CEO Podcast: Shannon Polk, Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation

Paul Krutko: Welcome to Ann Arbor SPARK's CEO Podcast…Conversations on Economic Opportunity. My name is Paul Krutko, and I'm the President and CEO of Ann Arbor SPARK.

Today I'm joined by Shannon Polk, President and CEO of the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation.

Shannon brings a really interesting background to this work, with experience spanning philanthropy, nonprofit leadership, law, and ministry. Before joining AAACF, she led The Witness Foundation, worked with organizations including the C.S. Mott Foundation and Michigan Breastfeeding Network, and consulted on community and equity initiatives with organizations across the state.

At AAACF, she's helping guide the foundation's work around economic mobility, community investment, youth development, and long-term opportunity across Washtenaw County - including through their S.E.E.D.S. framework and some recent research around housing and regional challenges.

Just before we start, one of the things that is very important for our listening audience to understand is that sometimes we can be the tale of two counties, if that makes sense. SPARK's work is to try to create opportunity and jobs for folks, but the foundation's job is how we can help everybody participate in that. So I'm really excited about talking with Shannon today.

So for those who are not familiar, can you start by sharing a bit about the foundation and the role it plays in the community?

Shannon Polk: Certainly. So the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation was founded in 1963. And over those years, we have always focused on how we can improve the quality of life for the residents of Washtenaw County. And now with over $400 million in assets, we are looking to provide support in every area of the county. And so one of the things we focus on is economic mobility. Whether you like it or not, this is a capitalist society. And so we always look at it as if we're not helping people improve themselves economically, we're not actually helping them.

And then once we do that, then really looking to help them understand that now that you have that level of financial security, let's make sure you have the quality of life to enjoy what you have now earned. So we fund in a broad variety of areas, including support for the aging, support for the arts and culture, economic development, but we also run the gamut into focusing on efforts around equity, our impact investing, and of course, housing and other health and human services supports.

Paul: So one of the things that I mentioned just in the intro is you've introduced the S.E.E.D.S. framework and I believe that the S.E.E.D.S. stands for particular words, so I'm going to let you do that. Can you walk us through what that is and how it shapes the foundation's work?

Shannon: Certainly. So S.E.E.D.S. is our way of explaining our focus. And so with that, number one, the S stands for Strengthening Community Voices. We're a community foundation. We are a collection of donations and funds established by residents across the county, even some from outside the county who have an affection for life here in Washtenaw. And so we want to make sure as we're doing our work that we're listening to the community. Philanthropy works best not when we parachute into solve a problem, but when we partner with the ideas that are provided by those residents on the ground who have a lived experience that we can all learn from. And so we have committees that help with the grant making that review those grant applications and then determine the distribution of those funds.

Now another thing that we're looking at is the first E, which is equity. Equity at the center. As you pointed out, this can often be a tale of two counties.

Paul: Yes.

Shannon: We work to make sure that we are working to help those that may not have a voice at the table, may not have a seat at the table. How can we ensure that your zip code doesn't determine the outcome that your life will have? Everyone's familiar with the fact that if you live on the east side of 23, you will likely to live 10 years less than those that live west of 23. How can we address that?

And then of course, the second E is expanding rural reach. So while people are very familiar with the fact that we are a college town, we've got all these great tech entrepreneurs in Ann Arbor and they're familiar with all the arts and culture that happens in Ypsilanti, I'm not sure how many people understand our rural areas, the needs that they have. And so through dollars provided to us by the Ralph C. Wilson Foundation, we now have a rural fellow who's going to be helping us expand our reach into areas like Chelsea, Dexter, Whitmore Lake, Saline, Manchester to really help those communities because there's also rural inequities just like there are urban inequities when it comes to access to transportation, sometimes food insecurity and even housing.

