Champions of Change

Champions of Change is a one-year leadership and design program that is part of United Way's Black-Led Social Change initiative. The program aims to bring together community leaders with diverse backgrounds, skills and perspectives who are driven to advance Black-led ideas/efforts that reduce poverty and promote wealth-building opportunities in the Black community. Champions take on large projects in support of United Way's commitment to equity.

For the pilot of the program, Champions were in the driver seat to test a new way for United Way to invest in and support communities. With support and resources from United Way of Greater Cincinnati (UWGC) and Design Impact, Champions designed and ran a process to provide grants and other supports to promising Black-Led ideas/organizations that reduce poverty and build wealth in the Black community. To do this, Champions took part in a series of experiences where they learned alongside grassroots leaders and other experts, built on knowledge and skills about grantmaking, and used their collective knowledge and networks to create an impactful new model.

This work led to the creation of the Black Empowerment Works grant program. Since its inception in 2020, we have invested over $5 million into 130 ideas and their leaders.

Thank you to the hard work and dedication of our first class of Champions: Retina Carter, Marquavius "Marq" Casey, Kendra Davis, Edita Dolan-Mayo, Alexis Trotter, Jalisa Harris, Reginald Harris, Terri Hurdle, Ronald Jackson II, Julius Jenkins, Chris Macklin, Rashida Manuel, and Jeremy Smith.

Participants will have the opportunity to:

• Network with similarly-passionate members of the community;
• Design and execute a grants project in a very hands-on way;
• Learn from and provide support to changemakers in the community;
• Provide leadership to UWGC on future efforts around community engagement and impact;
• Build relationships and connections to UWGC.

We are not yet accepting applications for the upcoming Champions of Change class. Interested in receiving updates when the next application opens? Send an email to black-led@uwgc.org with "Interested in Champions of Change" in the subject line.