[Applause]
I really want you all to imagine with me
a place where leaders and business
community organizations and social
service agencies all work together on a
shared platform for the improvement of
their local communities how awesome
would that be
if you think about it just in a small
sized city like I beloved Greenville you
can drive down the Boulevard and in our
business district and see hundreds on
top of hundreds of mainstream business
firms and if you think about it they all
have a CEO or some chief staff that sits
at the top and and they’re skilled at
solving complex organizational problems
and driving results but what if all of
those Minds were working on one
community platform within their own
respective roles to drive and and create
better communities again how awesome
would that be and why doesn’t that
well my name is Jermaine McNair again
I’m the founding director of NC civil a
local nonprofit here in Greenville North
Carolina that works to build a shared
platform where community members and
community resource providers can come
together meet and exchange values and
work together for improved communities
and I’m here today to share with you my
journey the lessons that I’ve learned
along the way and to implore you to
build upon those
in your own working in your own
communities my journey starts solved in
a United States federal prison now I
know most of the time if a person finds
themselves there that means their
journey has just ended right absolutely
all but for me having grown up in
low-income marginalized communities
throughout my life going there was
actually my introduction to the larger
social system and when I arrived there
the first thing I noticed was that there
were I mean there were fifteen hundred
other inmates there and they all were
just like me I mean really just like me
they most of them were black most of
them we were very similar hairstyles we
talked the same slang we walked the same
when you when we began to talk to each
other our stories were the same our
backgrounds the same our family
structure or lack thereof it was all the
same and up to that point you gotta you
gotta you gotta realize I thought of my
life as being this very unique thing I
mean when you grow up and you know one
of the essences of a growing up in a
marginalized community is that you learn
to live outside of the graces of you
know common social service you learn to
make your own way and even when I was in
Middle School in high school I
that I was doing things that the other
kids in school were probably not doing
so I thought of myself as a bit of a
rebel someone who did not fit into the
system but then I got there and I’m
looking at all these people and I’m
realizing that whoa according to what
I’m seeing I mean there were people
there from New York New Jersey DC
Chicago Detroit Ohio Maryland Virginia
Texas Florida Georgia Las Vegas and Cali
they were all there and according to
what I was seeing every city in America
had an inner city that was apparently
filled with black and brown families
that were all having their lives
structured by a particular set of
parameters that was driving that
outcomes in their lives it was a system
there was a largest system happening I
mean how could the same thing to be
happening in every single city across
America all of a sudden I didn’t see
myself as being so unique I was a
worse than the disappointment of being
sentenced and convicted and sent away
from your home and family was the
disappointment in myself of knowing that
I had allowed my life to slip inside of
this age-old narrative of black boys in
low-income communities and I didn’t even
see it coming
but it was cool I said you know you know
the first 20-some odd years of my life
that’s only joke’s on me but from here
on out I decided that I would take steps
that were necessary to simply open my
life up to the greater possibilities
because you see up to that point
obviously I had received all of my
images all of my messages and ideas from
so opening my life up was my number one
priority now what does this have to do
with nonprofit organizing a community
development I’ll tell you guys for all
of my leaders in the in this room here
and and leaders everywhere I will argue
to you that the issue in low-income
communities is not the lack of resources
or the lack of programs and initiatives
to actually explain to you the problem I
want to use coding to explain this and I
guess I should I guess I’ll get back to
my story to then explain why someone who
is not a coder is even talking about
coding but I I began to just look at the
system when I was there and I began to
study and read and learn about what was
taking shape around me and um just a few
quick lessons I learned that the most
powerful thing in our society was
exchange
people think it’s money people think of
so many other things but one of the
principles that I learned and I want you
guys to really catch this because power
is what a lot of this is about but one
of the most powerful things is exchanged
and I’ll tell you how I learned this um
when you look at the dollar value they
say the dollar value is weak or the
dollar value is strong what they’re
saying is that $1 or $10 or $100 people
are exchanging at a rate that means that
one $10 bill is being responsible for
facilitating five different exchanges or
ten different exchanges and when the
economy slows our ten dollar bill will
sit
and it won’t move from one person to the
next now when it’s not moving it’s still
the same ten dollar bill but it’s valued
less because the cysts because of the
system that it exists in now remember
I’m still thinking about systems I’m
