 My name is Dana Linane and I'm a Policy Communications Officer here at Kellogg Foundation monitoring today's conversation and I'm standing in for Humera Fez, one of our investment managers here at WKKF. But I have supported our mission-driven investment communications work for about a decade, so I think we'll be okay. It's an honor to be host this transformational conversation about place-based investing with a racial equity lens. So our conversation, our goal for today's conversation is threefold. We want to better understand how to approach place-based investments with a racial equity lens. Next, we want to inspire investors to get involved with fund managers who are reaching entrepreneurs of color and communities of color in place-specific ways. And last, we want to explore how these elements of philanthropy, venture capital, municipal financing work together to make a more racially equitable economic environment. A little bit about the Kellogg Foundation. Children are at the heart of everything we do and we know that children live in families and families live in communities and for all children to thrive and be successful, we've learned over our 90-year history that those communities need to be equitable. So our mission-driven investment work at the Kellogg Foundation seeks to make that happen by increasing capital and widening financial systems for entrepreneurs of color. And we do that not just through participation, that's certainly part of it, but what we ultimately and fundamentally want to do is reshape capital markets. And that means we're challenging deeply held and deeply misinformed narratives about entrepreneurs of color and about risk. We're figuring out what types of financial supports create the most supportive and wraparound structures for entrepreneurs of color. And we're creating networks of entrepreneurs, fund managers, institutional investors, all of those committed to advancing racial equity. But today, we're going to do some dives and place-based investing and we're going to go a little bit deeper. We'll talk about several places, but we'll go a little bit deep on Michigan today. And as folks may know, Michigan is the home state for the Kellogg Foundation and it is one of our priority places. In Michigan and in all of our priority places, we're trying to build a more equitable economy for all. And I just want to share a little bit of data fact. So the Michigan Business Case for Racial Equity, we found through some economic modeling that by 2050, if we close those racial inequity gaps in our systems and our structures, the state stands to realize 92 billion gain in economic output. And I want to be clear that report was conducted before the pandemic. So we really look at that as a floor. The opportunity is huge here. Because of the demographic shifts and other conditions, you know, we know people of color will power Michigan's fiscal future. So today, today we're joined by a couple of our partners in our portfolio, all of whom are unleashing capital, engaging in innovative research and changing policies to create new pathways for opportunity. So Chris, Chris Rizak, CEO, Renaissance Venture Capital, Chelsea McDaniel, Senior Fellow, Activist, and then my colleague Yazid Moore, who's a program officer with the Kellogg Foundation. As a reminder, please use, drop your comments, questions in the chat. We'll be monitoring. We'd love to get some dialogue in there as well. But I am going to ask our panelists to kind of kick it off, introduce yourselves and talk about how you're working in Michigan and how it advances racial equity in the state. So, Chris, why don't I kick it off to you? And if you're not speaking, would you guys mind muting? And that's great. Wonderful. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Dana. Yeah, it's really great to be here. Thanks for inviting me and glad to be on this panel. So we started Renaissance 13 years ago because we understood that access to capital is one of the one of the huge drivers for economic growth around the country. And yet in the world I've lived in for 27 years, venture capital, more than 80% goes to three states and one of them is not Michigan. And so the idea behind Renaissance is how can we attract capital from around the country into Michigan? Because we saw great opportunity here for startup companies, for new industries, et cetera. And we just weren't getting our fair share. So the idea behind Renaissance was we created the fund of funds. So that means we don't invest in startups. We invest in the venture capital funds that invest in startups. We invest around the country and venture capital funds under the condition that they come here to look at Michigan startups. Understanding our check alone wouldn't do that. So we then created sort of this more holistic new where we said, we're going to help find the startups. So we'll work with community groups, with universities, with accelerators, and we will gather information. We will help coach up startup companies ultimately to present them to venture capital funds around the country. And we created something we call the hot list, which at any point identifies here the 50 or 60 hottest young companies in Michigan that are looking for capital. But we also looked and said, once we make this introduction, what is the other thing the startup needs, and that's customers. And so we started Renaissance actually reaching out to major corporations in Michigan who agreed ultimately to not only invest in our fund, and we've raised about $300 million to date, not only to invest in our fund, but to agree to