Shared Learning

This lookback summarizes progress by the Greater Buffalo Racial Equity Roundtable (GBRER) over the past five years (2017 - 2022) and articulates emerging strengths and challenges of its development processes and organization.

As this report makes clear, the region continues to face challenges, yet there are numerous bright spots that point to positive transformation.

A labor market study in the Buffalo Niagara region. This study focuses on workforce development challenges, key industries, and the local workforce ecosystem, with recommendations to address workforce shortages, diversity issues, talent retention challenges, and alignment between education and employer needs. ​This study outlines various recommendations for initiatives in Buffalo.

Stakeholder engagement is the art and science of becoming more connected as a grantmaker. It is based on the belief that those closest to a problem have important insights that will help shape solutions.

In partnership with the Buffalo Together Community Response Fund, The John R. Oishei Foundation prepared a compendium of actionable research and neighborhood investment plans that are inherently connected to the East Side neighborhood of Buffalo.

We write these words as practitioners, working in partnership with community, centering the needs, lived experiences, wisdom and leadership of our Indigenous, Black and brown neighbors.

Developed through a collaborative effort in 2021, the RRP is a $300 million private and public co-investment in three interconnected geographic areas. Investment in these areas catalyzes economic growth for the entire region. Each area is at a different stage in its economic development, so the level of project detail provided herein varies.

In a series of posts on the CEP blog in summer 2020, leaders from more than a dozen policy-oriented foundations responded to five key questions that arose from the CEP research report, Policy Influence: What Foundations are Doing and Why. This series, packaged here in its entirety, shares these funders’ thoughts — in their own words — on why and how foundations can effectively engage in public policy to achieve their goals.

In this resource, we share these funders’ responses to five key questions in the hopes that their insights can help others engage more — and more effectively — in the policy realm, and to advance a more nuanced discussion of philanthropic engagement in policy.

This report summarizes the results of a field scan conducted between January and August 2021 as part of this strategy refresh.

This paper outlines a bold vision and a strategic approach to show how we can change the Black East Side into a great place to live, work, play, and raise a family.

Amplifying black excellence. One business at a time.  Unveiling the hidden gems: Celebrating black excellence in business, community, and culture!

What does the existing literature say about patterns and possibilities on the Eastside of Buffalo?

Opportunity in the Queen City was initiated by the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo in early 2022, with support from the John R. Oishei Foundation, in an effort to further a vibrant and inclusive Greater Buffalo region with opportunity for all.

In this episode we hear from john a. powell, who is our director, and a professor of law and African American Studies here at UC Berkeley. In the interview we discuss a brand new primer we’ve just published on the targeted universalism policy approach, a model conceptualized by professor powell. 

This suite of self-assessment resources addresses all of these imperatives, but with a unique twist: It helps funders like you respond to the current moment of social foment and the enduring drive for long-overdue justice by exploring your own power.

Homeownership is deeply tied to prosperity, wealth, and the American dream. But the credit needed to achieve homeownership remains out of reach for many people of color, resulting in significant and persistent racial disparities across New York state.

Objectives: Continue processing together the root causes of racial inequities in Buffalo. Delve more deeply into strategies deployed by other place-based foundations centering racial
equity and community. Advise consultants on usefulness/applicability of peer foundations’ experience to Oishei’s strategic options. Practice elements of a learning organization.

There is a hunger for fresh approaches and urgent demand for novel policy methods that can break through our political gridlock, address the problems of our time and create new avenues for thriving individuals and communities. Targeted universalism is an approach that supports the needs of the particular while reminding us that we are all part of the same social fabric.

This report seeks to expand the narrative associated with racial equity by adding a compelling economic argument to the social justice goal.

Laws and programs designed to benefit vulnerable groups, such as the disabled or people of color, often end up benefiting all of society.

In this two-part series, a collaboration with Arizona Grantmakers Forum and the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project, we walk through the fundamentals of trust-based philanthropy. 

This report, the Harder We Run, uses the State of Black Buffalo Project as a reference point to determine if African Americans have made progress over the past thirty-one years. It aims to determine if the Black socioeconomic trajectory is trending upward or downward. “Progress” is a shadowy term that requires careful definition.

ZERO-SUM THEORY: Many white Americans view race as a zero-sum game: There’s an us and a them, and what’s good for them is bad for us.

Evidence that board diversity benefits firms is mixed. A 2015 meta-analysis of 140 research studies of the relationship between female board representation and performance found a positive relationship with accounting returns, but no significant relationship with market performance. Other research has found no relationship to performance at all.

The vision of Aspen FSP’s New Wealth Agenda is a future in which everyone has enough wealth to maintain financial stability and resilience, to invest in their family’s well-being, and to participate fully in society, the economy, and our democracy. We can create that future by 2050 by achieving a ten-fold increase in the wealth of households of color and the bottom 50 percent of the population by net worth.

Throughout this edition, we look at the practice of emergent learning, advocating for an approach that is adaptive, inclusive, transparent, and curious. In the development of this issue, our formative conversations with guest editors Melanie Matthews and Shantelice White resonated with urgent themes regarding the processes and mindsets that allow learning to thrive.

Having wealth, or a family’s assets minus their debts, is important not just for the rich—everyone needs wealth to thrive. Yet building the amount of wealth needed to thrive is a major challenge. Nearly 13 million U.S. households have negative net worth. Millions more are low wealth; not having the assets or liquidity needed to maintain financial stability and invest in themselves.