Empowering black futures in Cincinnati neighborhoods

By Russell Hairston

Executive Director

Avondale Development Corporation

and

Robyn Judge

Senior Vice President

Community Impact Territory Manager

Fifth Third Bank.

Cincinnati has seen remarkable progress and innovation in recent years. At the same time, the heart of many of our neighborhoods is at risk. Large-scale investment can lead to intentional and unintentional displacement of low-income residents who have helped build and shape the city for decades. Ensuring legacy residents are part of a neighborhood’s growth is possible, but it takes organizations stepping out in a visionary way to understand what residents seek, aspire to, and embrace before making plans to address what is missing. It requires communication, collaboration, and co-design of related community plans and neighborhood programming.

Too many communities have endured years of wealth extraction and income disparities due to racial inequities and a lack of basic services like grocery stores and pharmacies. In turn, these structural inequities create an influence vacuum where residents feel socially, economically, and politically isolated and abandoned by the decision makers and institutions that can impact the community’s direction. Structural inequities also lead to disassociation and apathy, which may be viewed as non-commitment to growth opportunities. 

Strategic, resident-driven partnerships in the community have the power to repair these structural inequities. 

Over two years ago, Avondale Development Corporation was selected by Fifth Third Bank and Enterprise Community Partners to participate in the Empowering Black Futures Neighborhood Program, created to advance economic mobility in disinvested communities. Our economic mobility plan in Avondale centers on erasing structural inequities. 

Organizing resident-driven endeavors like ours with multiple stakeholders can be daunting, but this collaborative process is critical to the future success of communities. There’s almost always going to be limited funding for community-based nonprofits, regardless of location. Yet, in the most underinvested places, relationship building is simultaneously the most difficult and most essential factor driving meaningful and lasting change. 

Nonprofits, business owners, and institutions of all types must ground their transformative work in the strengths and desires of the area’s most important stakeholders—its residents—through active listening. Stakeholders will always have some divergent perspectives, but this tension can sometimes force meaningful progress that is critical to successful outcomes. This listening and community engagement process can overcome barriers and aggravators, like underfunded programs, costly environmental obsolescence, distrust of the collaborative process, and leadership voids, to build an aligned community-driven plan that reflects the shared goals of all stakeholders. 

While municipal funding and creative leadership are key, public-private partnerships are essential for bridging funding, capacity, and skills gaps. Avondale is fortunate to have the benefit of anchor institutions that support community development work in many different capacities.  It has become essential that nonprofit organizations within greater Cincinnati or cities across the country have this access to high levels of expertise, resources, capacity building, and partnership to grow communities.

A lack of anchor institutions, however, should not deter any neighborhoods from seeking resident-led transformation. Collective public, private, and nonprofit partnerships require a shared understanding of community challenges and a willingness to participate in creative solutions. Local public schools, community councils, places of worship, business owners, public safety officials, recreation centers, and libraries, in addition to peer nonprofits, are potential stakeholders in the process and together bring the same strengths as anchor institutions. In Avondale, the city of Cincinnati, Uptown Consortium, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati Recreation Commission, Avondale Community Council, and other essential partners have been vital to the success of Empowering Black Futures and other programs and initiatives.

Once partners are in place, there’s often a tendency to focus too narrowly on how to shape the neighborhood’s future. Instead, look at an issue from multiple angles, add new stakeholders, or simply start with what you have. A one-year program grant may be enough to start and produce results that impact an important residential need or draw resources, but, a two- to five-year program that mobilize resources and investments to create high-opportunity neighborhoods is a winning strategy to address the goal of stronger, more resilient communities.

With Avondale’s transformational change, significant partnerships were secured after the neighborhood created its resident-driven plan in 2020. Then, many major funders, like Fifth Third, arrived or were brought in to implement a sustainable, measurable plan focused on investing in affordable housing, supporting small businesses, and improving quality of life. With the foundation of the community plan and buy-in from stakeholders in place, we elevated our partnership with Artworks to create a youth mural depicting Avondale’s historic figures, expanded the ROOTS Ambassadors trauma healing program through our partnership with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, and provided funding to Avondale homeowners for essential repairs, while investing in affordable housing development to promote equity and ownership through our partnerships with Kaiser Development and Kingsley + Co.

In Avondale, our economic mobility plan is helping drive forward the programs and investments aligned with the community’s successful Quality of Life plan. As a result, we’re attracting new partners, interested investors, and innovative design specialists, both local and national, who want to be a part of the neighborhood’s resident-led transformation, too. 

One of the hardest challenges to overcome when building partnerships is identifying and centering shared goals. Without a common vision, it is easy for partnerships to stray from their original neighborhood-based intentions. Through Avondale’s success, neighborhoods across Cincinnati and the country can build sustainable, resilient communities by harnessing resident-driven partnerships and essential collaboration.