Weaving The Threads

A Brief History of Richmondand Its Implications for Richmond Funders

A presentation prepared for the Richmond Funders Forum

Presented by Rebecca Brown, MA, CFA, CFREPresident, Further The Work

October 18, 2010

A Brief History of Richmond: Expanding Its Borders Through the 20th Century

Unincorporated North

Richmond has a population of

about 4,000 people.

The Iron Triangle is the historic heart of Richmond, named for the three railway

lines that mark its boundaries. Its population

is about 15,000 people.

Since the 1950s, a great

deal of land has been

annexed to Richmond,

giving rise to suburban-style

bedroom communities (and even a

country club).

In the ’70s, Hilltop Mall opens, five miles from downtown.

Not a Bubble: A Boom (1900-1950)• 1892: The Giant Powder Company opens on the northern shore, creating the

small company town called Giant, now part of Richmond.

• 1900: Augustin Macdonald persuades Santa Fe Railway to establish a terminus in Richmond with a ferry to San Francisco, completing the transcontinental railway, with ferry service to San Francisco.

• 1901: Standard Oil Corporation (now Chevron) establishes operations in Richmond.

• 1907: Mechanics Bank is established to serve railway workers, who are called “mechanics.”

• 1912: San Pablo Bay is dredged to allow deep-water shipping.

• 1915: The Panama Canal opens, enhancing the importance of deep-water ports.

• 1931: Ford Assembly Plant opens, after Fred Parr assumes all costs of building the plant on spec.

• 1939: Henry Kaiser opens the Kaiser Shipyard, which gives rise to Kaiser Medical, schools, daycare, and housing.

• 1941: The United States enters the war, and Richmond’s port, railway, vehicle assembly, and shipyards springboard Richmond to a new level of industrial economic success. In Spring 1943, Kaiser Richmond employed 85,100 people.

Maybe It Hadn’t Been a Bubble...But There Was a Bust, Nonetheless (1945-

2000)• 1946: Post-war conversion of industrial manufacturing centralizes in

the midwest, with its ready nation-wide distribution capacities. Out-migration from Richmond begins, as skilled laborers with transferrable, portable skills move east to pursue the post-war boom.

• 1947: Kaiser shipyard closes down. Thousands of units of substandard housing remain in downtown Richmond.

• 1953-1957: Richmond annexes substantial amounts of outlying land, expanding city boundaries and creating a “suburban” ring. Bedroom communities develop, pulling many middle-class people away from downtown and attracting commuters from other areas.

• 1955: To accommodate increased market demand for cars, the Richmond Ford Assembly plant closes, and a larger plant opens in Milpitas.

• 1968: Racial unrest flares across the country; there are riots in downtown Richmond, which by now is almost entirely African American.

• 1976: Richmond’s Hilltop Mall opens, 5 miles north of downtown, serving the annexed “suburban” neighborhoods. It is a death blow for Macdonald Avenue, Richmond’s longtime Main Street.

Richmond’s Population 1900-2010

Profound Cultural Shift During Out-Migration and In-

Migration

“[O]ut-migration and population loss is detrimental to a region...because the migration process selectively

removes the ‘best and brightest,’ damaging the region’s endowment of human capital and therefore

its competitiveness.”

“Out-migration, Population Decline, and Regional Economic Distress”, 1/99,Edward J. Feser and Stuart H. Sweeney, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

Funded by the Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, p. 53

Out-Migration and Population Loss:A Fateful Combination in Richmond

“Severe boom-bust cycles accompanied by particularly rapid population adjustments can damage the fiscal position of local governments as maintenance of infrastructure and services expanded during a boom must be financed by dwindling populations with fewer financial resources following a bust.”

Feser and Sweeney, i.

Local Governments and the Lag EffectOf Out-Migration and Population Loss

Out-Migration and Population Lossin Richmond

This pattern proved true in Richmond; after decades of a declining economy, diminishing skilled labor, the lack of an replacement workforce sector

(such as technology), and increasing need for public support,by 2005 the City was nearly bankrupt.

During these decades, many CBOs left or closed, and those remaining carried an expanding role in

meeting residents’ increasingly urgent basic needs.