still thinking about the community that
I came from and I’m looking at how it
was enclosed and marginalised from the
rest of society and I said then we don’t
need more money because remember we many
of us in poor communities were taught to
do
above all things go and get money and as
a young person I ran and I got it and I
filled my pockets with it and for some
reason there were people next to me all
around me who had less money than I had
but they had a better life somehow so I
realized that money wasn’t the thing it
was the system that it was involved in
and that system needed some open up and
flow and in our community there was
nothing flowing in and nothing flowing
out because there were no relationships
flowing in and out we were all kind of
guarded and defensive because of many of
our past experiences and we developed a
lifestyle and a culture that basically
rejected the society that apparently
have rejected us so it was kind of like
the Berlin Wall around our communities
nothing was coming in and nothing was
coming out and that was hurting us so
again my goal was to first open myself
up step out and then create new avenues
and pathways for myself for my child and
for my community I made it through that
period and I returned home and my
brother was doing very well as a
computer programmer and he began to
teach me tools
that I could use to kind of get my life
going again and using some of the tools
that he taught me I build my first web
blog and began to do affiliate marketing
for mobile devices and things I mean it
was it was at the height of the mobile
device smartphone craze and the Apple
Wars that Apple’s the the phone wars had
come were in their first stages at the
time Apple’s primary draw wasn’t even
the iPhone more people had an iPod than
the actual iPhone if you remember their
big draw was their iTunes music but
Android was this amazing platform that
the tech world is going crazy over the
thing about Android was that Android
wasn’t even about a phone it was about
the platform that would invite
developers to build on it and that
platform would be the platform that all
phones would use to develop on so it’s
very different when you go buy an Apple
product the whole in fact the only way
you can access an Apple product is by
purchasing an Apple licensed product but
to get an Android platform you can
basically buy any falling out there
Samsung can make it LG can make it and
that’s the very opposite of what
traditionally had been done the
traditional method was what we call
proprietary proprietary is not just
about making money
proprietary is about owning the rights
to whatever is taking place but this
open source thing
was this platform where they wrote the
cold and they shared it so you had
developers in Japan China in Europe and
everywhere building off of this code and
adding improvements to it and then
sharing those improvements in a larger
community the exchange that took place
on this Android platform would be the
wave of everything that we would come to
know so how does this relate to
nonprofits and community development so
again I come back and I began to I
launched NC simple and the civil in NC
civil stands for long it stands for
Libre community and industry values
interactionists League it’s the
community and Industry values
interaction ously and it’s based on a
principle that communities and
industries both have very separate
cultures and they don’t mix well
industry follows skill patterns market
patterns traffic patterns even then when
there was a term in the real estate of
course I was taking where they teach you
a very similar principle to what they
teach you in business courses they teach
you the three rules are location
absolutely what that meant was that
where you placed your business was a
major determinant in the success of your
business and you needed to follow
parameters they stay taught you to
follow the highways wherever they are
expanding highways that’s where you want
to place your business or purchase your
real estate wherever there’s new
development and new homes popping up
that’s where the disposable income is
going that’s where you want to place
your business they even have a rule that
says follow the Walmart literally
Walmart spent so much money in research
before they put a Walmart anywhere that
if you see a Walmart coming up save your
research dollars just go there because
they’ve done it right this and I blew my
mind but what that meant was that there
were so many determinants dictating
where business and the finances went and
remember this currency that’s moving
there were so many other determinants
dictating that that in our lifetime the
money would never flow back to these
inner-city communities it would continue
to go out and further further out and I
remember growing up to seeing Grandma’s
aunties and moms and dads praying for
the day that their communities would get
better and the resources and the good
times would flow back to the to the old
days and what they didn’t realize that
according to our market trends it was
never coming back so the only thing that
was flowing resources and into our
community where the nonprofit groups and
possibly the churches but here’s what
their model was nonprofit organizations
built their programs
on their only platforms much like Apple
is very proprietary if I build a
traditional nonprofit program and you
guys are my target population
I made a channel my services towards you
guys but in order for you to get access
to those services you’ve got to come
here and you need to be here at nine
o’clock in the morning and meet these
guidelines and work yourself into our
institutional culture in order for you