The fourth one is D, developing youth. So this is the 10th year of our college success program, which we are super excited about. And that program allows us to provide scholarship dollars to graduating seniors from Washtenaw County Area High Schools. With this scholarship, they'll also receive access to a success coach as well as access to an emergency age fund that allows them to get additional support. Say if the professor asks for additional software that they didn't include in their budget, if a landlord raises a rent unexpectedly, we want to make sure that we're working to remove their barriers to graduation.

And then we also have our youth council and the youth council is this amazing group of young philanthropists who are making grants across Washtenaw County to meet the needs of high school students. Last year they gave out roughly about $100,000 in grants. Over the past few years, there's been a focus on health support, particularly mental health support post-pandemic. And these young people are doing an amazing job.

And then finally, it's around us securing the future, our impact investing, where we're making those investments beyond just the 5% that we may grant out every year as required by the IRS. It's how we're using our corpus to make investments across the community. And so we can see that in the work that we've done with Apple Play Schools and other impasse investments that are similar.

Paul: So obviously our emphasis is on the economic development side of work here in Washtenaw County. So from your vantage point, how do you see the foundations work connecting to the broader economic development efforts across the county?

Shannon: Well, it's interesting because when you talk to those folks that are bringing their businesses to Washtenaw County, one of the reasons they're doing that is the high quality of life. And so that's part of how we help support that. Our investments, whether they are grants being made to museums, grants being made to other cultural activities that people benefit from, are grants being made in the environment and helping with that. Those are all things that add to that quality of life that those employees are trying to make a decision that they want to stay here and raise their families here. That's part of how we support. But then there's also the piece around economic development itself. So when we come alongside those small businesses with impact investing loans, we make investments into housing, all those impact the economic development, the vibrancy of that in our region.

Paul: And that's an important point because I've shared with the audience in past podcasts that when you revisit our strategic plan and in the last strategic plan, our board added a fourth pillar, which was what is SPARK doing partnering with organizations like the foundation doing on community issues. Because as you say, how the community looks, feels, and supports is a key factor in whether we're going to have economic success or not. And the charge was where we should be a leader, be a leader in that area where we can convene, do that, and where we need to be playing a supportive role, we should be doing that. So one of the examples I know that we've worked with you and your team on is this whole question about childcare in Washtenaw County, which is significant, which gets me to my next point. From your vantage point, what are some of the biggest challenges and gaps you think are facing the community right now?

Shannon: So in my vantage point, looking at this through a philanthropic lens, one of the biggest challenges right now is support that's needed for our local nonprofit sector. Our local nonprofits, because of cuts that have been made at the federal level and at the state budget, they are hurting. I'm talking with nonprofit leaders who've had to lay off staff, who've had to do budget cuts across the entire organization in order to be able to maintain the high quality of services they provide. And that ranges anywhere from mentoring programs to afterschool work that they're doing for at-risk youth in the community to folks that are providing food and pantry resources for those that are less fortunate, housing supports.

We often in philanthropy told folks, "Hey, you need to diversify your resources. Look to the government as being your largest funder." And they took that advice and they did that, but now those tax dollars are no longer available. And so we're looking at increased risk. You may have seen the most recent article talking about the increase of the unhoused across our county as a result of some of those funding cuts and what that's going to mean. So when I think about those critical challenges, it is around health and human services, but I say that with this caveat, while we continue to need support there, we're going to need support across the board.

And oftentimes when you have an economic downturn like what we are experiencing, the high cost of gas and other commodities, then what happens is people begin to only look at health and human services and that means that other support institutions like the arts, the environment, aren't at the top of the table. So what I and my staff have been doing, we've been encouraging donors who normally might wait till the end of the year to make a gift, to make it to your favorite charity now because they need that support immediately.

Because when we think about the nonprofit sector, it's not just the services they're providing. And those are incredible, but it's also about the people that are working there.

Paul: Yes, and the economic impact that the nonprofit sector is having on this community as well. Yeah, I think one of the things that we've seen that affects SPARK as an organization is that many times, because we are, as many of the listeners know, we are a nonprofit ourselves, the different levels of government, other foundations, will establish what started as an initiative and you respond to that because you know that that initiative will help people right now.

