The Great Near (& Far)
The infrastructure bill, cooperative real estate, nonprofit consultants, & COP26...
Hey folks. This is the 17th edition of The Great Near. I’ll be re-launching “TGN 2.0.” in 2022 with a refresh and a bit more regularity. In the meantime, I’m sharing a weekly curation (read: no more long-form posts for a bit) of content that might push your thinking about power and the systems that shape our lives. I’m talking about the economy, public policy, finance, capitalism, the social sector, and more. Follow for new research, op-eds, hot takes, my favorite explainers, the best learning resources, and fun nuggets so that our heads don’t explode.
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The Great Near (& Far) 👀 ✨
On racial equity and the infrastructure bill — ICYMI, President Biden signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill into law this week. 🥳 My team has been buzzing about the news, despite disappointing cuts to paid family leave, renewable energy, and… well, let’s not spoil the celebration. This major legislation also has ties to Biden’s racial equity commitments, as Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Madeleine Ngo write:
“President Biden’s $1 trillion plan to rebuild America’s infrastructure comes with a built-in promise: No longer will roads, bridges and railways be instruments of bias or racism. Communities that ended up divided along racial lines will be made whole.”
Infrastructure projects have long threatened the existence of minority communities — a highway construction project in Houston that was recently put on pause when the Transportation Department evoked the Civil Rights Act. And though Biden’s commitment signals progress, most spending decisions fall to the states, meaning it isn’t yet clear how equity will trickle down. Though the administration has started to consider environmental and racial justice criteria before approving state funding, more accountability will be needed to track the outcomes.
To better understand the fraught relationship between infrastructure and racial equity, I *highly recommend* this long-form exploration of historic disinvestment in Baltimore. It’s meticulously researched, tying racial covenants of the past century to transportation disparities today, from the struggles of Amazon workers to the contentious Red Line. It makes the best case for why we need significant, reparative reinvestment in the infrastructure within marginalized communities.
On cooperative real estate models (stay with me) — When was the last time you saw a new development in your community (perhaps another coworking space??) and wondered why your neighbors didn’t have any say? Many are working to change that; to keep ownership local and grant communities more decision-making power. Oscar Perry Abello covered the development of Commongrounds Cooperative in Traverse City, MI, a new commercial space that is overturning how we typically finance and own commercial projects. He writes about their groundbreaking ceremony with ten individuals representing different funding sources, including 535 community owners who each paid $50 for a share, a bank loan guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more community investors who crowdfunded $1.3M in loans, and more. Abello writes,
“While housing co-ops have been around for decades, real estate co-ops for businesses are rarer, and don’t have as many reliable funding sources as there are for those in housing.”
If you’ve heard talk about “democratizing real estate: this is what it looks like in practice. Yes, financing options for major projects are still nascent, but community-controlled real estate isn’t a new concept, thanks to long-time leaders like the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative and newer entrants like Groundcover. (Fun fact: you can become an investor-owner in EBPREC)
The “plumbing and wiring of the nonprofit world” — Bridgespan is a nonprofit that spun out of Bain & Company in the early 2000s, and its consultants are highly regarded in philanthropic circles. This profile highlights the scale of that influence and the core of a debate: “Proponents say the advisers make the field more effective. Critics question whether consultants, even at nonprofits with good intentions, are the right solution for the charitable sector.” (Vu Le at NonprofitAF has a great response.) Bridgespan has shifted its approach, responding to the critiques by nonprofit leaders that “return on investment” doesn’t always translate in the nonprofit world, and that “making big bets” can leave out organizations that haven’t been afforded the funding to meet stringent criteria.
“If in your criteria, you say, ‘We only fund people that do random control trials,’ if you have these barriers to capital on general operating support, then a whole bunch of organizations led by people of color have actually never been given the money to do that,” Mr. Bradach said.”
Overall, Bridgespan gets mostly praise for advising foundations that may not have the capacity to identify gaps in the field and direct capital where it needs to go. And though it has helped money flow to smaller organizations and those led by people of color, there are still marked disparities. These changes are encouraging, though Vu Le and others in Common Future’s network offer another approach: philanthropy must look beyond consultants, and more to the communities they serve as the experts.
On the messages that move voters — This new poll put out by YouGov in collaboration with Jacobin and the Center for Working-Class Politics explored what mobilizes working-class swing voters. The Times offered a few takeaways. First, “nothing produced a more positive response from poll respondents than hearing that a candidate was a small-business owner.” Second, the two top-performing messages with voters were aggressive from different sides of the aisle. They were broadly labeled Republican (“freedom is under threat from radical socialists, arrogant liberals and dangerous foreign influences…”) and Progressive Populist (“This country belongs to all of us, not just the superrich…”)
Why share this? Our democracy is in crisis, and many of my colleagues in the nonprofit sector are at the forefront of crafting new policies and proposals. Yet our sector also has a narrative crisis (this tweet 😬) where good ideas get overcomplicated until they become unintelligible by the public. This poll is a reminder that politics aren’t driven by issues but by the language we wrap them in.
Old news, but still fascinating — Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square, is still tracking the $1B of donations he committed to #startsmall, his LLC, in this public Google Sheet.
A cool campaign — I am by no means qualified to give financial advice, seriously. Back in 2012, the JOBS Act made it legal for businesses to raise investment from all people, not just accredited investors. This is often referred to as equity crowdfunding, Regulation Crowdfunding, or “Reg CF” (more on that here). One campaign has been circulating in my network: Main Street Phoenix Workers Co-Op is raising capital on WeFunder for an employee-owned restaurant group to help transform restaurants into employee-owned businesses. (They are technically asking investors to make a reservation to invest while they finalize SEC filings.) What’s cool about this? It can be reaaally hard to raise capital as a cooperative, but there has been a trickle of co-ops starting to crowdfund investment, like The Driver’s Cooperative. It’s early, but this could open the floodgates for more co-ops and capital in the field.
Something else to talk about at the Thanksgiving table — This has been making the rounds on Twitter, for good reason. The job market recovery post-COVID has been shockingly fast compared to the years post-2008. So as the media (or your crazy uncle) works us all into a frenzy about inflation and unemployment becuase of the federal stimulus, let’s remember why it was kind-of-sort-of a good thing.
Something on COP26 — I haven’t mentioned COP26, though the climate crisis is undeniably linked to racial justice. I generally focus on economic and racial equity conversations in the U.S., though the decisions made at COP26 will, hopefully, instigate real change back at home. Emily Atkin writes a fantastic substack, HEATED, for people who are pissed off about the climate crisis. Of everything I’ve read about COP26, this hit the hardest (emphasis mine):
“The most climate-vulnerable people are underrepresented at this year’s historic climate summit. Due to prohibitive costs, visa and accreditation issues, lack of vaccine access, and COVID-19 restrictions, only three out of 14 threatened Pacific Island states were able to send delegates…The fossil fuel industry, meanwhile, was able to send 503 delegates to COP26—more than any other country, the BBC reported. And the country with the most delegates is one of the world’s most consequential climate polluters: Brazil, with 479 representatives.”
Something to unwind — Jacob Collier is, by all measures, a musical prodigy. You may know him from this video where he explains harmony in increasing complexity. I often return to this unplugged piano performance by Mahogany Sessions when I need a moment to catch my breath.
until next time,
caitlin