to gain access to these resources and
even if I do a great job at it it’s you
guys not there
how much expanding can I do on a program
I mean the biggest thing I can do with
the nonprofit program is probably build
an institutional school still going to
be closed up
it won’t affect and impact the community
so I said what I wanted to be was not a
traditional nonprofit group I want it to
be a platform and I wanted to be a
platform that when I went into the
community and connecting with my target
audience
I had tentacles and pathways and
relationships and connections that
connected to the outside world that
potentially would never come through
here and we would be the conduit of
exchange that would increase the value
of whatever was happening in here and
whatever was happening over here we
would increase the exchange rate and
that’s all we set to do I literally
moved back to Greenville in 2011
I began partnering up with groups are we
partnered first with businesses I
remember working with about 15
businesses on my first venture and we
hosted charity sporting tournaments with
local businesses in Greenville and it
brought all the businesses out and it
helped us to establish a rapport and
relationships with our local business
community because I knew
again I can’t run into a community’s
into a burning building to save
everybody and when I get there or I’m
the answer for everybody you know
I better be connected to some other
institutions right so I did it backwards
I came into Greenville and I did not run
into the community that I sold solely
wanted to help I went to the other
communities those relationships from
those charity tournaments we garnered
attention I leveraged that attention
into partnering with other nonprofits
and other charities and then the
platform expanded more and then local
government or local politicians took
notice and I embraced their agenda and
their desire to connect with communities
and it begins to write and expand the
platform to include them and then you
know whenever local politicians open
both in the media jumps on board and
they’re not I learned an appreciation of
how media can help get the word out
about community programs so now our
media department wasn’t our media
department it was the community’s media
our our our government and policy wasn’t
our department it was working with
government the the parameters that we
use for our program models we borrowed
from the Greenville Police Department or
whatever their crimes only areas where
that was what we said for our parameters
and you have to understand how this
threaten is proprietary control because
again I’m not saying that nonprofits and
community organizations are proprietary
in the sense that they’re only doing it
for the money
what I’m saying is that for the survival
of nonprofit groups they need to be able
to control inputs and outcomes and be
able to clearly state what
results are because remember that’s how
they appeal to their funding sources and
to further explain this coding is
computer programming for anyone who
doesn’t know computer programming is a
three-way relationship between a program
developer and the computer they manage
that relationship with their code that
code allows the computer to carry out
instructions and commands for the
program that’s set to run on it it’s a
three-way relationship now in the
nonprofit world that three-way
relationship seems to be still the
programmers present still the program
that they’re designing is present but
what they consider to be their computer
is their funding sources
that’s the three-way relationship for
your traditional nonprofit community
organization and then the community is a
beneficiary of that but it’s not a part
of the three-way relationship what I
needed was the community to be the third
party in this three-way relationship we
would develop programs so we would have
our developer you would have our
programs but who we designed and appeal
to would be the community and the
community would be the platform that we
would develop on and it would be open
source now again at the time going into
this I wasn’t calling an open source I
just knew the relationships of exchange
were the most important thing there were
times when larger agencies have come to
me and said hey we’ve got money for you
we see what you’re doing we’ve got money
for you and I would tell them I could do
it lord knows I could do a lot with your
money I’ve done more with less but if
you’re gonna send money you’re not going
to be involved with the relationship
keep it because what we need is
engagement high-level hyperactivity
engagement to a community that’s been
cut off so I began to build those
partnerships and you guys got to
understand what it means to have a
non-profit to run it for three years a
partner up with all the different
organizations and be noticed around the
community and have a little notoriety
and have yet to run a single program
hadn’t helped essentially one kid and I
held fast to the idea that when I
finally got that those relationships
would be key so we finally decided after
three years of being a roving
organization people saw us partnering up
here and there and everywhere and they
would ask what in the world do you do
[Music]
yet to be seen well we finally decided
that it was time to purchase and rent
our outreach office and the goal behind
opening up our outreach office right
here in West Greenville was to take
those partnerships and I’ll bring them
on home and we would focus on what we
did best
we focus on ways that we could keep
these relationships moving between the
community residents allowing them to
connect to community resources and
