Focus Areas
A key strategy of this effort is the concept of Anchor Collaboratives. Anchor Collaboratives are comprehensive workgroups of nonprofits, community members, and youth that have a vested interest in the focus area of that Collaborative. Each Anchor Collaborative consisted of 10-30 key organizations and approximately 50-100 work group members. The goal of each Anchor Collaborative was to write a plan concentrating on their focus area to improve the lives of Black and Brown residents in Shelby County. Collectively, these plans would be compiled into one strategic plan that would be submitted to the philanthropic community in an effort to secure implementation dollars. Once secured, the plans would serve as a basis for long-term policy changes in our community. All of these plans were to be developed with meaningful engagement from the communities that the Anchor Collaboratives represent.
Each Anchor Collaborative had an appointed Lead Organization as a key convener and facilitator. All Lead Organizations received a grant of $200,000 from Seeding Success, who served as the More for Memphis Project Manager. This grant was to be used to support strategic community engagement in the process of writing the plan and offer capacity building to the nonprofits leading the work. As a part of accepting the grant, each AC Lead Organization was responsible for delivering a plan for their focus area by the spring of ‘23.
