Throughout the pandemic, the McGregor Fund has been nimble and responsive to the needs of the community, connecting with new partners to support the urgent work on the ground.   

“We felt we had to do more in order to respond to this unprecedented crisis, which challenged us to work in a different way with partners,” Kate Levin Markel, president of the McGregor Fund said. “We had to listen more broadly and deeply to understand how this crisis was affecting communities.” 

One of these partnerships helped the Fund extend their reach to a previously untapped population in a new and innovative way.  

“We made a grant to FORCE Detroit, an organization working on anti-violence policies and criminal justice reform. They are really well organized in spaces and communities that don’t really trust or engage with the traditional social safety net organizations, which has been the historic focus of our grantmaking” Heidi Alcock, director of grant development and communications at the McGregor Fund said. 

“FORCE Detroit came to us and we saw very quickly the need for direct financial support to meet discreet financial issues that were coming up early in the pandemic.”  

The Fund’s COVID-19 response efforts have been focused on advancing racial equity.

In November, CMF reported that the McGregor Fund announced $1.2 million in grants focused on racial equity in Detroit. This work will continue as the Fund recognizes opportunities to address disparities and reimagine systems in the pandemic and beyond.  

“This pandemic has fully illuminated the racial injustices in our communities and the only way through it is to suspend what we believe to be true,” Alcock said. “Especially those of us who hold privileged seats inside of institutions and systems and really listen, lean in and partner with communities in a way that we haven’t before. I believe that is the way both through the pandemic and to work towards racial justice, during the pandemic and beyond.”  

The Fund’s focus areas are basic needs and housing, recovery and restoration and skill building and employment, all areas where deep-rooted inequities have been further exacerbated by the pandemic.  

“The pandemic made visible the intersections between health and the experience of homelessness, and the inequitable outcomes for people of color that are a result of structural racism,” Vanessa Samuelson, director of learning and reporting at the McGregor Fund said. “We know communities of color experience homelessness disproportionately; we know that’s true across the nation and Michigan. And in Detroit, the homelessness system has engaged resources to understand how to redesign a homeless response to be equitable, centering people with the experience of homelessness.”  

While McGregor leadership continues their work to advance racial equity, they say the path to equity and justice must be met with reimagined systems that support the lives and well-being of Black and Brown Michiganders every day. 

This means working in collaboration with others within our CMF community, our nonprofit partners, policymakers and other leaders in urban, rural and suburban communities and sharing best practices.   

“We also have to be in conversation with our funder colleagues across Michigan, who work in very different communities, to help bring about a different kind of society,” Levin Markel said. “That means different kinds of public policy, different kinds of grant making, and not pitting people against each other. Working in a racially equitable way is to the benefit of everybody. Getting everybody to understand why that is true is also a part of our work going forward. Now more than ever, we have to understand how we got here, find better ways of working together, and rectifying disparities that should not be acceptable to anyone.”  

The McGregor Fund’s work and response to COVID-19 will be featured in an upcoming installment of our new digital series Impact Connected ─ a celebration of our CMF community. Join the conversation on our CMF social media channels: Facebook and Twitter @michfoundations with the hashtag #ImpactConnected.