thinking about now what’s our functional
role in this three-part relationship
still and we decided it was outreach we
didn’t focus on criminal diversion we
didn’t focus on low income
we didn’t focus on education or
healthcare we did it strange stuff we
focus on outreach because if we could
take our presents and all of our
partnerships and now go out into the
community and weave our presents through
the community into their daily lives
my goal was that when a person walked
outside of their door and went to the
store to get their drink of choice my
goal is that they shouldn’t be able to
make it to the store without coming in
contact with some resources somewhere
and whenever window or door they used to
connect to those resources that window
or door should connect to everyone that
window or door should connect to other
resources so we literally ran outreach
programs into our communities and still
do but when we go out we work on behalf
of every agency no proprietary
controller you’ll see ACC civil and with
our west gate project sending teams of
street kids into the communities
knocking on doors delivering information
but they’re delivering the messaging on
behalf of not only insi civil but every
partnering organization that shares our
platform so the question who do the
results belong to how do funders
identify who is doing the work I don’t
know
but it doesn’t matter to me because the
one thing that I firmly believe in is
that more important than having a
program or nonprofit that grows greater
and greater it’s having a community that
grows greater and greater and I
literally just said this to another
nonprofit partner the other day if we as
nonprofits businesses and social service
agencies don’t function like a community
if we don’t model the behaviors of a
community how do we expect those we
intend to desire to function more like a
community because truth be told if they
became over community and their exchange
rate increased whatever things they have
that we consider to not be valuable if
the rate of exchange dis increase and
everybody was contributing to the one
platform the value of it would rise so
what we want to do is get stop looking
at the world through our organizational
lenses because we remember all those
bankers that are sitting at the top of
the bank and all those chief seat
chief c-suite executives that are
sitting at the top of their businesses
I’ll tell you in their defense they’re
all taught to see the world through
their organizational lens if it rains
it’s not raining on the community the
rain is affecting gonna affect our
business patterns today and that’s their
job to monitor and control the
operations within their space its
proprietary so every time I sit down
with the leader and I enjoy spending
time with leaders because I know that
that’s the minds that I have to change
it’s not really trying to change the
minds of the members of our low-income
communities it’s changing the mindsets
of our leaders and every time I sit down
with another leader my task at that
table is to get them to start to stop
looking at the world through their
organizational lens start looking at the
for how it engages within on their
platform and start considering how their
business and organization is engaging in
the world and in our community
and if we can weave the fabric of
community and weave the fabric of
exchange through our local neighborhoods
both the resources move naturally won’t
the Berlin Wall come down and the
resources start to move we don’t know
who will get credit for it but it also
it also reduces overlap every agency I
work with has about the same basic 5
programs and everything it’s necessary
because it’s hard to deliver one service
without having other support services so
this is not a towel it’s necessary but
you know quickly I was at a mechanic I
was at my I was at my mechanic last week
and he said hey Jay house
how’s everything going out there and I
said man the the community development
game is tough because it’s not like a
car when something malfunctions on your
car because all the parts have to work
together you immediately recognize it
because the car functions a little worse
but in the community the parts are so
separate that any of them can be not
working at any given time and because
they’re not tied to one collective
platform you don’t know what’s working
or what’s not so if you can get things
on a run platform and that platform be
the community platform and we shared
that space we all become accountable to
one another as leaders and that’s
organizational developers and we all can
reduce overlap we can then have a
conversation about what I can do that
serves you
because serving you allows me to serve
them and serving them in turn again
allows me to serve you and we keep this
relationship going and we continue to
collaborate and improves on one
another’s
ideas so that we can continue to make
the best community possible I tell my
nonprofit board members all of its hard
I got great supporters that come in with
great ideas and I tell them honestly we
don’t need another resource we don’t
need another idea our job remember is to
connect residents to resources that
already exist and if we find that
there’s a gap then an only thing do we
say this a lot and I held to these core
values and I don’t know where our next
funding source is gonna come from I
don’t know who’s gonna own the work but
I do know this as long as we are here
engaging working together sharing one
platform and making that platform our
community we will not only have great
organizations that grow greater and
greater but we will have a greater
community thank you guys [Applause]
I really want you all to imagine with me