look at becoming customers of startups that come out of this. And what we found is that quite often there were major needs that these companies had that could only be solved by a startup. And so we'll talk later about some of the ways we do this. But that was the idea behind Renaissance. We're really the place based piece of what we talked about. But what we found over time is if entrepreneurs in the Midwest are in the shadow of venture capital, tough to find, entrepreneurs of color in the Midwest are absolutely invisible. And you look at whatever measurement you want and it's pretty dire. So what we then had to do was look at how can we take and bring up entrepreneurs of color to at least get them at the table. What we do as a fund is we get entrepreneurs at the table and get venture capital funds to look at them. And what it meant is we had to help find new sources of capital at the very earliest stage to bring entrepreneurs up, but also had to look at what are the other things they need from the standpoint of mentorship and tools and infrastructure. And again, we'll talk later about how we do that, but with the idea of ultimately making it so that we're bringing up all entrepreneurs and they are all beside each other at the table with access to venture capital from around the country. So that's a hopefully a short explanation. And by the way, it's worked really well here. We've been able to attract to Michigan about $2 billion worth of capital. And we've helped about 150 startup companies to get contracts with major companies in the region. Thank you, Chris. Chelsea, why don't you kick it over to you? Introduce yourself, please. Great. Thank you. I'm Chelsea McDaniel. She her pronouns and I'm a senior fellow with activist. A little bit about activists. So we are a municipal investment research firm that focuses on something we call fiscal justice. And we believe that communities and cities that treat their residents fairly will realize strong financial outcomes. So we're a black owned firm started in 2016 and we're a collection of activists, finance professionals, social policy folks and a few other folks thrown in there. And we really built kind of the framework for activist and fiscal justice in the wake of Michael Brown's killing in 2015 in Ferguson. And just in brief about that, what kind of was that what played an important role in that for us is that we when we went down to do some rapid grant making and talk to folks on the ground about what the situation was there that kind of created this couple of things that the community lifted up to us that were really significant and really honed in on the significance of kind of this community driven insights and analysis. So those two things were that we saw increasing policing of the majority black population there to do basically one thing and that was to kind of enact the city's policy of taxation by citation. So extracting wealth from that community to help make up the significant revenue shortfall in the budget. And so that was increasing police interactions and ultimately creating the environment where this really tragic police killing happened. As we dug into that and other cities, we kind of expanded this view of municipal finance being an avenue for engagement on a lot of the justice issues we see in cities. And so our work focuses just like that very first time we went down there, our work focuses on bringing in two main things. One, we're bringing in and I think at the core of it is what organizers on the ground, folks who know the story of the place, elevating that insight and research, which isn't currently looked at in the municipal market and where they're identifying risk and problems and then bringing in our own data set of things that are currently not considered and combining the two to paint a different picture of the fiscal and the financial health of cities. I'll talk a little bit later about how we engage with community members and what we do about that. I think the last thing I'll say on the introduction because I talk a lot about municipal bonds and sometimes I get those blank stares from my family too. Municipal bonds, when we're talking about that, I'm really just thinking think of them as like I use to municipal to governments, to cities that go to pay for everything from schools to police settlements. And so that covers a lot there and I think what I'm going to talk about a little bit later but what's significant about that is who has power in that. And I think right now what we've seen with municipal bonds is that the power oftentimes is with the municipal bondholders and the credit rating agencies and there's a lot of embedded biases and racism in that that ultimately ends up supplying providing money that supplies these bad practices that have negative outcomes for folks on the ground. And the piece that we feel like is missing and we're trying to elevate is the folks on the ground who are most impacted by that using this as sort of just another lever to help push for substantial change for folks on the ground. Thank you Chelsea. Yazeem? Thanks Dana. Yazeem Moore, program officer at the WK Kellogg Foundation. Glad to be a part of this conversation. So you know we know that small businesses are a key driver you know of the overall economic vibrancy you know the financial security and health of family communities here across the state of Michigan. As an established anti-racist organization we understand that in order for everyone to thrive in today's economy we must address racial inequities. So along those lines we're making at the foundation