Metro IAF Receives Transformative Gift from MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett

Metro Industrial Areas Foundation (Metro IAF) received a transformative donation from MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett on Tuesday, June 15, 2021.  Metro IAF, a network of 26 non-partisan, multi-racial, multi-faith broad-based citizens' organizations working in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, and Midwest/Great Lakes regions in the US, was one of 286 recipient non-profit organizations nationally chosen by Ms. Scott and Mr. Jewett for support. Read MacKenzie Scott’s Seeding by Ceding on Medium.

“We are deeply grateful for Ms. Scott’s and Mr. Jewett’s investment in Metro IAF's organizing to transform neighborhoods and to create equity for first-generation homeowners through critical mass, affordable Nehemiah homeownership development and community revitalization as well as to recruit and mentor the next generation of organizers, especially people of color, and to replicate our signature criminal justice and police accountability reforms in more states, cities, and counties,” said Rev. Dr. David Brawley, Metro IAF Co-Chair, and Senior Pastor, St. Paul Community Baptist Church in Brooklyn, NY. 

“This unprecedented gift honors the generations of Metro IAF leaders and organizers, past and present, that have built and led Metro IAF's affiliates and established its track record of innovative and large-scale change from the ground up on health care, homeownership, living wages, jobs, environmental and criminal justice,” Rev. Brawley continued.

Metro IAF’s signature accomplishments include among many others:

1) Building 6,500+ owner occupied homes sold to first time homebuyers in NYC, Baltimore, Washington DC, and other places that have transformed blighted neighborhoods, created $3 billion+ in wealth for black and brown working-class families, and helped a generation of children thrive (see recent NPR story);

2) Securing the first universal health care law in Massachusetts that became the blueprint for Federal health care expansion;

3) Winning the first living wage laws in the US in Baltimore and New York that became national and international movements;

4) Pioneering criminal justice reforms state-wide in Virginia, Massachusetts, Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut and in numerous cities like Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland (see Politico article), New York, among others;

5) Winning $1 billion toxic chromium clean-ups in Jersey City, NJ from Honeywell and PPG Industries

Nehemiah Homeownership

Metro IAF is part of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), founded by Saul Alinsky, which is the oldest and largest citizens organizing network in the United States. IAF now has 60 broad-based, multi-racial, multi-faith, non-partisan citizen power organizations in 26 states and the District of Columbia made up of 2,500 institutions representing 2+ million people of diverse racial, ethnic, economic, political, and religious backgrounds.  IAF has trained hundreds of thousands of citizen leaders and professional organizers, including Cesar Chavez and Carmelia Goff, among many others. Read IAF 2020 Impact Report.