a place where leaders and business
community organizations and social
service agencies all work together on a
shared platform for the improvement of
their local communities how awesome
would that be
if you think about it just in a small
sized city like I beloved Greenville you
can drive down the Boulevard and in our
business district and see hundreds on
top of hundreds of mainstream business
firms and if you think about it they all
have a CEO or some chief staff that sits
at the top and and they’re skilled at
solving complex organizational problems
and driving results but what if all of
those Minds were working on one
community platform within their own
respective roles to drive and and create
better communities again how awesome
would that be and why doesn’t that
well my name is Jermaine McNair again
I’m the founding director of NC civil a
local nonprofit here in Greenville North
Carolina that works to build a shared
platform where community members and
community resource providers can come
together meet and exchange values and
work together for improved communities
and I’m here today to share with you my
journey the lessons that I’ve learned
along the way and to implore you to
build upon those
in your own working in your own
communities my journey starts solved in
a United States federal prison now I
know most of the time if a person finds
themselves there that means their
journey has just ended right absolutely
all but for me having grown up in
low-income marginalized communities
throughout my life going there was
actually my introduction to the larger
social system and when I arrived there
the first thing I noticed was that there
were I mean there were fifteen hundred
other inmates there and they all were
just like me I mean really just like me
they most of them were black most of
them we were very similar hairstyles we
talked the same slang we walked the same
when you when we began to talk to each
other our stories were the same our
backgrounds the same our family
structure or lack thereof it was all the
same and up to that point you gotta you
gotta you gotta realize I thought of my
life as being this very unique thing I
mean when you grow up and you know one
of the essences of a growing up in a
marginalized community is that you learn
to live outside of the graces of you
know common social service you learn to
make your own way and even when I was in
Middle School in high school I
that I was doing things that the other
kids in school were probably not doing
so I thought of myself as a bit of a
rebel someone who did not fit into the
system but then I got there and I’m
looking at all these people and I’m
realizing that whoa according to what
I’m seeing I mean there were people
there from New York New Jersey DC
Chicago Detroit Ohio Maryland Virginia
Texas Florida Georgia Las Vegas and Cali
they were all there and according to
what I was seeing every city in America
had an inner city that was apparently
filled with black and brown families
that were all having their lives
structured by a particular set of
parameters that was driving that
outcomes in their lives it was a system
there was a largest system happening I
mean how could the same thing to be
happening in every single city across
America all of a sudden I didn’t see
myself as being so unique I was a
worse than the disappointment of being
sentenced and convicted and sent away
from your home and family was the
disappointment in myself of knowing that
I had allowed my life to slip inside of
this age-old narrative of black boys in
low-income communities and I didn’t even
see it coming
but it was cool I said you know you know
the first 20-some odd years of my life
that’s only joke’s on me but from here
on out I decided that I would take steps
that were necessary to simply open my
life up to the greater possibilities
because you see up to that point
obviously I had received all of my
images all of my messages and ideas from
so opening my life up was my number one
priority now what does this have to do
with nonprofit organizing a community
development I’ll tell you guys for all
of my leaders in the in this room here
and and leaders everywhere I will argue
to you that the issue in low-income
communities is not the lack of resources
or the lack of programs and initiatives
to actually explain to you the problem I
want to use coding to explain this and I
guess I should I guess I’ll get back to
my story to then explain why someone who
is not a coder is even talking about
coding but I I began to just look at the
system when I was there and I began to
study and read and learn about what was
taking shape around me and um just a few
quick lessons I learned that the most
powerful thing in our society was
exchange
people think it’s money people think of
so many other things but one of the
principles that I learned and I want you
guys to really catch this because power
is what a lot of this is about but one
of the most powerful things is exchanged
and I’ll tell you how I learned this um
when you look at the dollar value they
say the dollar value is weak or the
dollar value is strong what they’re
saying is that $1 or $10 or $100 people
are exchanging at a rate that means that
one $10 bill is being responsible for
facilitating five different exchanges or
ten different exchanges and when the
economy slows our ten dollar bill will
sit
and it won’t move from one person to the
next now when it’s not moving it’s still
the same ten dollar bill but it’s valued
less because the cysts because of the
system that it exists in now remember
I’m still thinking about systems I’m
still thinking about the community that
