Investing in Black, Brown and Women Leaders: Nick Allen on 10 to Watch
Nick Allen is the Chief Program Officer for United Way of the Greater Triangle, a role that includes managing the strategies and execution of: philanthropic storytelling, transformative community engagement, and multi-million dollar impact investments across a four county region. Prior to joining United Way, 15+ years of experience in youth development and community organizing has left Nick with the belief that community-centered approaches rooted in racial equity are the key ingredients to significant, positive changes in the Triangle community. A creative thinker and a practical doer, Nick brings radical re-imagination and bold vision influenced by both statistical data and lived experiences of those we serve, to his work.
Nick and his wife Nicky are raising their two children, Audrey Rose and Oliver Rhys, to love fearlessly, live passionately and eat well. Born and raised in Baltimore, Durham, NC is now home. Nick is also a Tar Heel, a house renovator, a farmer, and a chef. He is a 2016 Leadership Triangle Goodmon Fellow.
“Think about the mindset of a leader who’s been denied and rejected for funding opportunities over and over and over again. That could lead to a self perception that ‘I lacked something and I’m not good enough.’ And the story that we want to tell, the equitable story, is that it’s the power structure’s fault, not your fault. Right? As United Way, we had to be very explicit about the fact that we’re fixing ourselves by having this opportunity. Please absolutely leverage our resources, the dollars, the connections, and the platforms to grow yourself and your organization. We’re starting from a place of knowing that you are very capable and successful.”
Kristine: What is compelling for you about funding 10 to Watch?
Nick: I think it’s really important to understand what 10 to Watch has meant to our organizational journey and how it has contributed to our evolution as a more equitable funder. Anecdotally, historically we were seeing tremendously high percentages of people of color being served through our nonprofit investments. I’m talking — years and years and years and years of anecdotal evidence showing that Black and Brown folks were the primary focus of the services that we were investing in. And then when we convened our nonprofit leaders, we saw a huge disparity in what that population served looked like versus what the nonprofit leadership looked like.
That anecdotal data led us to pull some really hard statistical data that showed us exactly what was happening. And we saw that over 80% of the people served through our investments were people of color, while less than 20% of the organizations we were investing in were led by people of color. Further analysis showed that organizations in our portfolio being led by men had three times the organizational assets of those led by women. That was regardless of race. And quite frankly, we saw that white women-led organizations were the highest demographic group within our portfolio. We had a clear under-representation problem between people of color-led organizations relative to who was being served. We also had an under-resourcing problem along gender lines. That led us to asking some critical questions about ourselves, namely does our portfolio represent the nonprofit ecosystem in the Triangle? And, what can we do about these disparities as a funder?
That’s how 10 to Watch was born and how we landed on the data-driven criteria of who was to be served by this investment opportunity.
I think intentionality is really important in equity work. Data is also really important in equity work. That’s why it was important to us to stick to the data that we had that was relevant to our portfolio. And that’s why we landed on Black, Brown and female leadership as the focus. Through our networks and partnerships, we also had the opportunity to connect with Leadership Triangle. In addition to the monetary resources that we dedicated in our two-year commitment to 10 to Watch’ers, we also wanted to make sure each of them, and their teams, had access to opportunities for networking and holistic leadership support. We’ve been very intentional in leveraging our networks and our resources to get folks into the rooms we have access to, so that they can tell their own stories. Resources, networks, and leadership training are fundamental to our advantage in program work so we wanted to leverage those things in support of the 10 to Watch.
Kristine: How do you feel your thinking has evolved as a result of the feedback from the initial 10 to Watch cohort? In what ways did their leadership help evolve or change the program?
Nick: I think far too often we talk about the impact of 10 to Watch on the participants but the story about the impact of the 10 the Watch on United Way gets lost in that shuffle. Proximity in relationships is incredibly important in our work. We’re in the people business, right? So by building trusting relationships, I think we were able to receive transparent and honest communication and feedback from the 10 to Watch participants in a way that we don’t normally see in our more traditional grantor/grantee setups. We were very close. We talked consistently. We’re able to do that with the size of the 10 to Watch group. We have over 100 nonprofit relationships and it’s much harder to have these intimate conversations and relationships built upon trust. But we were able to do that with 10 to Watch, as a smaller subset, and importantly, a subset that may have lacked trust in United Way or trust in the traditional philanthropic ecosystem to begin with.
Because we had those relationships, we got honest and helpful feedback about the stories that we tell, how we tell them, how we position ourselves, and how we can do all of that in service of building trust and relationships with Black, Brown, and women-led nonprofits. I think our messaging and our storytelling have gotten better because of the 10 to Watch. We want to focus on the assets. We don’t want to claim their success, right? They are very capable leaders to begin with. United Way and Leadership Triangle are only a small part of the reason why there are so many examples of growth and success in that cohort. And what we learned from them doesn’t just apply to the 10 to Watch, it’s shifted how we approach every other organization in the Triangle that is similar to them.
