Congratulations to the Institutional Investment Accelerator Teams!

The Wallace Center is thrilled to announce the six community-based teams participating in the inaugural cohort of our Institutional Investment Accelerator, made possible through the generous support of the Kresge Foundation. Representing coalitions and collaborative efforts in urban, rural, coastal, and heartland communities, the teams share a common goal of partnering with and seeking investment from institutions to increase community health, wealth, and power. 

Through the Accelerator, teams from Baltimore, West Virginia, Northwest Arkansas, Chicago, Denver, and Portland will shape and implement unique strategies based on their goals and local assets. Each team comes to the Accelerator with history and relationships in their community and work in a variety of contexts, including nonprofits, faith-based communities, food businesses, healthcare, city government, and universities. Across the 18-month program, each team will work with an advisor, receive $10,000 in technical assistance funds to advance their strategies, and participate in cohort-wide trainings, learning journeys, and peer learning opportunities facilitated by the Wallace Center. “Food sovereignty, community wealth-building, and economic justice for BIPOC farmers is at the core of what we do at the East Denver Food Hub and participating in this Accelerator is an amazing opportunity to develop and advance our mission,” said the Roberto Meza, Director of Operations for the East Denver Food Hub and the Denver team lead.  

With so much momentum around establishing institutional procurement commitments and systems, this Accelerator will focus in on engaging institutions in building up the supply chain infrastructure and supportive ecosystems necessary to fulfill procurement goals. Dakarai Howard, Chicago team lead and Supply Chain Development Specialist at the Chicago Food Policy Action Council, sees the potential of this approach: “As project partners work together to shift institutional food purchasing, we have recognized that institutions must leverage their power and resources in other ways beyond direct food procurement. This includes reassessing procurement policies and practices, identifying complementary institutional initiatives that could support more equitable supply chain development, and providing commitments that help emerging food businesses access much needed resources, like land and financial capital.”

While they are working in different communities and contexts, all six teams are engaging institutions as key partners in their food systems change efforts, with an emphasis on building economic opportunity with and for Black-, Indigenous-, and other People of Color-owned food and farm businesses. For example, the Portland team hopes to better align the region’s parallel farm-to-institution efforts and explore institutional investments, like using vacant hospital land for food production, that build the capacity and economic resiliency of BIPOC producers. See the list below for more detail on each team and their areas of focus for the Accelerator.

“We are so excited to partner with these diverse and creative leaders to address the inequitable barriers that limit BIPOC-owned food and farm businesses’ ability to build wealth in their communities,” says Susan Schempf, Co-Director of the Wallace Center. “Institutions can be powerful partners in building economic opportunity, and we’re eager to learn alongside the teams about how to more meaningfully engage anchor institutions – beyond procurement– in our collective efforts to shift food systems towards equity.”