But sometimes it's has this one-time funding nature to it, and that was particularly true. I think what you're describing is out of the Biden administration, there were significant resources that came into the community responding to COVID and other things. And those dollars are now not there.

Shannon: Right. The ARPA funding that we knew there was going to be a bit of a cliff when it came to the nonprofit sector. We were able to partner with the county and with other institutions to best deploy those dollars in a very strategic way. And that's great. But those dollars have, they have an expiration date. So then how do people continue to secure funding beyond that?

And so as someone who's worked in government, you know, it's those initial partnerships that may have the shelf life of, say, one to three years. And then the community begins to rely on that as a support. And then when the funding is gone, they don't look to the government that initiated the particular movement. They look to those nonprofits, say, hey, where did you go? What's happening? And so I always think about this in terms of responsible philanthropy, right?

I often tell a story about the reason why I don't know how to play the piano. When I was a child, I was able to take lessons at a local art studio that was making that available in my in my neighborhood. And then all of a sudden, I know where we got notice saying, oh, the studio is shutting down. And I didn't understand. I just knew I no longer had piano lessons. And so obviously, as an adult, realizing that what happened was the grant funding was cut, that support had been eliminated.

And so I think it's incumbent upon us when we're doing this work to think about the long term impact, the relationships that are developed, the way the community begins to rely on these supports.

And think about how we then if we're going to have to reduce programming or shift programming, how we make sure that we minimize the impact on the residents, on those clients, so that they can still continue to have support.

Because if you're already dealing with a traumatic situation, you don't want to increase that by address, by becoming, I don't know, a focal point in that way. So yeah, we do.

Paul: Thank you. I think the other thing and you, you probably this is where your work is really, really important is because people who want to be donors to the foundation and have been donors for as long as you've existed are, are focused on what's happening and around them, right? I mean, if you want to be involved in national kinds of issues or international issues, here are places where you can be a donor to do that. But the people that donate to you, companies that support us here locally, that fund SPARK, are about what's happening here. A long time, long career, you know what, what, what I've seen the federal government retreat from things that it was doing. Unfortunately, we're seeing that in the state. And I've become more and more convinced that we as as a region have to figure out how to do the things we need to do with our own resources. And maybe it's not at the scale or that one- time money comes in, but at least it's going to be sustainable, right? And we can we see how to go forward.

But it's, it's, it's something I've seen in in over 40 years in my work life where early on the federal government was a significant partner in these kind of activities. And, and they aren't any longer. And that's not just this administration, it's been you see that trend happening, certainly.

And so your work is really, really important because I think of the the local region, I mean Washtenaw County, the focus on what you do.

So you released a housing report recently. What, what did it tell you. And why are you focusing on housing as a part of your work at this time?

Shannon: Well, I mean, it goes back to what you just said, Paul, And that is that we're a Community Foundation, which means we're informed by what's happening in our local, our local work.

You know, I've worked at a foundation that was funding internationally and that is beautiful and amazing work. There's nothing like being able to see the impact of your work when you're, you know, taking a drive down the street, going to dinner with your family. And so when you think about what is fundamental to people's survival, it is housing is one of those pieces, right? We think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And so one of the things that was very easy to understand is begin to listen to the community and hear people saying, I'm no longer able to live here. Talking with new executive directors and new staff members as they're moving into the community and saying, hey, where do you live? Where were you able to secure housing? And hearing them say, I wasn't able to live in the city because it was, you know, cost-prohibitive. And I'm living here now. And just people saying, you know, I grew up in this neighborhood, but I'm no longer able to afford to live there. And so now I'm living even further out away from some family members, so forth.

