Giving Compass' Take:

• Verizon’s Chief Corporate Social Responsibility Officer Rose Stuckey Kirk sat down with Greg Fairchild, a LISC board member, to discuss how investing in racial equity requires committed partnerships with small businesses and local communities. 

• How can donors forge meaningful relationships with small businesses or the communities they are trying to serve?

• Learn about the business benefits of sustainability collaborations. 

Recently, LISC CEO Maurice A. Jones and Verizon’s Chief Corporate Social Responsibility Officer Rose Stuckey Kirk sat down with Greg Fairchild, a LISC board member and professor of business administration at the University of Virginia, to discuss the kinds of intentional investment—financial, political and personal—required to close the racial equity gaps in our country.

Stuckey pointed out the need for people working in corporate America to look hard at how they may be helping or hindering the pursuit of racial equity in their day-to-day business: “You have got to be very clear about who you are as a corporation beyond just this moment,” she said. “It's very easy for everyone to shout out, “Black Lives Matter,” to see themselves engaged, to have a point of view. So we've got to ask ourselves the questions about how are you actually governing yourself every single day?”

Strong partnerships with the private sector, each speaker noted, are imperative to carrying out the work of connecting people with opportunity and dismantling the systems that perpetuate inequality. There is “a recognition that a company like Verizon can in fact provide the platform and the reach [in times like these],” said Fairchild, who moderated the roundtable. “And an organization [like LISC] that then finds ways to marshal those resources becomes so important.”

Listen to the full podcast about racial equity in CSR at LISC.