Neighborhood Allies centers equity in all that we do – in our programming, in our company culture, and in how we show up in the communities we serve. We want to share some of the work happening at Neighborhood Allies, both internally and externally, that is creating resilient, thriving, and equitable neighborhoods across Pittsburgh.
Each one of our staff members contributes uniquely to our equity goals through their dedication to and passion for the communities we serve. Demi Kolke, Neighborhood Allies’ Director of Community Investments, works directly with minority-and-women-owned small businesses, organizations, and community developers to support true community-driven revitalization that is designed to benefit the residents of a community.
Q: How do you feel that Neighborhood Allies advances equity?
A: “Neighborhood Allies was created on the premise of making our systems more equitable. We work towards this goal through our intentional programming and by focusing our efforts in underserved neighborhoods. We try to reach forgotten communities, meeting them where they they’re at, both by being physically present and having an understanding of those communities.
Internally, we’ve also made great strides in ensuring that we are operating equitably. After the murder of George Floyd, we created an internal equity team, RISE HIGH (Racially Inclusive Solutions for Equity, Healing, Impact, Growth, and Health), which began by focusing on how to make our hiring practices and company culture more equitable than ever. Through the work of this team, we also began implementing an internal tracking system to document contracts to minority-or-women-owned businesses or organizations, so that we could track any payments made to MWBE contractors. The goal was to see what percentage of our funds were supporting MWBE contractors. We really wanted to put our money where our mouth is.
It turned out, we were actually doing worse than we thought. So, we set out to increase our percentage. Since, we have made a more intentional effort here. We even created an internal referral list of MWBE contractors for everything from caterers to barbershops for our staff to reference.
In 2023, we invested $1.37M into 122 different MWBE vendors, organizations, and individuals across our work, representing 55% of our total expenditures for the year.”
Q: What is one example of how your work specifically advances equity?
A: “Get Online Grow Online (GOGO) is my pride and joy. GOGO participants are able to access up to twelve hours of pro bono technical assistance to support the online presence of their business. Each business is matched with an expert technical assistance provider to receive one-on-one, hands-on upgrades to their online presence. GOGO was literally created to embed equity into an inequitable system. 96% of businesses we served in 2023 alone were MWBE. These participants are businesses that might not have the network, connections, or capital, to prioritize or receive a service like this. By enacting GOGO, we take one thing off their plates and hope that it will leverage further access and revenue for their business.”
We’re proud each and every day to have staff members like Demi, who are passionate about bringing equity to the forefront of all that we do!
