The Present and Future Are Ours!

(Illustration by Marcos Chin) 

An ecosystem builders and investors in community transformation, we have focused on stability for the last five decades. Stabilizing the single parent, the eager and expectant student, the transitioning teenager, the unmotivated, undersupported young adult, the overwhelmed head of household, the elder with desires of living out their days at home in their community. We’ve seen it all.

We’ve also achieved great success. The main ingredient of that success has been connecting in authentic ways with disfranchised neighbors and residents with forgotten zip codes, centering their experiences as we design community transformation and economic development strategies. This work is rooted in holistic pathways to stable housing, lower risk scores, and integrated educational ecosystems that support everyone from cradle to career and beyond. It depends on community partners that want to do the work in the short and long term, propped up by a diverse funding apparatus that includes a thriving philanthropic community and supportive elected officials who clear the way for others to receive. It’s a simple recipe that we’ve created in more than 60 communities across the country. Spoiler alert: It can be done and scaled.

Industry leaders often ask me, “What’s the secret sauce?” My answer is simple: “Love and a results orientation.” Our love for people is our vibranium and our legacy. It’s the foundation of our shift from transactional to transformational leadership. As you read this, you might ask, “What does love have to do with it?” Everything, because love is a universal language. I believe that through love—and only love—we can reach collective prosperity.

The moment we are in allows us to reimagine a world that benefits everyone. A world where every community has access to:

• Quality education (nearly 60 percent of fourth graders from low-income families in the US can’t read at grade level)
• Economic opportunity (when more than one in three families cannot afford basic needs)
• Culturally competent health care (in a system where Black women are three times more likely to die in childbirth than white women)
• Safe, stable housing (more than 700,000 people experience homelessness on any given night)
• Ways to engage in democracy to strengthen their communities without hurt, harm, or danger

We’re being invited to move beyond systems that were not built for everyone and into structures that reflect who we are and aspire to be. The path forward is paved not only with innovation, but also intention that centers care, dignity, and the experiences of the people living closest to the margins. Our collective posture, from this moment forward, must be abundance, and we must remove scarcity from our lexicon. We must see all of us. We must honor our lived experiences, shared connections, and the promises we make to one another. The American promise, while key to remaking our future, must be grounded in our collective humanity. Is it truly a promise? Only love will hold us accountable.

I believe we live in one of the greatest countries in the world. But until we confront the marginalization of individuals and entire communities, that greatness remains at risk. We are only as great as the sum of our parts and boldness is required to ensure that our humanity is visible to all.

So I ask: Are we willing to continue perpetuating generational harm? Or are we ready to reimagine a world that sees us all? I was born and still live in a society that often doesn’t see me. But I’m working to eradicate that invisibility and connect our purpose with the promise of our present and future, which gave birth to this collective movement. You may ask, “What is the collective movement?” It is the movement that centers our collective humanity through the lens of:

• A grounded experience centered on people
• Strategic action for the betterment of community
• Releasing the transactional in favor of the transformational
• A deep understanding that individual humanity is bound to our collective humanity
• Centering policy that responds to historically marginalized places and people
• Remaining nimble and results-oriented in pursuit of a North Star to which we all adhere

In closing, I ask: What would it take as an industry to ensure that every person, regardless of race, background, or zip code, could access the American Dream with dignity? Would it mean releasing the grip of scarcity and choosing abundance? Not as charity but as design? Could we learn to see systems and people living in them not as regulatory checkboxes, but as stories of survival, striving, and dreams deferred? How would we know when we’ve done right? Not through profit alone, but by porch lights flickering in homes that once stood empty. By joy returning to places long abandoned. By children soundly sleeping in rooms that hold their future.

To truly focus on Healthy Opportunities Made for Everyone (HOME), we must align in a different way. We must lead with love and center our collective humanity in action, policy, and practice, not just theory. At the end of the day, this work isn’t just about systems change but also ensuring that every person is seen, heard, and valued.

Read more stories by Donovan C. Duncan.