The nonprofit starvation cycle hit Richmond CBOs particularly hard; for decades, investment in

organizational capacity was squeezed aside by the demand for direct services.

What then, to do?A Four-Point Call to Action for

Funders1. Understand the Consequences of Population Loss and Outmigration

• Brain-drain, scarcity conditions, nonprofit starvation cycle, and sharp elbows

• Hamlets, moats, and bridges

2. Explore the Whole Elephant

• Don’t depend on CBOs to provide the periscope

• Use your resources to make everybody smarter: commission a landscape analysis, create an information repository, identify and provide to CBOs usable information abut best practices relevant to their work

• Leverage emerging assets: Co-located service center, access to a pool of technical assistance?

3. Enrich Capacity and Familiarize Connections

• Model and foster collective inquiry: use the dialogue about best practices to foster conversation with grantees

• Cultivate natural partnerships, foster allies from current “competitors,” with shared funding

• Forge connections with smart “outsiders,” using them to enhance collective local conversation, and making them available as technical resources to grantees

4. Align Intentions and Consider Pooled Funding

• Cultivate, designate, or advocate for a Local Opportunity Funnel: Work with City and other funders to develop a CBO Coordinator, a Grants Czar, a MultiSector Manager

• Develop a Pilot Funding Collaborative to identify and underwrite some collective targeted efforts in Richmond

Small Isn’t Simple:Thinking Big, Locally

To rebuild Richmond, we have to rebuild its economic underpinnings through targeted workforce sector development: and in Richmond, CBOs are a key player in that endeavor.

“ Workforce development is the coordination of public and private sector policies and programs that provides individuals with the opportunity for a sustainable livelihood and helps organizations achieve exemplary goals, consistent with the societal context.

“From the definition, it should be noted that workforce development is not simply public sector programs to promote the acquisition of skills. Indeed, workforce development entails both profit and non-profit institutions to achieve a wide range of outcomes.”

Ronald L. Jacobs, Ph.D., Professor of Workforce Development and Education, Ohio State University

Small Isn’t Simple:One Example of Thinking Big,

Locally:Healthy Behaviors in A Healthy Environment

• City has highlighted a “health focus” in its five-year general plan, now moving toward implementation

• We have the support of The California Endowment’s massive state-wide Healthy Communities initiative bringing both a spotlight and a lot of money and expertise to advance such practices

• We have health-friendly CBOs that blend health-friendly training, internship, and social service:

• Solar Richmond, providing vocational training, paid internships, job placement, and sector development to expand the solar market

• Pogo Park’s Elm Playlot Project will serve as a hub for physical and health-related activity, while offering training and employment for Park Hosts who model and encourage healthy behavior, interactions, and attitudes.

• Urban Tilth, cultivating food security while providing vocational training, urban agriculture, agriculture education at the schools, healthy foods through Community Supported Agriculture boxes and public, open-to-all community gardens for free “gleaning”; it will be opening a community garden at Pogo Park’s Elm Playlot.

• Richmond Spokes, Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL), EcoVillage Farms, all providing relevant, additive elements

Small Isn’t Simple:One Example of Thinking Big,

LocallyWhat might happen if

we had a community center at a key location - let’s say, adjacent to Elm Playlot in the Iron

Triangle - creating a one-stop center that offered

technical resources for CBOs, provided program space where they could offer services to

residents, and that included a community kitchen?

Health-Focused Community Kitchen:

incubating, educating, community-buildingCommunity kitchens are being used around the

country to:

• strengthen families• build community• enhance food security• enable and encourage healthy eating• distribute and sell local produce• support small entrepreneurs• and activate local economies

La Cocina in San Francisco offers a culinary incubator, facilities rental for small cooking businesses, store, catering

Three Stone Hearth is a Berkeley worker-owned cooperative that produces meals for saleLACE in Barre, Vermont provides a kitchen and store to support local family farms

The West Contra Costa Business Development Center is advocating for a Culinary Business Center

“Place-Based” Means Combining Great Expertise with Deep Local

KnowledgeFunders are ideally suited to cultivate and “host”

both great expertise and local knowledge, while also serving as an important partner to

amplify City government efforts, help businesses identify promising opportunities for community investment, and foster increased

capacity in the CBO community.