Our Journey
Like many in our community, Impact Alamance has been learning and growing. Through our relationships with community partners, with our staff and board members, and with other foundations, we began to recognize and acknowledge the areas we needed to grow to achieve our vision. In order for Alamance County to be a place where everyone can live and thrive, we realized we had to start asking new questions about the best ways to make that happen.
We began to imagine Alamance County as an electrical power grid—one that lights up the entire county, ensuring everyone can plug into the resources they need to thrive. With this vision in mind, our staff, board, and leadership began to talk about how some areas of the county are generously supplied, while others experience frequent outages. Clearly, not everyone in Alamance County was thriving, and we wanted to understand why. How did it come to be that way, and what could we be doing differently to make sure everyone has access to the resources they need to thrive? And we weren’t the only ones asking those questions—so were many of you.
With increasing curiosity and growing need, in 2018, we began talking to peer Southern foundations who were asking some of the same questions. We all wanted to better understand how racism impacted our region’s history and how it shapes our community today. As we compared notes, patterns emerged that connect racial disparities in health outcomes to a family’s ability to access opportunities like quality education, employment, and healthcare. When the opening came for Impact Alamance to join MDC’s Passing Gear Philanthropy Learning Institute, we said “yes” and welcomed this opportunity to learn and identify the root causes of inequities in our community.
The experience opened our eyes to interconnected histories that underpin the problems we are working to solve in Alamance County. If the community grid is going to be lit up for everyone, we realized we have to understand how the grid was originally built, who built it that way, and why. For example, we learned that in the 30’s and 40’s, only white people could access government loans, influencing how communities developed and reinforcing a regional divide that had ripple effects.
We began to better understand how race impacts the social drivers of health and how the inequities that exist in our schools, housing, healthcare, and environment are connected to the quality and length of a person’s life. Several of our board members were able to understand why they experienced so much more opportunity than others.
Through this process of learning and growing, we recognized the need to reflect internally on what this work means for Impact Alamance. We also acknowledged that we were not all at the same place in our learning journey. For some staff members, the history shared through the Passing Gear Institute was familiar; for others, it was new and eye‑opening.
One such insight was the presence of racial disparities in average life expectancy in Alamance County. Black residents live an average of 74.7 years, compared to 78.2 years for white residents. This gap reflects longstanding historical and systemic inequities that shape long‑term health and wellness, particularly through what are known as the social drivers of health.
The five social drivers of health—neighborhood and physical environment, economic stability, education access and quality, healthcare access and quality, and social and community context—play a significant role in determining health outcomes. According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, these factors account for up to 80% of health outcomes, while clinical care and individual health behaviors account for just 10–20%.
Due to historical inequities and systemic barriers related to housing, food access, education, and other critical resources, many Black, Indigenous, and other people of color in Alamance County do not have equitable access to the conditions that support lifelong wellness. This reality is evident in the 11‑year life expectancy gap between East and West Burlington. Although the two areas are only a few miles apart, East Burlington—which is home to a higher concentration of residents who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)—has fewer grocery stores, healthcare clinics, parks, and other essential resources as a result of historical discrimination and disinvestment. As a result, residents of East Burlington have an average lifespan that is 11 years shorter than those living in West Burlington.
Addressing these gaps in our community requires bold and sustained investment in the communities that have long been underserved, working to ensure lifelong wellness is achievable for everyone in Alamance County.
Although we’re still learning ourselves, we came to realize that if we wanted a different result, we had to start doing things differently, beginning with leadership and moving throughout our organization.
One of the first things we did was create an Equity Committee to think more deeply about the specific work we need to do together. We developed a shared language for staff and leadership to define equity: Equity means everyone should be able to access the resources needed to thrive, regardless of their zip code, race, or income.
We agreed that this isn’t the case right now. Our team had months of conversations about what we need to do to begin building a truly equitable Alamance County where everyone feels they belong. We started reflecting to get clear on our role as a foundation:
● Who do we want to serve and why?
● How are we defining ‘community’?
● How does this action advance equity?
● How will we hold ourselves accountable?
We continue to consider these questions as context for every action we take as an organization.
We have committed to moving forward, no matter how uncomfortable the journey feels at times. And we know that what we’ve already gained far outweighs any discomfort. Our relationships with each other are more honest. Trust is being built because we’ve been vulnerable and brave enough to challenge personal and operational assumptions—ones that we’ve held as truths for
our whole lives, and some we didn’t know we had. We are shifting our organizational culture at Impact Alamance, one conversation at a time.
In the five years since we began this journey, we’ve continued to listen deeply and learn from the diverse lived experiences across our community. More than anything, we’ve found that fostering a true sense of belonging is essential to moving forward—and to meaningfully addressing historical disparities in ways that are sustainable and rooted in community voice.