I came from and I’m looking at how it
was enclosed and marginalised from the
rest of society and I said then we don’t
need more money because remember we many
of us in poor communities were taught to
do
above all things go and get money and as
a young person I ran and I got it and I
filled my pockets with it and for some
reason there were people next to me all
around me who had less money than I had
but they had a better life somehow so I
realized that money wasn’t the thing it
was the system that it was involved in
and that system needed some open up and
flow and in our community there was
nothing flowing in and nothing flowing
out because there were no relationships
flowing in and out we were all kind of
guarded and defensive because of many of
our past experiences and we developed a
lifestyle and a culture that basically
rejected the society that apparently
have rejected us so it was kind of like
the Berlin Wall around our communities
nothing was coming in and nothing was
coming out and that was hurting us so
again my goal was to first open myself
up step out and then create new avenues
and pathways for myself for my child and
for my community I made it through that
period and I returned home and my
brother was doing very well as a
computer programmer and he began to
teach me tools
that I could use to kind of get my life
going again and using some of the tools
that he taught me I build my first web
blog and began to do affiliate marketing
for mobile devices and things I mean it
was it was at the height of the mobile
device smartphone craze and the Apple
Wars that Apple’s the the phone wars had
come were in their first stages at the
time Apple’s primary draw wasn’t even
the iPhone more people had an iPod than
the actual iPhone if you remember their
big draw was their iTunes music but
Android was this amazing platform that
the tech world is going crazy over the
thing about Android was that Android
wasn’t even about a phone it was about
the platform that would invite
developers to build on it and that
platform would be the platform that all
phones would use to develop on so it’s
very different when you go buy an Apple
product the whole in fact the only way
you can access an Apple product is by
purchasing an Apple licensed product but
to get an Android platform you can
basically buy any falling out there
Samsung can make it LG can make it and
that’s the very opposite of what
traditionally had been done the
traditional method was what we call
proprietary proprietary is not just
about making money
proprietary is about owning the rights
to whatever is taking place but this
open source thing
was this platform where they wrote the
cold and they shared it so you had
developers in Japan China in Europe and
everywhere building off of this code and
adding improvements to it and then
sharing those improvements in a larger
community the exchange that took place
on this Android platform would be the
wave of everything that we would come to
know so how does this relate to
nonprofits and community development so
again I come back and I began to I
launched NC simple and the civil in NC
civil stands for long it stands for
Libre community and industry values
interactionists League it’s the
community and Industry values
interaction ously and it’s based on a
principle that communities and
industries both have very separate
cultures and they don’t mix well
industry follows skill patterns market
patterns traffic patterns even then when
there was a term in the real estate of
course I was taking where they teach you
a very similar principle to what they
teach you in business courses they teach
you the three rules are location
absolutely what that meant was that
where you placed your business was a
major determinant in the success of your
business and you needed to follow
parameters they stay taught you to
follow the highways wherever they are
expanding highways that’s where you want
to place your business or purchase your
real estate wherever there’s new
development and new homes popping up
that’s where the disposable income is
going that’s where you want to place
your business they even have a rule that
says follow the Walmart literally
Walmart spent so much money in research
before they put a Walmart anywhere that
if you see a Walmart coming up save your
research dollars just go there because
they’ve done it right this and I blew my
mind but what that meant was that there
were so many determinants dictating
where business and the finances went and
remember this currency that’s moving
there were so many other determinants
dictating that that in our lifetime the
money would never flow back to these
inner-city communities it would continue
to go out and further further out and I
remember growing up to seeing Grandma’s
aunties and moms and dads praying for
the day that their communities would get
better and the resources and the good
times would flow back to the to the old
days and what they didn’t realize that
according to our market trends it was
never coming back so the only thing that
was flowing resources and into our
community where the nonprofit groups and
possibly the churches but here’s what
their model was nonprofit organizations
built their programs
on their only platforms much like Apple
is very proprietary if I build a
traditional nonprofit program and you
guys are my target population
I made a channel my services towards you
guys but in order for you to get access
to those services you’ve got to come
here and you need to be here at nine
o’clock in the morning and meet these
guidelines and work yourself into our
institutional culture in order for you
to gain access to these resources and
