The pandemic has shown all of us the willingness and capacity of institutions to set aside outmoded rules, protocols and practices to answer urgent needs in an unpredictable time. Never prone to ascribe to the idea of business-as-usual, the REACH board and staff examined our own grantmaking requirements to get to the essentials of what we needed to change, and quickly, in order to accelerate grantmaking support to partners with whom we’ve worked for years. Many, if not most, of those changes will be incorporated into our practices going forward.

In reflecting on the community partners REACH has engaged with over the course of our 2016-2020 Community Investment Framework, as well as earlier versions, it was clear there were leaders and organizations missing from our portfolio. Although REACH’s strategic focus on health equity had fueled multiple investments in immigrant and refugee-serving programs and organizations over the prior four years, the public calls for racial justice tied to violence against Black men and women gave urgency to our launch of Centering Black Voices in 2020. This capacity and leadership initiative focuses on Black-led and Black-serving organizations working on key social determinants of health, through unrestricted grant support and strategic technical assistance. One of our visionary team members, our newly named Vice President of Programs Carla Gibson, guided development of this new effort following two years of earlier planning. Six Black-led organizations received $20,000 grants in 2020.

While we missed opportunities to gather in person, we continued to use the foundation’s platform to educate the business community and connect that sector to the public health system. We led early and vocally about the long-term risks to our economic recovery of not taking COVID-19 testing and vaccinations seriously. We advocated for more public health funding of critically under-resourced systems in Kansas and Missouri. We helped inform and allocate local and state CARES Act funding investments. And we kept our foot on the pedal for Medicaid expansion in both Kansas and Missouri, supporting coalition work, voter engagement strategies, and communications campaigns in both states. Although elected leaders maintained their opposition to expansion, we saw continued growth in public support for this common sense and cost-effective health policy. So, this work continues.

Finally, given the stress and pain of the challenges and losses people and our own REACH family faced, our team worked to give encouragement to our nonprofit partners and to one another. It was, as already stated, an extraordinary year. Not because of what REACH did, but because of what our people—board members, colleagues and allies—did to demonstrate resiliency and resolve to move our community through the pandemic and into a new year where we will all continue to put what we learned to good use.