After completing the 2020 Passing Gear cohort, we began shifting our funding practices and tracking our grantee pipeline. One early example of this shift came during our COVID response, when over 70% of the $170,000 in relief funds went to marginalized communities where resources have not historically flowed equitably. We’ve continued tracking the demographics of our grantee pipeline as a way of ensuring our investments will not only support, but actively empower, historically marginalized communities.
We’ve also started tracking our funding initiatives according to the five philanthropic traditions: relief, improvement, social reform, civic engagement, and reconciliation. This is a way of holding ourselves accountable, while also reframing our funding approach to think about how we can address deep systemic inequities as opposed to simply providing temporary relief. This shift to the “upstream investing” approach has allowed us to maximize impact by implementing programs and internal processes that support sustainable, equitable progress in our community.
We’ve shifted to an ESG investment model, partnering with a financial firm led by women and people of color. By aligning our investments with companies committed to environmental responsibility, social impact, and good governance, we are also strengthening Impact Alamance’s long‑term capacity to invest in community impact.
We’ve sought opportunities to embed equitable practices into our grant operations, including reforms to our grant reporting process. We’ve shifted from a rigid report-based process to a more relational, trust-based approach, reducing the burden on grantees and making the process more accessible and effective.
We’ve also reformed the requirements for several of our grant cycles to ensure grant funding is allocated to projects that address the social determinants of health and the root causes of health disparities. In 2022, we launched the Community Forward Grant, which expanded eligibility to include individual community members—empowering residents to lead community-oriented projects that promote equity and support historically underserved populations in Alamance County.
Central to all this work is the commitment to reflection, learning, and honest conversation—first with ourselves, and then with you, our partners in the community.
Internally, we’ve created processes that foster diversity and prompt ongoing reflection on how our organization is advancing equity in the community. We established an Equity Committee to embed equitable practices in our investments, internal systems, and broader strategic plans. Through our GOLD Partners program, board and staff commit to regular learning and group reflection on a wide range of equity issues. We also launched an Equity Orientation for new board members, ensuring incoming members are informed about the expectations and priorities of our organization. These efforts have helped us align our internal culture with our external commitments to equity and belonging.
Over the past five years, we’ve taken intentional steps to increase the diversity of our Board of Directors to better reflect the community we serve. Today, our board represents a wide range of regions and municipalities of Alamance County—from rural areas like Saxapahaw, Whitesett, and Snow Camp to city centers in Mebane, Graham, and Burlington. We’ve also prioritized recruiting more People of Color, and 36.5% of our active board members identify as BIPOC. While this marks meaningful progress, we recognize there’s still work to be done. That’s why we remain committed to recruiting diverse leadership that truly reflects the communities we serve.
We’ve also increased funding for the Alamance Racial Equity Alliance’s (AREA) racial equity workshops, conducted in partnership with the Racial Equity Institute, in an effort to ensure that the nonprofits serving our community have the tools and resources they need to provide effective services.
In 2021, we launched the Alamance County Racial Equity Collaborative (ACRE Co-lab) to foster shared learning and dialogue around equity and systemic change. Over the past five years, five cohorts of local leaders and community members have participated in the program, exploring the brain science behind bias, examining how history and policy shape present-day disparities, and deepening their understanding of our community through meaningful conversation.
In 2022, we partnered with the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation to launch an initiative focused on driving progress through community-centered action. The result was the For Alamance Initiative—a volunteer-led community development coalition, guided by Harwood experts and coordinated by Impact Alamance staff.
The Harwood Approach has challenged us to rethink our assumptions, to listen more deeply to the community, and to open our minds to the possibilities of grassroots change. At its core, this work is rooted in equity—grounded in the belief that sustainable community development is dependent on broad community buy-in and a strong sense of belonging.
There are five For Alamance action teams made up of local volunteers and community changemakers: Arts & Culture, Narrative, Faith, Youth Wellness, and Bridging. Each of these teams has been out in the community, listening to different groups across the county, and implementing programs, events, and projects that foster belonging and bridge divides by sparking action around shared goals and aspirations.
The For Alamance Initiative has also led to changes in how Impact Alamance operates, prompting us to prioritize deep community listening and to leverage our role as a convener. We’re committed to creating spaces where every voice is valued, and every community member feels empowered to help shape a healthier, smarter, and stronger Alamance County for all.
We are humbled to be part of this journey with our community. Whether you’re just beginning to step into this work, or you’ve spent years trying to create lasting change, we’re in this together. Our commitment is to build trust, listen deeply, and remain accountable to the people of Alamance County so that together, we can create a healthier, smarter, and stronger community where everyone belongs.