Kevin A. Roberts
Roll through the blocks that make up the Normandy Schools Collaborative’s footprint, and you’ll feel it: Certain sectors of these two dozen small communities are struggling. While many of the 36,000 residents fall into the middle-income category, nearly half the children are growing up in poverty; crime festers; the school district is only provisionally accredited. Since 2009, the folks at the not-for-profit Beyond Housing have been focused on this area. They’ve labored at the macro level (by building affordable housing and the Carter Commons commercial hub, for instance) as well as the micro level (by assisting residents with health, personal finance, and other challenges). Now, in an effort to scale up, the group’s executive director, Chris Krehmeyer, seeks $200 million. He’s framing his pitch to big companies and wealthy donors as an initial public offering. Invest in Beyond Housing’s program, he says, and the return will be a solution “once and for all.”
YOU TRULY BELIEVE YOU CAN PULL THIS OFF? With enough capital, sure. It’s not rocket science. It’s just hard. And if we don’t tackle the hard stuff, we’re going to have the same results we’ve had for the last 30 years.
WHY PRESENT THIS AS AN IPO? We’re trying to get to scale, and I can’t get to scale without more capital. We believe we’re doing all the right stuff: building and rehabbing housing, doing economic development, investing in schools and community health, putting on after-school and summer programs, working with the municipal governments, all the things that’ll make up a successful place. But if we keep doing this on an incremental basis, our fear is it’ll take too long, and it won’t sustain itself.
HOW HAVE POTENTIAL DONORS REACTED TO YOUR PITCH? When I say “$200 million,” people are like, “That’s a lot of money for that place.” And I say, “That’s what it’s going to take, though.” And it’s not all philanthropy—$90 million of it is. The rest is equity and debt to do housing and economic-development projects. So there is a financial return to a piece of this IPO. But most of the return will be felt in people’s lives: Kids are doing better in school. The crime rate goes down. The recidivism rate at emergency rooms goes down. Property valuations go up. The tax base gets stronger. There’s not any one thing we can do to make any of these metrics magically jump off the charts. All this stuff has to happen together.
ARE DONORS ASKING FOR SPECIFICS ON THOSE METRICS? Yes—as they should. I don’t want it to be just charity, where you give me dollars, we help families, and I tell you about it, and you feel good afterward. We’re still going to tell you those stories, but it’s not just, “Here’s a wonderful picture of puppies and babies.” I’m also going to measure.
A KEY PART OF YOUR PLAN IS TO SERVE 20 PERCENT OF THE FAMILIES WITH THE GREATEST NEED. WHY THAT NUMBER? There’s some research—even if it’s nowhere near as robust as we’d like—that says that you hit a tipping point in a given area if you can really help that 20 percent. And help them not just through what we call “transactional work,” which is handing out food. That’s an important thing to do if families go hungry, but if that’s all you do, they’re going to keep coming back the next week until we get to the root causes.
HOW DO YOU GET TO ROOT CAUSES? Typically, folks come to us for a very specific need. We try to address that. But then, through our centralized intake system, we try to ascertain: What else is there? What’s happening from an income standpoint? Can you get into the job market? Is childcare a problem? Is transportation a problem? We offer and provide all those services to you over time and build up confidence and trust. Then your life is not as chaotic, and you go from financially stable to financially independent.
A HOLISTIC APPROACH, THEN. HASN’T THAT BEEN TRIED BEFORE? As a region, we’ve spent a lot of philanthropic money in neighborhoods like this, but it’s all disjointed. The intentional connectedness of our work is what’s different. And that we’ve built trust in this community because we’ve been here a long time. Now, we don’t have the hubris to think we can do it all, because we can’t. Other not-for-profits are doing great work. They’re just choosing to do their work in a way that most folks have always done it. And we’re saying that if we don’t do it differently, we’re going to have the same outcomes we’ve always had.
CAN’T THE GOVERNMENT DO THIS? No. This is about on-the-ground, real-life work, and there are times you need to be nimble and quick and able to pivot. But they can certainly be a resource provider.
WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF THE ARGUMENT THAT IT’D BE EASIER TO END POVERTY BY RAISING $200 MILLION AND SIMPLY DISPERSING IT THROUGH A UNIVERSAL BASIC-INCOME PROGRAM, AS OPPOSED TO THROUGH YOUR ORGANIZATION? I would love to pilot something like that here. I’ve seen the preliminary results from Stockton, California, and I think there’s something there. I do wonder: If everybody here got part of that money, would they leave? Part of our dilemma is that as we help people become successful, they leave. And I get it: This place doesn’t have everything you’d want. So when we originally started building grocery stores and movie theaters, people were saying, “What are you doing?” Well, the answer is, we need to help build a place that people want to stay in and come to.
HOW’S YOUR FUNDRAISING GOING? Well, 80 percent of all charitable giving comes from high-wealth individuals, and they tend to be more interested in specific issues—children, health, public education, art—rather than zero in on one whole community’s development. It’s not as if they don’t care. It’s just hard to understand somebody else’s life experience if you haven’t lived it.
HOW DO YOU BREAK THROUGH THAT? I take people on tours all the time. This is a place they might not drive on their own, right? But jump in the car with me and I’ll drive around and show you stuff, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’ll say, “Oh, over here, there’s some challenges.” And they’re like, “Well, how do you address that?” And I tell them all the roadblocks, and they say, “Oh. I didn’t realize it’s so complicated.” So, making it tangible and real, so people can fully understand and conclude, “OK, so if you get help, these are things that you can do.” And I say, “Yes. Can you help us?”
WHAT RECOURSE WILL RESIDENTS HAVE IF THEY DON’T LIKE WHAT YOU’RE DOING? At the end of the day, we’re allowed to be in this leadership role in these communities. If we’re not desired, we can’t stay. This work is not about doing anything on our own. This work is about trust.