intentional and long-term investments in partnership with grantees and investees to deploy capital to entrepreneurs and communities of color which have been locked out of. So some examples in Detroit we partnered with the JP Morgan Chase to launch the Entrepreneurial Colors Fund in 2015 to date. That fund has loaned more than 10 million dollars to entrepreneurs throughout the city. 97% of those bars are people of color and 55% are women. The loans have helped create and retain more than 1,100 jobs. So when you talk about the impact of the work that's what the impact of the work. You know for us that Entrepreneurial Colors Fund was in many ways kind of like our launch pad investment in this space in Michigan because it helped us do a couple of things. One it helped us kind of identify lessons, learnings, pain points you know when considering other investment opportunities and some of those things included the importance of TA technical assistance, pre and post, flexibility and thinking about putting together loan funds and packages. You know the piece about you know being explicit and we can't leave that out and can't be understated but being explicit about racial equity and building on ramps to create those opportunities and wealth for communities of colors in the ways that Chris kind of mentioned earlier if Michigan was being locked out of venture capital opportunities what do you think communities of color are being locked out as well too? So when we take a look at the work that we've done in Detroit you know as I said kind of our launch pad investment you know we begin to kind of sprinkle those learnings to other places so and Battle Creek you know our hometown or our mothership is located. You know we brought together local partners to launch a 10 million dollar small business loan fund to spur economic development. That fund was led by Northern Initiatives, a community financial development institution who provides that capital and TA that we talked about early to small business owners who are deemed too risky for funding by traditional lenders. So as we know COVID-19 had a disproportionate impact on impact on black, brown and women-led businesses. Lack of access to PPP or in many cases being exclusively locked out of it showed us the challenges for these entrepreneurs with traditional banking. Even before the pandemic we knew that access to capital was a trouble spot for groups like black business owners as they were denied loans at twice the rate of their white counterparts per findings from groups like the center of responsible lending. So taking those lessons we talked about looking in Grand Rapids right of working with a group called Run Day Progress Capital who's a racial equity-oriented community development financial institution and addressing the relief funding gap by deploying flexible loans. Again talking about the learnings that we've gathered from Detroit about the flexibility in creating these loan packages and funds and actually being able to you know provide that capital entrepreneurs. But one of the things that Run Day did that was really helpful throughout this process is that you know looking at the technical assistance piece and actually bringing community a part of that conversation to talk about what they need right and the work that we did in Grand Rapids was really in response a direct response of looking at what COVID-19 had done in terms of looking at the rollout of the PPP and particularly us hearing fears early on that you know maybe 90% of businesses owned by people of color would be locked out of that process for opportunities for several reasons whether that was they didn't have relationships with banks or whether some other things that really made it difficult for the communities that we care about to be able to kind of help them to develop in that wealth and opportunities. You know another bright spot in 2019 you know more than 260 million dollars was raised or leveraged by WKKF grantees focused on women and people of own businesses. During the pandemic you know those grantees utilized that funding made available through our foundations a grant making process and leveraged those opportunities through CARES Act to ensure that equitable access to employment opportunities continues across the state again building on the learnings that we've kind of looked at and looking at that launch plan investment in Detroit and then beginning to kind of go deeper and sprinkle some of those lessons and opportunities in places like paddle creek and Grand Rapids but also being able to spread those lessons across the state as well too as we think about creating opportunities for communities of color businesses owned by communities of color to be able to kind of access the capital and resources. Izzy thank you and thank you all so let's dive in with some questions so Chelsea you talk specifically around community voice and community driven and the data and the research right I mean even as simple as just aggregating by race right and looking at those numbers talk a little bit more about the community voice looking at that data how why do you do it and how do you do it? Great thanks and I think I'll use the example of we did a kind of deep dive research into the Flint the recent Flint settlement bond so I'll try to use that as an example for for kind of how we work so our work with on and our research on that really began with kind of standing relationships with some academics in the area who worked in that area other activist investors and then actually Izzy put us in contact with some other great folks on