If you've seen the red DurhamCares bumper-stickers sprouting up on cars around town and scratched your head about what it's all about, it's not a stretch to say that the organization's mission is well-summarized by the slogan appearing as the group's slogan: "Love Your Neighbor."
I mentioned the group in passing in this month's Durham Magazine as the philanthropic counterpart to Bandwidth.com co-founder Henry Kaestner's passion for re-engaging entrepreneurship in the Bull City. In the case of Kaestner's Talent Capital, he hopes to provide Durhamites with the seed funding to open businesses that better not just their founders and investors but the community.
Similarly, DurhamCares seeks to provide structures -- ranging from outcome-driven success grants, to their unique volunteer matching and trips programs -- to help non-profits connect with the monetary and human resources they need to meet their missions.
But the mission of Kaestner and his team is deeper than that. At its heart, DurhamCares is a principles- and faith-driven endeavor aiming to get Durhamites themselves to reconnect with the needs of other Durhamites.
And that's where the "Love Your Neighbor" idea comes from. It's far from a quickly-chosen motto; it reflects the vision Kaestner and others have set out for the organization from day one.
"For me, it's all spiritual. It's all about my faith," says Kaestner, noting that the slogan comes directly from the parable of the Good Samaritan, who didn't just provide money to the person he helped in the Bible, but literally engaged on a personal level and brought the person he helped into his life, loving him like a member of his family.
"It's the broader definition of my neighbor. It's everybody," says Kaestner. "The broader definition means your neighbor isn't just the person who lives next to you in Hope Valley, or American Village, but across the city in North-East Central Durham."
Kaestner hopes with DurhamCares to re-engage with an older model of community support for others, hearkening back to the days when everyday citizens directly worked to help those in need. "We ended up getting more and more removed as individuals" from the needs of the community, Kaestner says, when we began to professionalize helping others through social services organizations.
The entrepreneur's own realization of the importance of directly engaging those with philanthropic capital -- financial, human, time and otherwise -- with those in need came after a charitable trip he made to South Africa a few years ago. Staying in a wealthy part of the still-much divided country, Kaestner's hosts were surprised to learn that he'd ventured into a poor township, adding that they themselves had never visited that poverty-stricken portion of their country.
A point that hit home to the south Durhamite when, back in the Bull City, he was talking with others about Joe Bushfan's engagement in the Angier-Driver corridor to open a neighborhood grocery and other businesses -- and Kaestner realized that he himself hadn't been there before.
Which is where DurhamCares comes in.
A marketing study commissioned by the non-profit found that Kaestner wasn't alone among Durhamites in not knowing how to get engaged with charitable activities in their communities:
- Residents with household incomes over $100,000 were giving less than 1% of their income away locally;
- Many respondents said they weren't giving because they didn't know what the impact of their giving would be;
- A number said they wanted to volunteer but didn't know how to get involved.
DurhamCares director Heather Jones -- formerly an HR manager at Durham-based ad agency McKinney -- notes that the group is responding with a three-pronged effort to get these citizens engaged with their home community.
FIrst comes engagement, showing how one might help, and that starts through Durham trips, bus-based drives through the city, stopping at points of need or interest, and trying to introduce the Locopops crowd to places like J.C.'s in East Durham -- and vice versa, a move Jones describes as trying to "demystify" Durham and familiarize those who might become more engaged in their community with facts, knowledge and needs.
And those motivated to give time or money -- or both -- can find in DurhamCares a concerted effort to connect them with organizations that could use their help.
On the time side, Jones' HR background will come in handy for the group's volunteer matching service.
Outside of occasional events like the upcoming Week of Hope effort (July 5-12), DurhamCares is focusing on making longer-range connections between community members and non-profits that could use their help, ideally for 3-12 months or longer.
Got an interest in volunteering? DurhamCares will literally interview you, spending the time in person or by phone to understand more about your skills, interests, likes/dislikes, and what kind of work you want to do; then they'll work with local non-profits to find a placement for you.
"Just as that recruiting or headhunter process happens for jobs, that's the same thing we want to do," Jones says.
It's a relationship that doesn't end when the handshake between citizen and organization is done; ongoing follow-up with both the organization and the volunteer then take place to assure a match. And mind you, if there isn't a group in their database that fits what you're looking for, DurhamCares will look to find other organizations in the community where you can pitch in.
In terms of matching donors with groups that could use their money, DurhamCares is innovating in a different way, at least from a Bull City perspective, bringing a social entrepreneurship focus to their effort.
They've partnered with eight Durham-based community groups, ranging from the Durham Rescue Mission to Habitat for Humanity to Big Brothers Big Sisters.
But they're not simply out working as proxy fundraisers; instead, they've worked with recipient programs to define outcome-based goals and metrics.
DurhamCares is this year putting up $10,000 towards a "success grant" for each group -- and encouraging donors to make their own grants via DurhamCares, pledging the funds if the group(s) in question meet their goals.
Come year's end, DurhamCares and the non-profits will work together to see how much progress has been made towards the outcome-based targets; organizations will receive anywhere between 0% and 100% of the total success grant pledge based on their progress in meeting outcomes.
Kaestner's entrepreneurial bent is evident in the plan, and Jones notes that it's a new way of thinking for non-profits, many of whom have used activity-based reporting in the past -- how many events they held, how many attendees at events and so forth.
The organizations set the goals themselves, mind you, but DurhamCares works with them to make sure they are tangible, measurable, and based on outcomes and not effort-expended.
And mind you, when you donate money towards a success grant, 100% of your pledge goes to the organization. DurhamCares doesn't take anything off the top.
The organization is being bootstrapped by Kaestner and others who want to see this model of deep engagement succeed. And the start-up mentality extends to their offices at NECD's John O'Daniels Exchange on Gilbert Street, itself a community- and entrepreneurship-focused office space that opened earlier this spring. (More on the O'Daniels Exchange in an upcoming story at BCR.)
Inside DurhamCares' cozy office, Jones and fellow staff member Mike Schneider toil away with interns, brightly-colored Ikea furniture occupying the space.
And if their heart-of-Durham neighborhood doesn't tell you they're deeply embedded in the Bull City, the two maps on the office's east wall -- one showing Durham streets and thoroughfares, the other depicting Durham neighborhoods, make clear the organization's target area.
From those maps alone, the group's mission is clear: getting more Durhamites engaged directly, across and throughout the Bull CIty.
DurhamCares is hosting a bus tour of the city Tuesday night from 6:30 to 9:00pm, and again on June 30 and July 9. For more information on the tour, challenge grants or ways you can get involved, visit DurhamCares' web site at www.durhamcares.org.
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