“Traditionally, advocacy has been a few people speaking on behalf of others. But…it is also about movement building and power building, grassroots engagement, and community organizing. It is about people being able to create the paths and environments to speak for and advocate for themselves.”

Cesar Aleman, Director, Connecticut Urban Opportunity Collaborative

This past June, three Connecticut community foundations—the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, and Fairfield County’s Community Foundation (based in Norwalk), which combined have assets that exceed $2 billion—announced their joint hire of Cesar Aleman to direct a newly-formed Connecticut Urban Opportunity Collaborative (CUOC).

The foundations’ agenda is ambitious. As their press release states, CUOC seeks to coordinate senior staff across the three foundations to “develop collective strategies to dismantle structural racism and advance social and economic mobility; aligning the strategic and programmatic efforts of the three foundations to create an actionable plan that builds on each organization’s individual strengths.”

In an interview with Aleman shortly after his hire, New Haven radio station WNHH program host Babz Rawls-Ivy expressed her surprise that community foundations would take on promoting racial and economic justice as primary goals. Her implied question: Is this real? Just a half year later, it is too early to say. To learn more, NPQ interviewed Aleman, along with Will Ginsberg, who has led the New Haven foundation for the past 21 years.

Read the full article about racial and economic justice by Steve Dubb at Nonprofit Quarterly.