In response to the need for increased investment in Black-led organizations and racial justice initiatives on the Island, LICF has been working with the Urban League of Long Island and the State of Black Long Island (SOBLI) — a council of Blacks with ties to Long Island that was developed to secure economic, political and social equity for Black Long Islanders.

LICF and donor partner Citi, saw the need to validate SOBLI’s work with reliable data. For that reason, they approached PolicyLink, which conducted a study, “An Equity Profile of Long Island,” which found that the region — Nassau and Suffolk Counties, that had a combined annual economy of $120 billion, was losing $24 billion a year as a result of racial economic disparities. The report also stated that the financial loss would only continue growing without intervention that would create equity for Black residents. This report and a subsequent report, released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, highlighted two major challenges — lack of access to credit and financial exclusion for Black Long Islanders. SOBLI and other local community organizations have endeavored to address these realities through research-informed policies and programs that will improve the economic wellbeing of Black Long Islanders.

To further support SOBLI’s agenda and other similar social justice work on Long Island, LICF established the Long Island Racial Equity Donor Collaborative (Collaborative) in 2018, a first-of-its-kind Long Island-wide mechanism for pooling philanthropic resources to address the deeply rooted racial inequities on Long Island.  Member institutions – Apple Bank, BankUnited, BNB Bank, Capital One, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, The Long Island Community Foundation, Long Island Unitarian Universalist Fund, M&T Bank, Nassau Financial Federal Credit Union, Santander Bank, Surdna Foundation, Wells Fargo, and William E. & Maude S. Pritchard Charitable Trust – have been pooling their resources to support strategies to address systemic racial inequities impacting the economic health of Black Long Islanders.

The Collaborative members adopted a place-based funding approach in an effort to work with the community for change. What followed was many meetings with community members, a landscape study conducted by Urban Institute and funded by donor partner JPMorgan Chase, the launch of a region-wide request for proposals, and seven grants to provide the critical tools to aid leaders in understanding the racial economic equity landscape and develop plans that will increase the number of living-wage jobs available and/or improve credit access.

The focus of the Long Island Racial Equity Donor Collaborative is to support regional institutional leaders representing government, nonprofits, and the private sector, in establishing strategic priorities and guiding targeted investments in critical areas of need for black Long Islanders. These efforts will be directed at the systems level – organizational networks, associations, institutional configurations, and pivotal stakeholders – in an effort to build capacity, catalyze collaboration, and strengthen the systems that can serve the interest of achieving tangible outcomes.