2024 Annual Report

Connection is intrinsic to every part of MCR’s work, and pursuing community across the sector furthers our mission of strengthening the nonprofit and grassroots organizations that we serve.

Over our 25 years of history, we have made a point of being present in the spaces and communities in which our clients do their work. This is not just to have a better understanding of the context in which they are operating, but also because being present in-person fosters relationships in a way that isn’t replicated by a face on a screen. It allows us to build trust, because our clients see that we are curious and willing to bear witness to their joys and the struggles they face.

The strength of our human-to-human connections enables dialogue through which our clients can honestly share their needs. Equipped with this knowledge, we can meet the demand to build connections between our clients and the people, resources, and skills that enable them to effectively do their work.

In 2024, the work of Michigan Community Resources was driven especially by the urgency to connect. We bridged gaps in the sector in several ways, fostered new connections, and strengthened existing ones.

Skilled Connections

Organizations are not always equipped internally to handle every challenge they come across. Through our relationships with professional service providers, pro bono attorneys, and other specialists, as well as leveraging our staff's own expertise, Michigan Community Resources provides connections to resources and knowledge that enable our clients to succeed.

Our work in 2024 continued the values and practices we have maintained since our formation in 1998. MCR's Legal Support has anchored our services since the beginning. In 2024, we continued to help our clients access transactional legal aid and cultivate a more supportive ecosystem of legal resources for nonprofits.

Through our pro bono partners and in one-on-one sessions with MCR team members, organizations were able to navigate the variety of legal challenges they face in the course of their operations. These services come at no cost to clients, who would often otherwise be unable to afford the support of experienced legal professionals.

We worked with attorneys and law students in 2024 to promote community engagement in the legal profession. In March, we hosted law students from Georgetown University as part of an alternative spring break, giving them an opportunity to see the impact they could have in the nonprofit sector through pro bono work. Through this, and other speaking opportunities at local universities, our team worked to promote community-mindedness and professional responsibility among newcomers to the legal field, ensuring that future attorneys see their skills as a vital community resource.

In October, our Dovetail partnership launched its Funding Navigator (www.dovetaildetroit.org/funding-navigator), an interactive guide designed to empower nonprofits to make informed decisions about fundraising. Through a series of survey questions, the Navigator equips clients with tactics and recommendations for expanding their fundraising strategies. This resource comes alongside with our Dovetail directory, which indexes service providers and other resources that can lend their skills to our nonprofit clients.

Michigan Community Resources pushed the boundaries of capacity building in 2024 by expanding the resources made available to denied grantees who did not end up in the cohorts we facilitate. As part of our longstanding partnership with the Kresge Foundation, MCR's pre-application and denied application support provided prospective Kresge Innovative Projects: Detroit Plus (KIP:D+) provided no-cost advising to clients to help them define their strengths, how to position themselves in the grant landscape, and how to strategize for future and alternative opportunities to resource their community work.

Across these programmatic components, MCR continued to democratize institutional knowledge in 2024, and bring access to resources to a wider population of Michiganders.

Sector Connections

Michigan Community Resources' work connects organizations to what they need beyond addressing immediate needs. As strong as our clients are, organizations can only truly thrive if the context in which they operate supports their success.

As an intermediary, our positioning in the sector gives MCR a view of community organizations doing work on the ground as well as those in philanthropy working to support lasting change. Making sure philanthropic partners, intermediaries, and nonprofits are all on the same page requires more work.

In 2024, our work continued with the Kresge Innovative Projects: Detroit Plus (KIP:D+) grant program, where alongside the Kresge Foundation and intermediary partner Co.act Detroit, we had the opportunity to reorient the year's focus on deepening impact.

As part of this collaborative table, MCR worked to ensure that feedback cultivated from previous rounds of KIP:D+ investment would inform present and future grants. In direct response to calls we received from clients, 2024 KIP:D+ grants invested exclusively in projects that had previously received planning funds, ensuring that more organizations would see their visions through to fruition in their communities.

In 2024, one of the ways we leveraged our privileged position as an intermediary is by ensuring nonprofits in our service area were represented at events like the 2024 Building Michigan Communities Conference, where an intersection of community developers, service providers, public officials, and nonprofit advocates came together to discuss the decisions that shape communities.

The participation of our nonprofit and grassroots clients created an opportunity for honest dialogue about how physical development projects can have better outcomes by engaging impacted neighborhoods, and by encouraging developers to coordinate with community groups to incorporate the expectations and needs of community members.

Later in the year, we presented our vision for an aligned sector at the 2024 Council of Michigan Foundations Annual Conference in Traverse City. Intermediaries provide valuable thought leadership, and MCR showcased the ways we work in partnership with foundations to help their community investments to go further.

Human Connections

Community is at the center of our work, and at the center of any community is the people that live there. One of the greatest joys of our work is connecting with the people that make up the organizations serving communities across the city.

These connections do more than keep us informed about community work and well-being – they are the foundation of the trust we have built with our clients for over 25 years. Without meaningful relationships, it is impossible to have honest dialogues about community needs.

Michigan Community Resources works hard to be present and transparent with the community leaders we serve so we can get a deeper understanding of what stands in the way of their ability to thrive.

Building sustainability and resilience within the nonprofit sector requires more than simply funding projects and organizations, or even connecting them with skills and resources. It is about reframing the value of human capacity and recognizing the need to invest in it.

One of the most prominent ways we demonstrated this value was in May’s Rest Forum. There, community leaders and other attendees came together to discuss and reflect on the prevalence of burnout in the nonprofit sector, and to take part in exercises that centered the lives of the people who position themselves to respond to community needs.

Our Rest Forum represented the culmination of engagement done across the sector on the effects of burnout on nonprofit leaders which had informed the previous year's Rest and Liberation Initiative Report (www.mi-community.org/rest-and-liberation). These engagements yielded a report that centered a simple truth: sustainable community development is impossible without healthy and empowered people moving the work forward.

One of the other truths uncovered by remaining connected is that some of the people doing the most work in communities receive little to no recognition for their contributions. In 2024, we celebrated the 10th year of our Power of One Dedicated Woman Awards, through which MCR—in partnership with awards co-founder Dotti Sharp—has honored and invested in women taking on leadership roles in their Detroit communities. The winners of these awards are nominated by their peers and MCR has been privileged to connect with these women and to be able to bring attention to their stories through our annual awards.

Whoever we were with, whether they were a team member or leader of a nonprofit or grassroots organization, or perhaps a funder or resource broker, we worked to understand where our constituents were coming from. One of the most valuable opportunities to do that in 2024 was at our MCR Coffee Hours and our Dovetail networking events. Opportunities to connect and check-in with colleagues across the sector gave us a window into the state of the sector as whole. What successes there were to celebrate and what was driving community leaders to the point of burnout were brought to light through casual conversations in informal contexts. It builds trust to be present; by being more than names in email inboxes, MCR team members were able develop the relationships necessary to understand where the needle pointed on the fuel gauge of capacity in community organizations, and how to steward lasting, systemic change.

ANNUAL REPORT 2024

POWERED BY CONNECTIONS

Skilled Connections

Sector Connections

Human Connections

Financials

2024 FUNDERS