even if I do a great job at it it’s you
guys not there
how much expanding can I do on a program
I mean the biggest thing I can do with
the nonprofit program is probably build
an institutional school still going to
be closed up
it won’t affect and impact the community
so I said what I wanted to be was not a
traditional nonprofit group I want it to
be a platform and I wanted to be a
platform that when I went into the
community and connecting with my target
audience
I had tentacles and pathways and
relationships and connections that
connected to the outside world that
potentially would never come through
here and we would be the conduit of
exchange that would increase the value
of whatever was happening in here and
whatever was happening over here we
would increase the exchange rate and
that’s all we set to do I literally
moved back to Greenville in 2011
I began partnering up with groups are we
partnered first with businesses I
remember working with about 15
businesses on my first venture and we
hosted charity sporting tournaments with
local businesses in Greenville and it
brought all the businesses out and it
helped us to establish a rapport and
relationships with our local business
community because I knew
again I can’t run into a community’s
into a burning building to save
everybody and when I get there or I’m
the answer for everybody you know
I better be connected to some other
institutions right so I did it backwards
I came into Greenville and I did not run
into the community that I sold solely
wanted to help I went to the other
communities those relationships from
those charity tournaments we garnered
attention I leveraged that attention
into partnering with other nonprofits
and other charities and then the
platform expanded more and then local
government or local politicians took
notice and I embraced their agenda and
their desire to connect with communities
and it begins to write and expand the
platform to include them and then you
know whenever local politicians open
both in the media jumps on board and
they’re not I learned an appreciation of
how media can help get the word out
about community programs so now our
media department wasn’t our media
department it was the community’s media
our our our government and policy wasn’t
our department it was working with
government the the parameters that we
use for our program models we borrowed
from the Greenville Police Department or
whatever their crimes only areas where
that was what we said for our parameters
and you have to understand how this
threaten is proprietary control because
again I’m not saying that nonprofits and
community organizations are proprietary
in the sense that they’re only doing it
for the money
what I’m saying is that for the survival
of nonprofit groups they need to be able
to control inputs and outcomes and be
able to clearly state what
results are because remember that’s how
they appeal to their funding sources and
to further explain this coding is
computer programming for anyone who
doesn’t know computer programming is a
three-way relationship between a program
developer and the computer they manage
that relationship with their code that
code allows the computer to carry out
instructions and commands for the
program that’s set to run on it it’s a
three-way relationship now in the
nonprofit world that three-way
relationship seems to be still the
programmers present still the program
that they’re designing is present but
what they consider to be their computer
is their funding sources
that’s the three-way relationship for
your traditional nonprofit community
organization and then the community is a
beneficiary of that but it’s not a part
of the three-way relationship what I
needed was the community to be the third
party in this three-way relationship we
would develop programs so we would have
our developer you would have our
programs but who we designed and appeal
to would be the community and the
community would be the platform that we
would develop on and it would be open
source now again at the time going into
this I wasn’t calling an open source I
just knew the relationships of exchange
were the most important thing there were
times when larger agencies have come to
me and said hey we’ve got money for you
we see what you’re doing we’ve got money
for you and I would tell them I could do
it lord knows I could do a lot with your
money I’ve done more with less but if
you’re gonna send money you’re not going
to be involved with the relationship
keep it because what we need is
engagement high-level hyperactivity
engagement to a community that’s been
cut off so I began to build those
partnerships and you guys got to
understand what it means to have a
non-profit to run it for three years a
partner up with all the different
organizations and be noticed around the
community and have a little notoriety
and have yet to run a single program
hadn’t helped essentially one kid and I
held fast to the idea that when I
finally got that those relationships
would be key so we finally decided after
three years of being a roving
organization people saw us partnering up
here and there and everywhere and they
would ask what in the world do you do
[Music]
yet to be seen well we finally decided
that it was time to purchase and rent
our outreach office and the goal behind
opening up our outreach office right
here in West Greenville was to take
those partnerships and I’ll bring them
on home and we would focus on what we
did best
we focus on ways that we could keep
these relationships moving between the
community residents allowing them to
connect to community resources and
thinking about now what’s our functional
