH, in 2021, MCR leveraged its legal resources and partnerships to continue support of a longtime client: the Russell Woods-Sullivan Area Association. Learn more about that story below.

MCR VALUES: TRUST & COMMUNITY ROOTEDNESS

Michigan Community Resources values the sense of trust and respect we have built with the communities we serve. This respect begins with the recognition that the histories, strengths, and challenges of each community are unique, and that the individuals best positioned to recognize and respond to those are the members of each respective community.

In our role as a nonprofit intermediary, MCR works alongside philanthropic partners to improve the outcomes of their funding initiatives by leveraging our trusted relationships and community rootedness, which uniquely position us to provide tailored support to nonprofit and community-based organizations. Two programs that demonstrated these values in action in 2021 were the North End Resilience Project and MCR’s support of the Pontiac Funders Collaborative. In each project, MCR worked to meet the needs of two unique Southeast Michigan communities. In each, we created a responsive cohort experience that allowed each organization to grow individually and alongside their peers to achieve community goals. Learn more about this below.

By tailoring services to individual communities often overlooked by traditional philanthropic initiatives, MCR pushes to highlight and respond to inequities in the nonprofit funding landscape. MCR is trusted by our funding partners to identify actionable, impactful opportunities to strengthen organizational infrastructure and multiply philanthropic activity in communities. We remain ROOTED IN COMMUNITY by maintaining TRUST in our relationships and by bringing attention to the transformative work being done in a way that allows organizations to attract greater resources and further their missions.

MCR VALUE: EQUITY

EQUITY is a core value at Michigan Community Resources, and we work to assure that each of our projects is framed by a vision that centers equity. By understanding equity as a cooperative process — moving toward a more inclusive standard among community work that recognizes community organizations as experts in their fields — MCR hopes to transform systems and push the nonprofit landscape toward greater equity. By engaging in constant dialogue with the communities we serve, we operate under a definition of equity informed by the experiences of our clients — one that is responsive to the client's experience, needs, and vision.

In 2021, one manifestation of this vision was the development of the Rest & Liberation Initiative ("RLI"), a sabbatical program designed in response to burnout expressed by Black and Brown community leaders. Learn more about that process in the video below.