the ground there who do amazing work who kind of raised the issue now obviously no there's no issue with there being a settlement but there were a lot of concerns that came up around substantial or the lack of rather policy changes and substantial behavioral changes in in conjunction with this so our process for that kind of went with like started off talking to some of those folks on the ground and and figuring out what where was what was the status of things right now obviously there was there was a community call for some some sort of financial restitution but there were other things that that weren't that hadn't been thresholds that hadn't been met or means that hadn't been met as well at one point we spoke to someone at Flint Rising New York who framed it up as as basically what would it cost to to make Flint whole and it and it wasn't it wasn't just this settlement and so I think our job as you know investment researchers and change there sorry my screen just went a little weird you can still see me okay great it might just be the chat popping up thank you um so we we kind of worked um we start with kind of measuring the risk uh and we kind of do our deep dive into that with our own data sets we kind of did this in conjunction this time because we had such great community partners that were sending us stuff at the same time and so that's really the the next part of is this community sourced intelligence you know this is the picture we're getting from a traditional finance analysis adding these fiscal justice indicators um and then what the community source intelligence is telling us of the story of how we got here which many of us know in the case of Flint but the story of really how folks are living on the ground right now and what their asks are in response to this municipal bond um and how the state might show up differently and to meet some of those very um real needs of the people um and then our third step kind of with that is is releasing this research and elevating ways that bondholders might get engaged so when I say bondholder engagement if you think um if you think of like the traditional shareholder activism or engagement it's along those lines it just doesn't happen very often in bonds uh in the bond market but we're trying to change that in municipal bonds and so it's lifting up the specific ass of um of the community and particularly in Flint that was around um lifetime health care um that was looking at um the pipes that were actually in people's homes that were still leaching particularly led and the concerns there um those were also some of the people that bought up um what's going on right and what's not what's been going on in Benton Harbor but it is now finally getting national attention and I say that just because I can't stress enough how important that that local insight is you know we can um we we like to add in and add what the financial risk um is of that and try to make the argument to investors on this is this is a uncompensated financial risk and and doesn't make sense socially or financially and that's you know there's a reason and a case a business case there um for advocating for change for that but I think we you know we really rely on the folks on the ground who have that tremendous insight um and I think the final goal there is really then to to shift that capital and power back to communities so use our position as researchers and lean on municipal finance to help do that. That's great thanks Chelsea and Yazid how are you how are you lifting up community voice and why is it important? Well you know for us Dana you know community voice and community engagement is is key for us it's a you know it's a key part of what we call our DNA of the foundation right particularly also along with racial equity of that being a part of our DNA because we believe that people you know have an inherent capacity to solve their own problems of yet to become a meet any community that doesn't know what they want and what they need and how they articulated that right. The challenge for us is that how do we begin to kind of enable those conditions to lift and step into that space and so when we think about our grantees and investees here in Michigan you know everyone just deploying capital is also providing that critical non financial support as well so and that's really in terms about how we've engaged with partners on the ground so hearing from them what they need in these spaces right yes it's good about meeting the capital but what are some of the other non financial support that they may actually need just in terms about how they kind of help prepare a loan application coaching business models right and thinking about networks and even scaling the work and so that's always been fundamental to us in terms of centering voice in the work because when you center voice in the work it shows up best and so an example I'd like to probably give around that is kind of referencing back to some of the work that Ronde progress uh progress capital did in Grand Rapids you know very networked and you know did extensive outreach with the business community the chamber other community based groups other you know entrepreneurs support organizations that are kind of working in that space and actually brought them all to the table to say hey how can we build a loan package a loan process right that works for community right that benefits community and so in using that firsthand knowledge to build that under that loan underwriting tool in those processes right you know that really tapped into the lived experiences and