And so I think that as a result of hearing those conversations, seeing cuts that were being made to HUD, it became critical to us to understand the data. We see ourselves as being a data hub in the community, being able to be a neutral source for that kind of information. And part of the reason why the housing study was so critical was we wanted to make sure that people were operating from the same data, right? Because there have been multiple ways to take a look at that. But to say, hey, to all the Washtenaw County municipalities, businesses that want to make decisions around housing, we want to give you the tools by which to be best informed.

And so it was great to work with an organization that had done a study of housing in Ann Arbor roughly 10 years ago. And then to build upon that good work that had been done to say, let's now look at it not just for the city of Ann Arbor, but let's look at it county-wide. Because when you're talking about housing, you really need to think about it through a regional lens.

And so what we learned was just that number one, while there is a shortage of housing in some areas, not so necessarily across the board, finding out who is most at risk, which we learned were single head of households, probably female, making less than $70,000 a year, were really at risk of not finding any housing that's going to be secure, safe and appropriate. And so I think that it helps us understand what the needs are.

But the other piece was also understanding where there were opportunities for development. And so if people want to visit that report, it is available on our website, and they can see some of those suggestions and ideas of how we can move forward to address what is a very critical issue, which is just safe and affordable housing where people want to live.

Paul: Well, and then, you know, part of it is, lots of times people don't connect all the dots. And so, you know, where there's concern about densification, you know, that's a big topic in the city of Ann Arbor right now. But then the other side of that is, if we don't create those opportunities close to where people work, the kind of household you're describing is going to live at a distance away, is going to be commuting. And then we have, you know, right now, I think it's the number is like 80,000 vehicles coming into Ann Arbor every day. That's part of it, right? I think if people, if people have a preference, they wouldn't do that commute, They would, they would live close to where they are. So, where I'm going is, you can say, well, I'm worried about Ann Arbor changing, but to the degree if we don't change, then we may be creating other problems like traffic, like sustainability issues, like, you know, even in the case that you describe, it relates back to childcare.

Shannon: So that the single parent who's trying to figure out, right, so you've got a parent working at one of the largest employers in the area. They don't want to have to travel 40 minutes from where they're dropping their child off to make their job. Because when you've got a child, and I say this remembering back to when my daughter was in daycare, right? You don't want your one year old, your two year old, to be an hour away from you, 35 minutes away from you. When you get that call saying, hey, little Susie is having a nosebleed, can you come?

So this idea, and then that also gets the point of one of the things that makes Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County so enjoyable is people love the fact that it feels like it did when they were in their college days, right? Everything is accessible and it's walkable, right? I want to be able to walk to whatever the various minis are that I want to avail myself of at that time. And so people come for that.

But if you're creating a situation where you don't have the densification, then you are creating more of a challenge around transportation because that single parent may or may not have access to reliable transportation, may not have access to quality public transportation. So we do have to think about this from a comprehensive standpoint of housing, building in a community that is accessible to everyone.

I mentioned earlier our work around aging. What does this mean for our seniors who may also not be driving again? How are they going to then access the healthcare services that they need, access the cultural amenities that they've grown to love, which is part of why this community is their home, especially if they are living alone. And the majority of our seniors, as they age, are not living with a partner, but they're living by themselves.

Paul: Well, let's change gears a little. I see you work with a wide range of partners, and for you, what does effective collaboration look like when you're trying to create long term impact?

Shannon: For me, what it looks like is having those relationships that go beyond that initial partnership, right? You talked about some of those partnerships that are often created around federal grant dollars, you know, bringing various people to the table who may or may not have natural affinity around anything other than that singular issue. But that effective collaboration for me goes beyond perhaps the one issue that brings us together. It's where we begin to continue to have conversations about those points of interaction where we can continue to have impact far beyond that initial engagement. And are we building the relationships that we begin to get opportunistic around where those partnerships can develop? Are we working together creatively to problem solve? And then creating that community of trust where we know one another as supportive actors in the ecosystem to be able to move an initiative forward.

