KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When Shanelle Smith first launched her nonprofit, HBCU Walking Billboard, she asked the Kansas City, Missouri, community for donations on social media.
“We were so grassroots, we basically took to social media to beg for money. The community was super supportive,” she reflected.
That year, Smith was able to send students in her program who were attending a Historically Black College or University to campus with a gift bag.
This year, she was able to send them off to college with a scholarship thanks to a new partnership with an organization called The Hadley Project.
“I don’t think we’d be in a position to have that type of an impact without The Hadley Project believing in our mission,” Smith said.
The Hadley Project is a branch of The Sunderland Foundation. Beginning in January 2021, it set aside $6 million to pass out in grants over three years specifically to nonprofits in the Kansas City area focused on racial, social and environmental justice causes, and even more specifically to nonprofits led by people of color or benefitting people of color.
“When you give access to opportunity, good things can happen,” explained Drew Eanes, a founding member of The Hadley Project. “Historically, a lot of these communities have lost their access to opportunity and there have been consequences because of it. If we can help these marginalized communities to create more equity, it’s not just good for those communities, it’s good for the Kansas City metro as a whole.”
Aside from a three-year monetary commitment, The Hadley Project works with its grant recipients to coach them and to give them credibility among philanthropy’s traditional inner circle.
“We’re creating opportunities for us to be able to take our networks and really introduce these organizations to other funders and really help to get them into those other social networks,” explained Denise St. Omer, another founding member of The Hadley Project.
Monique Johnston runs Youth Ambassadors. The nonprofit employs teenagers aged 14 to 18 to help them build life skills and develop as a whole person.
Thanks to funding from The Hadley Project, it will hire more staff, add more programs and eventually serve more children than the 250 per year it currently averages.
“We’re trying to inspire youth to tap into their potential as community leaders, as change agents in their neighborhoods,” Johnston said. “Ultimately, we’re trying to instill a belief in our youth that we don’t have to escape our communities to be successful, our communities are fertile ground. We can be part of the positive change through perseverance and hard work right here in the heart of the neighborhood.”
The Hadley Project’s goal is to make that positive change by allowing the people closest to issues to solve those issues.
To see a list of organizations The Hadley Project funds, visit its website.