resiliency of community of people who've been thinking about how to access capital I think that's been something that's been really understated is that really tapping into and looking at people's lived experiences as they're starting businesses right you know in terms of using that as a value add as a part of that process and so when we you know when they receive a loan application right you know we looked at those looked at the entrepreneur and you know given the issues about what they might have been experiencing from an unconscious bias and discriminations and inequities right and use that as a part of that process to kind of like make sure that we were building a package and a level of supports right that was being innovative but in also some ways maybe disruptive as well too disruptive in the positive sense right to ensure that we're putting together a tailored package that allow communities and business owners to kind of come in here and get the support and resources that they need to actually help and support and run their businesses and that didn't happen if we don't if we don't if we're not asking an engaging community about what they need at the end of the day that's great Izzy thank you and I think that lived experience is so important understanding where people are at and meeting them where they're at so I'm going to jump to a question in the chat here because I was one of the questions I had for folks so you know the Kellogg Foundation we do invest a lot in a couple different places and as Izzy mentioned we think about how we share those lessons and learn and what is applicable what is replicable so in Chris and Chelsea certainly you guys work all uh Chelsea you work all in different cities across the country and and Chris when I uh I do know that you guys are doing a lot in terms of sharing your lessons learned to other places on how to do this and how to do it well I think I I gulied you last night you're the even the Dean of BC in Michigan right now so I think the word's getting out so so what I want to hear from you guys is in terms of what are you know in the chat let's see are these what are the lessons in place-based network um what is the infrastructure that's needed and do we need folks like a WKKF or JP Morgan to make this work so Chris why don't you start that off please yeah there's a lot there I'll try and go out a little bit you know because he was talking about something that's pretty important to us because I talked earlier about how a big part of our goal is to take help local companies find investors from around the country and this hot list we create where we pull from the community and we found in the first couple years you know the hot list was as you would expect in the tech community you know there's a there's a natural sort of organic way that that happens in Ann Arbor you know that's been there for decades but if you're an entrepreneur of color in Detroit or in Pontiac or in Flint you know there isn't a natural pathway and so we actually we started working with the foundation community and helped create something called the first capital fund because we found there was a big gap of the first $50,000 to a company that could ultimately be you know a world leader but that first $50,000 or $100,000 was difficult and so we helped with foundation help we started this first capital fund and then later we actually went to the state it's not through the economic development commission and I wrote a white paper on it about how from a state economic development standpoint a relatively small investment could have an outsized impact and so Invest Detroit Ventures is a fund in Detroit that I chair we started this fund but with a particular mission toward focusing on underrepresented entrepreneurs so you know for instance last year we we invested in I believe was 85 companies and 60% were women or minority entrepreneurs which in the world of venture capital is like a 10x over what you know you typically expect and the whole idea is you know we create capital we create mentorship and then we bring everybody to the table so that when we run our hot list when we bring in hundreds of venture capital funds in Michigan into Michigan now it looks like a much more representative group and everybody is prepared to be at the table so that is a big difference and it was partnerships that we did you know to to do that so that was infrastructure that we were all kind of you know throughout state we're kind of creating as we were as we were going along but now if you look at where the gaps are the gaps are fewer and and in each area you know we're getting there and where I think you were going with this is you know this is replicable so the what we found in Renaissance you know with the data we've received where we're we're getting startup companies capital we're getting them customers and really the important element is and I've spent 13 years convincing other people this this isn't charity I mean our investors are getting better than market returns by doing this and and that was you know I when I'm sorry I'm taking a little bit long but when I first raised the fund there was a CEO of a local company who believed in the mission and so the company invested and then he pulled me aside said by the way I told my CFO this is a grant this isn't an investment and you know that investor now is going to make probably four times their money on that initial investment for something that they thought was a grant so with the success we've had we've been approached by a number of areas of the country we made a pretty fundamental