There were also some very critical conversations, internally, around the role that leadership development plays in this program. If we’re not carefully telling the story of equity first, then the story of leadership development becomes the dominant story. And the risk of that, is that people may make assumptions that these 10 leaders are under-resourced because they lack the leadership capacity. That is absolutely the opposite of what we believe. These leaders, and leaders like them, lack access. This is us providing this holistic support of their growth as a leader, of their growth as an organization, through investment, through access to expert consultants, and through leadership development centered in building their networks and their connections.
Kristine: Yeah. And I feel like for some folks that might sound like a subtle distinction, but the difference is actually foundational. It gets out of the kind of savior complex of the philanthropy sector and a lot of leadership development, and it moves into a real partnership and co-design model, which is truly transformative. It’s not “we’re gonna give you this money, please say thank you” but “we’re going to fund your work because we believe that it is already demonstrating impact, and we also know that these resources have been systematically denied from organizations like yours”.
Nick: Yeah, I mean, you’re spot on. Think about the mindset of a leader who’s been denied and rejected for funding opportunities over and over and over again. That could lead to a self perception that “I lacked something and I’m not good enough.” And the story that we want to tell, the equitable story, is that it’s the power structure’s fault, not your fault. Right? As United Way, we had to be very explicit about the fact that we’re fixing ourselves by having this opportunity. Please absolutely leverage our resources, the dollars, the connections, and the platforms to grow yourself and your organization. We’re starting from a place of knowing that you are very capable and successful. And the reason why you’re underrepresented at United Way and under-resourced at United Way is a United Way problem.
Kristine: I’m wondering if there are any other organizations that you were made aware of because of the 10 to Watch program, that you might not have known about previously?
Nick: I think even the application process itself attracted organizations with zero history of relationship to the United way. We got 40 or so applications and only selected 10, meaning we had 30 additional opportunities to start to build a relationship. Again, it’s not just about 10 leaders — it’s about the entire ecosystem as well. So in funding rounds that have happened since, we wanted to make sure that those folks get the communication, see themselves in the process, see themselves in the application, and see themselves in our impact strategies. And we’ve seen evidence of folks applying for and getting dollars, even if they didn’t get 10 to Watch dollars. That’s really cool. We’ve also seen the 10 to Watch get connected to our bigger bucket of more traditional funders, that they never were connected to in those ways before.
Kristine: Do you feel like 10 to Watch has been uplifted as a model for philanthropy in the Triangle?
Nick: I absolutely think that 10 to Watch has a strong brand. I think it’s recognizable across the more traditional local funders, whether it be corporate or foundations or otherwise. We have relationships with those same folks. So when we talk about 10 to Watch, I think it sparks the imagination. Quite honestly, because of the success of 10 to Watch, I feel like it has given confidence for those funders who were a little hesitant to be so explicit in the way that they targeted their dollars to take that leap. They saw it was successful with us. Since launching, we’ve been a part of other pooled funding opportunities where they explicitly target leaders of color, which is not something we saw publicly before.
The dollars that are funding the 10 to Watch program are coming from corporate funders and local companies — not individuals, but local companies investing $10K, $25K, $50K or more into this very specific equity initiative. I think in a lot of ways, it has been a test and a warm up for what I hope is a more intentional and explicit equitable philanthropic ecosystem moving forward.
“If we’re not working to eliminate the problem that we’re trying to correct, then we’re not doing our work correctly. I want potential 10 to Watch’ers to understand how serious we are about this work. I want 10 to Watch’ers to know that they have the power to influence the way that philanthropy serves them. This is a prime opportunity to create the environment that is going to lead to their growth and the achievement of their goals and dreams for this community.”
Kristine: I’ve been glad to see these kinds of opportunities extend out, not just from the nonprofit sector, but into the private sector and into how we as the Triangle region are thinking about funding and supporting our entrepreneurs and business owners. Alright, final question. What do you want folks who are interested in applying for 10 to Watch to know?
Nick: I want Black leaders, Brown leaders, women leaders to understand that this is not an episodic focus of United Way of the Greater Triangle. It is permanently positioned in our strategic investment plan to have equitable grantmaking as a part of our organization. It is also our intention that we won’t need 10 to Watch if we’re doing our work correctly in the future. Our goal is to work ourselves out of business, whether that be in the poverty business or in the equitable grantmaking business. If we’re not working to eliminate the problem that we’re trying to correct, then we’re not doing our work correctly. I want potential 10 to Watch’ers to understand how serious we are about this work. I want 10 to Watch’ers to know that they have the power to influence the way that philanthropy serves them. This is a prime opportunity to create the environment that is going to lead to their growth and the achievement of their goals and dreams for this community.
Kristine: Snaps.
Apply for 10 to Watch at https://www.unitedwaytriangle.org/rfp