Some of the things we're talking about, whether it's housing, transportation, even childcare, it's going to be multi-jurisdictional and multi-partner initiatives that help us begin to solve and address some of these intractable issues that we are facing right now.

Paul: Yeah, I think one of the things that's important about both of our organizations is the longevity and the continuity. One of the things that I reflect on in SPARK's history, we're from the beginning of this century, nonetheless still heading into our third decade, is you build that sort of platform where people are working together and building trust, and you can take on new things.

I remember, your organization and our organization responded effectively during COVID, because we had built the partnerships and the people around the table had trust to do things.

So I think that's one of the things that's great about the foundation is that continuity, because a lot of times, you know, people get together around a particular issue and they just focus on that issue and they don't build something that can respond to the next thing. So I think that's really important.

Well, as you think about the future, my last question before you is, what are you most focused on or most optimistic about in terms of creating opportunity in this region?

Shannon: You know, I think one of those pieces that I'm really excited, it's about the work that we're doing with our young people and our youth. As you are aware of, the economic data demonstrates that we have a brain drain, right? That folks are saying, hey, I'm not sure if I want to come back to Michigan, not sure if I want to come back to the area.

And so what I'm really excited about are those young people that are #1 that we are supporting with our scholarship dollars and that we are creating and changing the economic trajectory of their lives, right? And the more that we begin to partner with other educational institutions, ranging from the universities to our community college to the ISD, right, to help provide those supports, what we're doing is we're keeping young people from falling into a gap. And I think that's absolutely, absolutely critical.

But I think the other piece of that are the young philanthropists that we've been training. Our youth council is over 35 years old and so that means we've got folks that are learning what it means to be a community philanthropist, what it means to have that core value of giving back, of sharing their resources. And I am very excited about what that means for long-term change because that's where our future leaders come from. They're going to understand the connectivity between my organization and yours and others, and really will work towards a community of belonging. And I think that's absolutely critical.

Oftentimes, and I've talked about this with other folks, is that sometimes we can be looking at our own smaller municipality without recognizing the fact that we have linked fates with those that are next to us. And I think having young people who are knowledgeable about what's happening across their community, not just what's happening in their neighborhood, but they're able to speak to the needs of health, needs of transportation, needs of having quality third spaces where they can gather, getting them involved.

One of my favorite stories was to hear someone say, hey, the reason why I got involved in government was because of a grant program that you all funded that allowed me to visit a council meeting when I was in high school. And as a result, I chose to go to school here, I chose to live here, and now I hold an elected office. So for me, when I think of those greatest opportunities for change, it is that investment in youth.

Paul: I think, I think you're absolutely spot on about that. I think we're, we're, we're trying to help with that is we want to make sure that young people understand the opportunities that are here. I think one of the things that we're faced with in that sort of brain drain many times is they think they need to go to Boston or New York or Chicago or San Francisco to have opportunity, to advance themselves. And the reality is those opportunities are right here.

And so I think we need to do and we want to keep those because as you described it, those are the people that will will, if we, if we get them engaged in the community now, will be the leaders that we'll have in the future. And so that's, it's really important work.

Shannon: We want those folks who are going to create those tech companies here. They're going to not try to leave and feel that they have to go elsewhere, but they can have that opportunity in whatever field of interest that has engaged them now, and for them to say, you know what, I can do this right here in Washtenaw County.

Paul: Exactly.

Well, Shannon, thank you for taking all the time. I really enjoyed the conversation.

If listeners want to learn more, what's the web address that they should go to?

Shannon: You can find out more about us at aaacf.org

Paul: Or you just type in Ann Arbor area Community Foundation - these days with all of our bots, helps on this kind of stuff. So anyway, thank you again.

Shannon: Thank you Paul.

Paul: And I want to thank our audience for listening and learning more about SPARK and how we impact the Ann Arbor region's economic future. These conversations are brought to you by Ann Arbor SPARK. For more information about Ann Arbor SPARK, you can find us on the web at annarborusa.org. We're also on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

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