decision early on you know there was some thought of you know we'd like you to create a consulting group and consult with this and what we sort of said is we're just going to open source this we will share all of our learnings with everyone we serve on boards in other regions and all that we don't ask anything for it our feeling is the more funds like ours there are they're not competitive at all the more funds like ours there are the better it is for all of us and we can share data we can share you know learnings and so first place that we replicated this was in Cincinnati which was about eight years ago in Houston two years ago and actually this week Milwaukee was the third location and then the next one that's been announced is Dallas and again a completely open source model run locally because we really feel you have to have local people who understand the region doing it but we've got you know 13 years worth of best practices that we can share with them that you know are probably 90 effective in their region that's great thank you chris and chelsea what are you finding how are you navigating or learning from the different communities you work with yeah um thank you for that i think um i think the thing we we've learned um over time is that framing is a big piece of this that the reason they're well one of the reasons why there are a number of these social and financial risks um and and they kind of exist and um and without having an impact on the financial space it seems like or the market's not responding to them is because they're not seen as that and so we um we actually there's a recent study that was just published um out of the the worton sg lab they used some of our data and looked at um you know the different indicators and if they were were material and predicting the outcomes of these municipal bonds so on the making the financial argument side of it and framing um you know increased policing and and harassment and surveillance of people and the risk that that caused the long-term risk of settlements of whatever many other things or um the risk in the case of a flint of um being allowed to take on additional debt when they had already met their debt cap um they're they're that's um we're realizing that the framing and the urgency behind it behind it is um really important for folks and so we've laid out a fiscal justice framework um that helps people understand these things actually are material even though they're not currently being treated like that at least in a financial way and then i think the second piece is getting this this data together um and so getting that from the the community um we recently launched a credit rating firm to help facilitate that and so um we are training community members and partners on how to um how to integrate some of this data and collect and share this data um and do these types of analyses of their own cities um so that folks own part of that process too and collecting the data um and there's a certain amount of um community authenticity with that as well um but that that is that's taking yeah that's that's an issue that's an area where scaling up is is uh is going to be a process i think um right now this the the data we're collecting in the data the community that members are providing it's not on your regular annual you know your CAF or your report for the city um shoot sometimes the stuff they're supposed to be reporting on is not yet in there yet despite the the new regulations on that so um that's that's where i think the that further infrastructure is needed and we're trying to build that out and i mean more times than not we we go to community members we were just talking to some folks in in louisville and they have done the door to door uh visits to understand the dynamics of evictions and how policing is connected to developments push to try and push people out of a historically black neighborhood there the wrestle neighborhood and so they have that data where they're asking they know the right freedom of information act requests to ask for and they've got those FOIA requests for us um so it's really it's in a lot of ways enabling a platform and helping to give them a framework um and then translating that into the financial risk and and doing our part um to mobilize bondholders to um advocate on behalf of those those community asks thank you chelsea thank you and that both of you shared the importance of that data looking at different data set sharing data so i think that's some really good learning lessons there and chelsea i can tell you spent time in louisville i was raised there and uh you said it right so i want to go i want to go back to you know when we look at the opportunities we often try to pull the right levers um to advance our work so i want to understand how do you tap into those levers how do they intersect so i'm talking about policy grant making investment and i'm going to throw in their narrative too because you guys all have talked about that um and even uzi you had mentioned being explicit about racial equity so uzi why don't you start off a little bit please yeah so you know you know you know to achieve racial equity right when we think about this we must take a systemic change approach to the work right it has to be about systems change and so you know at the foundation you know obviously we we deploy you know both crack capital and investment capital but alongside those other tools as you talked about right we talk about things like narrative change right and begin to kind of have intentional conversations about well what are we solving for