This year has been one of transformation for all of us at the Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley. Through leadership changes and the implementation of our new strategic plan, 2024 has been a busy year. We’ve been looking closely at how we carry out our mission to improve the quality of life for all Valley residents and are excited to be taking new steps that will make the work we do, and the work of our local nonprofit community, more impactful.
One of the biggest additions to our work — highlighted as an important opportunity in our strategic plan — is advocacy. Making grants to nonprofits serving the Valley remains the most central part of our work, but advocacy is another tool to help us support our community by pushing for systemic and high-level change. What we’ve learned from our partners, here in the Valley and across the state, is that change doesn’t just come from a single field of work. It takes partnership, coordination and collaboration to make big-picture changes that improve our community.
We began engaging in advocacy with the creation of the Healthy Community Partnership, which has brought partners across all sectors together to work toward improving health outcomes in the Mahoning Valley since 2018. One of the Partnership’s advocacy achievements was in collaboration with Produce Perks Midwest, ensuring the state budget included funding for nutrition incentive programs like SNAP Double Up, which allows shoppers receiving SNAP benefits to double their dollars at farmers’ markets, grocery stores, and other retailers when buying fruits and vegetables. Our efforts have grown to incorporating what we’ve learned through HCP in other aspects of the Foundation’s work.
Over the past year, one of our focus areas has been civic engagement. Through projects like Building a Better Table, the Civic Innovations Transforming Youngstown internship program, hosting presentations by Bolder Advocacy to educate local nonprofits, and sharing voter registration and election information, the Community Foundation is working toward a Mahoning Valley where everyone has their voice heard.
While it’s commonly believed that not-for-profit entities can’t engage in advocacy, that oversimplifies what organizations like ours can do. The advocacy that 501(c)3 nonprofits can do is vast. We can advocate for policies, communicate what certain policies would mean for the communities we serve, educate elected officials on our work and policy positions, and fund projects that work toward those goals.
Beyond knowing that nonprofits — including community foundations — can engage in advocacy, we are also aware that there are possible risks associated with the rewards of this approach. We’ve been developing processes for staff to evaluate and communicate possible actions and activities, to examine our role in collaborative efforts, and what resources are required to be effective. Moreover, our team has developed a tool to record and report all of our advocacy activities to ensure we are always in compliance with federal regulations.
To keep stakeholders like you in the loop of what the Community Foundation team is working on, we are adding a new page to our website that will highlight our past work and show what we’re currently working on. We will share that page with you soon.
We encourage all Mahoning Valley nonprofits to examine what work they can do, both legally and in terms of organizational capacity, in advocating for the communities they serve. Even work as simple as encouraging clients to check their voter registration and find their voting location –which can be done through the free and nonpartisan Vote411.org – can boost election turnout and get more residents involved in the democratic process. If your nonprofit is interested in what it can do, more information is available through national organizations like Nonprofit Vote, which focuses on voter turnout and engagement, and Bolder Advocacy, which has a great resource library available HERE.
To our fund holders, we’re excited to embark on this journey and we hope you’ll come along with us as we work to make the Mahoning Valley a more welcoming, equitable and beautiful place for all who want to call it home. As a fund holder, you can continue supporting the causes that matter most to you and will not be required to fund our advocacy. We simply hope you’ll learn alongside us and think about how you can have the biggest impact possible to improve the community you care about.