We worked in small groups to identify the team’s core values, then we identified guiding principles we could adopt that would help us live our values.
Values
Operating in adherence to our mission to achieve measurable impacts in the most vulnerable and overlooked communities requires honesty, compassion, valuing relationships, and honoring each person’s and community’s history and strengths.
Our core values are:
Equity
Equity is foundational to our mission. We believe that a person’s race or other identity-based characteristics should not be predictive of their access to housing or health care or their overall wellness.
Collaboration
Meaningful collaboration requires disrupting existing power structures that serve to elevate those with resources over those with experience.
Trust
We believe in granting trust not just funds, which requires recognizing and celebrating the varied and unique strengths of community-based organizations.
Integrity
We have a responsibility as custodians of financial resources to operate with integrity, keep ourselves accountable, and focus on sustainability.
Guiding Principles
Returning Power
We commit to help dismantle systems of structural oppression by redirecting power to marginalized communities and people with lived experience — people who have had their power systematically taken away. In doing so, we seek to recognize and acknowledge when we are failing to cede power or otherwise acting as barriers to equity-based change.
Prioritizing Equity
We examine whether each decision we make and each program or community in which we invest serves to advance equity.
Promoting Local Leaders
We work to identify and promote grassroots leaders, amplify the ideas and work of local organizations and individuals, and facilitate connections among community-based coalitions and agencies.
Driven by Trust
We prioritize listening and learning and seek partnerships rather than acting unilaterally.
Investing Broadly in Communities
We will prioritize coalitions over single agencies, focus on systems, and follow the lead of communities to make decisions about additional investments of funds and other support.