right and how do we begin to kind of create equitable opportunities for those that we're looking at and so you know when we think about you know the interventions and investments you know that we're making in this space you know i kind of touched on the early it's about really disrupting right the existing policies you know that uh you know that you know push these inequities and as in the case as we saw like in the first rounds of ppp deployment right and so we're making these investments and we're making these intentional conversations and having these conversations around racial equity and there are the change because we're thinking about institutions about the policy failures right that allow things uh you know in terms of like how pp was deployed and and how banks may be a little hesitant and resistant to lend to you know the people that we work on behalf of and so it kind of takes me back to the story you know of uh adrian vinnett uh who's michigan's first female plumber right uh you know and a master plumber at that right and founded her firm called bancari and so you know she secured you know a contract to kind of help you know build that new basketball facility uh in downtown detroit but but you know that project required her to you know invest hundreds of thousand dollars up front and permits you know to be able to kind of get rental equipment and all those other things she didn't have that type of access she didn't have that type of capital but what was there for her to be able to do is that you know we had an entrepreneur's of color fund where she was able to tap into that tap into that fund to begin to kind of like cover some of those things that allow her one not only just to pay her her workers but also to think about the permits and equipment rentals and so you know with that proper funding right uh you know she was able to access that capital right and so all the things that we do you talk about these spectrums right you talk about policy grant making investment you know these are the spaces that we step in right to really try to be disruptive from their positive way right and I think when we're most successful is that when we're being disrupted and we're being pushing in terms about looking at opportunities that really kind of like create these opportunities in space for people who've been locked out of traditional capital needs to be able to kind of access those things that hadn't been available to them in the past thank you and Chris how are you guys kind of leveraging these you know one of the things I'm going to follow something you talked about you know um one of the things we had to deal with is when dealing with large organizations they put things in buckets often and we had to challenge those buckets so when we started doing this and I mentioned a minute ago somebody said well this is this is a grant so it's going to come from this small pool of grant money and what we're challenging was the notion that you can accomplish certain social missions that you have and certain societal missions and it doesn't have to come from kind of this money that's thrown on the side you know that there isn't there's a false choice there between you know doing good for the community and actually you know doing something that makes financial sense for you and that was the big push we had so we were able to draw on you know I would say if you've looked at the money that came into renaissance very little of it would have been money that would have gone toward the kind of social mission that we have it was you know money that would have gone to into a bank account or something else and we were able to use that without pulling from the grant side of the house we were able to use the investment side of the house to accomplish certain goals and that was that was a pretty important development for us and it took us probably five or six years to prove it out so that we no longer had to kind of we no longer had to go into into rooms and hear that choice and try and try and have them unlearn something that had been you know kind of deeply rooted in the organization thank you Chris so I think we want to do I want to I want to ask all the panelists what else is needed you know how do we build a roll bat for others to do this work in places Chelsea why don't you kick it off hmm I think so in addition to what I was saying about the framework in the data I think some more robust understanding of municipal finance and that it really does fuel or act as a supply line oftentimes for these inequities in cities I think for both investors to understand whether those are holdings that they have or even just understanding the bondholder engagement is an avenue to sort of engage with these cities and to push for change I think that's an important piece also with with activists and organizers on the ground I think a lot of folks they tend to know what the issues are and I think educating as well around like municipal finance can also be a tool and helping make it make that accessible and available for them and I think yeah I think those are the main things that the data piece that I keep coming back to and just the the infrastructure around that feels really important so we're addressing the right things when we when we do do the bondholder engagement and campaigns great and easy I'm going to ask you what what what what are the gaps what do we need to do well you know you know Danny you touched on something earlier you know around you know what what the what is right and really what the what is is that we're doing work to kind of reshape uh