Focus Groups

Recent EdBuild report research on school racial disparity revealed high-poverty districts that serve mostly students of color receive about $1,600 less per student than the national average, while school districts that are predominately white and poor receive about $130 less. Brown vs. Board of Education overturned school segregation in 1954, but more than half of U.S. students attend “racially concentrated” schools. Learn about creating a counter-force to systemic racism to influence K-12 school culture and bridge opportunity gaps through enhanced learning programs. Presented by Higher Achievement

Stories are important. They can move people to care about an issue when facts and data alone fall short. But storytelling also can be challenging, particularly when it comes to identifying and telling stories that illustrate the need and impact of our work. It can also be difficult to make space for creative storytelling approaches. Focus group leaders will share the challenges, lessons, and possible solutions associated with incorporating storytelling in your mission work. Presented by Pillars Fund

President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper, now an initiative of the Obama Foundation, is centrally focused on reducing barriers and expanding opportunity for boys and young men of color. However, we recognize that creating communities where boys and young men of color can thrive must address interconnected issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, immigration and socioeconomic status. Join a candid conversation about the progress made and the work that remains to create programs and policies rooted in the knowledge that the challenges and opportunities facing young men, young women and gender non binary youth of color are deeply intertwined. Presented by The Obama Foundation

Having trouble convincing people to implement interventions that better support marginalized groups in your community? Targeted universalism (TU) could help you implement population-level interventions while elevating a shared understanding of equity among involved stakeholders. Learn three practical steps FSG used to socialize the TU concept in a new community initiative in Staten Island, New York. And after a brief Q&A, you’ll be paired with a partner to plan how to leverage TU to reduce disparities in your community. Presented by FSG

After the urban protests of the nineteen sixties, President Lyndon Johnson’s Kerner Commission, composed predominantly of White men who bore the imprimatur of the political establishment, concluded in 1968 that the national had made little progress in reducing poverty, inequality and racial injustice. In 2018, the Milton Eisenhower Foundation and Temple University Press published the Foundation’s Fifty Year Update of the Kerner Commission, titled Healing Our Divided Society.  The Update concluded that, from 1968 to 2018, the overall child poverty rate, the deep poverty rate, income inequality, wealth inequality and public school segregation all increased.  Mass incarceration has become the present iteration of slavery and Jim Crow. In response, Healing is challenging Independent Sector to better communicate these trends over the last fifty years and to better convey the existing evidence on what works – and what doesn’t work.  After almost fifty presentations on Healing around the nation, the Foundation has found that much of the American White public is not aware of the evidence.  Or is in denial.  Or does not care. The original 1968 Kerner Commission concluded that “new will” was needed to scale up what works.  To create “new will,”  the Reverend Martin Luther King was assembling an interracial economic justice coalition among the poor, the working class and the middle class when was assassinated shortly after he endorsed the Kerner Commission in 1968.  Running for President in 1968, Senator Robert Kennedy also endorsed the Kerner Commission – and then he too was assassinated. The Eisenhower Foundation now is speaking out on how nonprofit organizations and foundations need to play a much greater leadership role in the creation of “new will,”  as America heads into 2020, a critical year for the future of what presently is a betrayed democracy. Presented by The Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation

School attendance is key to achievement, graduation and beyond, but research shows clothing insecurity is among the primary reasons children don’t attend school. Government and private programs work to address food and housing insecurity, but only a few address the lack of appropriate and adequate clothing. Learn about this crisis, grassroots movements to address the challenge and raise its profile, and approaches to move the needle. Presented by Cradles to Crayons

Across the country a diverse group of actors from nonprofits to government to the private sector are working together to breakdown barriers to voter participation. In this Focus Group session, Tiana Epps-Johnson, Founder & Executive Director of Center for Tech and Civic Life, will kick-off the conversation by sharing background on the disparities we see among the US electorate, common barriers to voting, and examples of promising work being done by CTCL and others to increase voter engagement. She will then facilitate a group conversation about what it will take to see inclusive, sustained participation in US elections.