LISC is Larger Than Jacksonville

There was a quote that I heard recently on a commercial and it suggested that “size was everything.” As I reflect on that and look at the scope of work conducted by LISC Jacksonville, I have to smile and say I tend to agree. I agree in as much as our size has allowed us to partner with the City of Jacksonville to address some of the most pressing issues that face our under-resourced communities. It has allowed us to partner with Fortune 500 companies to deploy capital during the COVID-19 pandemic in an unprecedented manner. Finally, our size nationally has allowed us to leverage and develop a technical resource base that serves over 38 major metropolitan areas and rural communities.

While to a great degree our size does matter, LISC Jacksonville has not lost sight of the humanity our work requires or the directional dexterity that is often required when you are working with some of the most under-resourced communities. I would offer that it’s all those elements combined – size, humanization of the issue, and dexterity – that puts us at the front lines of our work and makes us the go-to partner for resource and programmatic deployment.

To that end, much of the aforementioned is maximized when we as a local office partner with our national team to bring resources and programmatic offerings to Jacksonville, such as the Uber Vaccination Program, which provides rides to vaccination locations at no cost. We have also partnered with Chipotle’s Juneteenth “Round Up For Change” initiative and the Macquarie Group Foundation to garner support for our work around criminal justice reform. These are just a few examples, with much more to come, of how partnering with those outside our county’s borders can have a direct impact in our own back yard. 

In this newsletter, we also address how to leverage the power of our national office in the areas of disaster recovery and resiliency. And yet, all of this is still just a taste of everything that is possible. While size can be relative, I would argue that LISC nationally and locally have maximized our size and abilities to generate an unprecedented level of impact in our under-resourced communities and beyond. And as our community increasingly recognizes the positive, city-wide economic and other impacts of uplifting our most challenged neighborhoods, LISC – both locally and nationally – will continue to play a leading role in bringing the necessary resources to the table to improve the quality of life for our most vulnerable neighbors and our city overall.