Brooklyn Insights

In her monthly column, Brooklyn Community Foundation President and CEO Dr. Jocelynne Rainey shares reflections and stories of impact from our work across Brooklyn.

In this conversation qw discuss the findings of our Brooklyn Insights 2020 community discussions, including community-led solutions to barriers of systemic inequity.

Brooklyn is home to the largest Black community in North America. Nearly 70 percent of the borough’s residents are non-white. For our staff at the Brooklyn Community Foundation, the events of the past year have revealed in the starkest terms that systemic racism is the greatest threat to the health and well-being of our communities.

Last week, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy’s director of research, Ryan Schlegel, responded to an all-too-common trend among foundations in his article, “Recent Calls for Foundation Engagement Leave Out Grantees and Communities They Serve.”

At Brooklyn Community Foundation, we believe that residents of Brooklyn, those directly affected by the challenges, hold the wisdom, the ideas, and the power to transform them too.