role in this three-part relationship
still and we decided it was outreach we
didn’t focus on criminal diversion we
didn’t focus on low income
we didn’t focus on education or
healthcare we did it strange stuff we
focus on outreach because if we could
take our presents and all of our
partnerships and now go out into the
community and weave our presents through
the community into their daily lives
my goal was that when a person walked
outside of their door and went to the
store to get their drink of choice my
goal is that they shouldn’t be able to
make it to the store without coming in
contact with some resources somewhere
and whenever window or door they used to
connect to those resources that window
or door should connect to everyone that
window or door should connect to other
resources so we literally ran outreach
programs into our communities and still
do but when we go out we work on behalf
of every agency no proprietary
controller you’ll see ACC civil and with
our west gate project sending teams of
street kids into the communities
knocking on doors delivering information
but they’re delivering the messaging on
behalf of not only insi civil but every
partnering organization that shares our
platform so the question who do the
results belong to how do funders
identify who is doing the work I don’t
know
but it doesn’t matter to me because the
one thing that I firmly believe in is
that more important than having a
program or nonprofit that grows greater
and greater it’s having a community that
grows greater and greater and I
literally just said this to another
nonprofit partner the other day if we as
nonprofits businesses and social service
agencies don’t function like a community
if we don’t model the behaviors of a
community how do we expect those we
intend to desire to function more like a
community because truth be told if they
became over community and their exchange
rate increased whatever things they have
that we consider to not be valuable if
the rate of exchange dis increase and
everybody was contributing to the one
platform the value of it would rise so
what we want to do is get stop looking
at the world through our organizational
lenses because we remember all those
bankers that are sitting at the top of
the bank and all those chief seat
chief c-suite executives that are
sitting at the top of their businesses
I’ll tell you in their defense they’re
all taught to see the world through
their organizational lens if it rains
it’s not raining on the community the
rain is affecting gonna affect our
business patterns today and that’s their
job to monitor and control the
operations within their space its
proprietary so every time I sit down
with the leader and I enjoy spending
time with leaders because I know that
that’s the minds that I have to change
it’s not really trying to change the
minds of the members of our low-income
communities it’s changing the mindsets
of our leaders and every time I sit down
with another leader my task at that
table is to get them to start to stop
looking at the world through their
organizational lens start looking at the
for how it engages within on their
platform and start considering how their
business and organization is engaging in
the world and in our community
and if we can weave the fabric of
community and weave the fabric of
exchange through our local neighborhoods
both the resources move naturally won’t
the Berlin Wall come down and the
resources start to move we don’t know
who will get credit for it but it also
it also reduces overlap every agency I
work with has about the same basic 5
programs and everything it’s necessary
because it’s hard to deliver one service
without having other support services so
this is not a towel it’s necessary but
you know quickly I was at a mechanic I
was at my I was at my mechanic last week
and he said hey Jay house
how’s everything going out there and I
said man the the community development
game is tough because it’s not like a
car when something malfunctions on your
car because all the parts have to work
together you immediately recognize it
because the car functions a little worse
but in the community the parts are so
separate that any of them can be not
working at any given time and because
they’re not tied to one collective
platform you don’t know what’s working
or what’s not so if you can get things
on a run platform and that platform be
the community platform and we shared
that space we all become accountable to
one another as leaders and that’s
organizational developers and we all can
reduce overlap we can then have a
conversation about what I can do that
serves you
because serving you allows me to serve
them and serving them in turn again
allows me to serve you and we keep this
relationship going and we continue to
collaborate and improves on one
another’s
ideas so that we can continue to make
the best community possible I tell my
nonprofit board members all of its hard
I got great supporters that come in with
great ideas and I tell them honestly we
don’t need another resource we don’t
need another idea our job remember is to
connect residents to resources that
already exist and if we find that
there’s a gap then an only thing do we
say this a lot and I held to these core
values and I don’t know where our next
funding source is gonna come from I
don’t know who’s gonna own the work but
I do know this as long as we are here
engaging working together sharing one
platform and making that platform our
community we will not only have great
organizations that grow greater and
greater but we will have a greater
community thank you guys [Applause]
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