capital systems for racial equity right that's the work that's the main thing that's the main thing right and so having foundations and other institutional investors right you know who are able to kind of accept that increased financial risk right you know during the startup period to kind of create and help support and grow these promising and innovative business models right to begin to can ensure that we're building those own raps and those pathways for uh entrepreneurs of color and communities of colors to build wealth right and to and to gain opportunity in spaces in in that regards and so I know one of the other things I think that you know can't lose sight on is that you know we kind of talked about this earlier too is that you know knowing that you know I think it's been important around the PRIs but also knowing too that they're complementary things that we can do in addition to a PRI right and thinking about the technical insistence that we can probably provide organizations that non-financial capital right and I think sometimes often people just think well the money's there that's all they need well no we may need some other coaching and guidance and TA and so you know like I say well that's pre-long or post-long right because at the end of the day we want to make sure that people are being set up you know to have sustained success and to grow wealth and things of that nature so I think that's one of the things that I think it's always going to be needed is that we're being intentional about you know what are we actually after right and we're using our platforms and kind of creating those tables to really think about transforming the practices of mainstream financial institutions as it relates to opening up capital and opportunities for communities who are looking for it. Thank you Yazid and Chris I'm going to throw one two questions at you because there's one in the chat I want to make sure we hit but what is needed what are what's the gaps what's needed and then there's a question if you do you know if any other peer initiatives in other states or regions that are doing the work that you're doing yeah um so you we talked about some of the gaps and getting companies to to readiness but I want to flip it a little bit and there's another gap you know we talked earlier about what are the levers you're pulling and there's the other question of who's pulling the levers right and so you know if you look at the venture world it looks like the problem we describe with startup companies it's even it's more entrenched in the venture world and so how do you create a situation where you've got a more representative group of investors under the thesis that a more representative group of investors will invest in a more representative group of companies um and so you know that's been a problem I will say there is since the George Floyd incident there has been more of a recognition it's still not there yet and I there is a fear I have that it's kind of the shiny object right now and that you know it won't last but um the the challenge is there's two ways you can try to address it you can simply play the short game and and say we're going to sell something right now or you can play the long game you know this is an apprenticeship business and the idea of okay we're going to create five venture funds run by um smart underrepresented folks who've never done venture capital is not necessarily the way I don't think it's the way to do it what I'd rather see is a truest apprenticeship business I go back to my first two years in venture capital I was pretty bad and you know if I would have been thrust into running my own fund then it wouldn't have gone well but the idea of creating fellowships you know internships so that folks can rise through apprenticeships and then just go out on the road if they want or take over the firms that they're in um that to me is is the way to do it we've actually started that at invest Detroit ventures we run a fellowship but we were on two or three people a year a typically African American associates with the understanding they're probably not going to stay and that's fine because they're going to get recruited out into something bigger and you know we were bootstrapping this you know we talked to some national organizations who didn't necessarily get it so we just bootstrapped it um but now we're putting people out into the community you know two three at a time that are going to change things and I think that is a big gap that needs to be addressed in a more scaled fashion than what we're doing thank you Chris so I heard a lot of good takeaways I love how you guys technical assistance financial supports coaching up data you know a lot of and being very explicit so we are going to wrap up folks um I'd really appreciate it first one I think so cap for hosting this conversation and being so explicit about the racial equity throughout the conference um you know closing the racial and equity gap is critical to realizing the full creative and economic potential of all Michiganders and in fact people were in your communities where you live you know I do think the models practices examples shared here today remind us of what's possible an urgent call if you will um you know Chris you mentioned you know hopefully not a shining on but hopefully an urgent call for actionable investments in entrepreneurs of color and communities of color so Chris thank you Chelsea thank you Izzy thank you your voices perspectives and work is so important and again thank you to so cap and everyone who joined us here today be well