Show notes
Hugh Ballou: This is Hugh Ballou, and I have the honor today. I am in Lynchburg, Virginia where I live. I have the honor of speaking to a native. Treney Tweedy: Yes, I am a native Lynchburger. Hugh: Burger. Treney, it’s a mouthful for me. Mayor Treney Tweedy. Hugh Ballou has its own challenge. Treney: Well, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me as your guest. We’re talking. Hugh: This is part of what we call The Nonprofit Exchange. We talk to people in social benefit work. They might be in government work, education, running a community for-purpose organization. We like reframing nonprofit to for-purpose. This is a live interview, but we are also recording and transcribing, preparing for the next issue of Nonprofit Performance 360 Magazine, which is going to be about partnerships and collaborations. I moved to Lynchburg 13 months ago. It’s been a very welcoming community. I noticed unlike a lot of places, people do work together in some communities, but here there is a whole community spirit of let’s attack the issues that are holding us back. Back in history, before the Civil War, Lynchburg was one of the wealthiest cities in the country. Treney: We were. We do understand our place in history. A lot of that was because of industry, because of being located by the river, and the tobacco industry, and many areas of utilization of the river alongside the city. Families and businesses grew along with it. Hugh: Lynchburg comes from John Lynch. Treney: Yes, who ran the ferry. The businesses back then utilized him. He helped develop Lynchburg. I know people don’t understand that. They often don’t get where Lynchburg comes from. It does come from the founder John Lynch. Hugh: It’s a great story. A lot of great stories here. Our story today is about how leaders in this city, and it’s a right-sized city. Not too big. We have 80-something thousand? Treney: It’s about 80,00 residents. We are in a region of 250,000. Lynchburg is the anchor city with surrounding localities. We are a city of 80,000 strong. Numbers are going up. We are a city we feel is compassionate and caring and innovative in how we think and work together. It wasn’t difficult to say we have a problem. Previous leaders before myself looked as issues, tackled things as they came along. There have always been community dialogues around issues. It wasn’t unusual for us to look at our current issue, which was our poverty rate, a high poverty rate we have among families and children living in poverty, and say, “We are just big enough to have the problem, but small enough to do something about it.” So that started the conversation amongst the previous Mayor Joan Foster. When we were on the campaign trail, the poverty numbers came up. When we were talking about education and work force, the actual percentage rates, when they hit you in the face, that almost a quarter of the population lives under the poverty threshold, we think of ourselves as being that formerly wealthy city, a city of opportunity, a city where you have a church on every hill. We also have restaurants. We love to eat. We love economic development. We have a thriving downtown. So what’s going on that we still have a quarter of our residents living under that poverty threshold? Of that 24%, 9% of those are children who are living in that. Once you get the numbers, you understand where we are, many cities, we drive by poverty every day. Do we actually have the wherewithal or the gumption to say we are going to do something about this? We have a lot of faith leaders, faith communities, faith houses. We think we have a strong education system. We know we have a thriving economic system here and development. It’s not getting to everyone. Everyone is not seeing that opportunity. That is when the city manager, the previous mayor, Joan Foster and I sat down and just said, we are going to commit to talking about poverty every two weeks during our meetings. We are going to look at how to develop our plan of talking to nonprofits and organizations. Where is the first step? We went looking for plans. We didn’t really see the canned program, and this is what you are going to do to fix your problem. It had to be locally thought out and locally grown. The communication conversation, we knew we had to make it solely for Lynchburg and build it around Lynchburg. Hugh: That’s wonderful. I have attended two meetings recently. One was Mayor Joan’s last meeting. There were reports from some grants that the city had given two different constituents, and how they were working and working together was quite impressive. A few weeks ago, there was one with faith leaders in the community and how they are sharing things together. It’s another level of remarkable. You break the politician mold. One of the definitions of a politician is someone makes half the population mad at them. Treney: I can believe that. Hugh: I don’t know if that’s the standard definition, but it’s my definition. I experience a lot of synergy, a word which we are both fond of. As a conductor, ensemble is we synergize together. I see synergy in a broader sense. The spirit of what people are doing. It’s fair to say- we are recording this in October 2018. We are not at perfection. It’s a work in process. Let’s jump to the future as you and your colleagues have done work on this. What do you all see in the future? Have you looked at a future vision? Treney: Yes, it continues with the cooperation and the collaboration. We realized early on that government can’t do it all. We had to partner with nonprofits. While everyone has always partnered together in programming and events, this is how we move our community into its best future. That is shifting the idea of organizations that have been doing great work. Someone said, I can’t take credit for this, that we manage poverty well. How do we move people out of it? How do we affect that mindset and shift that thinking for families and individuals? We need the collective community—the nonprofit leaders, the volunteers, the education institutions—to help work with all of that, to shift the mindset. We have what I say, you always want or need more resources. We already have dollars coming into our city. How are they being utilized? How are they connecting to the issue at hand for us? A lot of organizations are serving the same people. When you actually look at the individual households and the families, they are the same folks who are maybe walking through different service buildings, different types of needs at different times. Prices that are coming into play. One catalyst for this work was our health care system. Centra system. Centra health care realized early on that they were serving a small number of families in the emergency room. It was costing a huge amount. About 1,100 people were costing them about $17 million in ER. It still wasn’t meeting our need of the crisis of that family or individual. They began to look at how we can spread out the medical services or the opportunities for people to have that better relationship with a health care provider that gives them ongoing assistance and management. They developed mobile medical clinics. They researched the specific street of life they are coming from. What are their health care needs on that street? That really began the conversation in part probably of people looking at our neighborhoods, our streets, our families, our homes. Tying the census track data to it. We know where folks in their households are. To be able not to affect that somehow with all the data available, all the technology. Centra created the mobile medical units that went around to each neighborhood and brought medical care to folks who couldn’t access it. Maybe a transportation system. What is a ten-minute car ride to get to a doctor appointment for you or I? It might have taken them an hour and a half to get on a bus and transfer. That just limits the mobility of folks to take their children and themselves. All of that is what began the greater conversation of the types of committees we needed in addressing the poverty issue. Child care. When somebody goes to work, do they have child care? Transportation system. How does our bus system get people to their necessary appointments, but also to a job that is on the outer part of the community? Not closer in downtown, but further out. How does that spoken wheel type of thing work? Do we have routes for people who are on the outskirts of the city? Or are they spending two hours to get around within a five-mile radius? What is that? We created those committees through the Poverty to Progress initiative to galvanize the community, to say, “These are what we think we need to do in reducing the challenges and the barriers.” Identified those. Asked the community, whoever wanted to, college students, seniors, youth, whichever neighborhoods you came from, work on a committee. Talk about the challenges. If we had resources, how would you apply them? The community identified the greatest challenges and how to begin to work on them. People change. That is a year of asking people to commit to need. What I am very pleased with is that city council also agreed that this is a challenge for our city. A unanimous vote, which happens, but maybe not all the time in a council setting. The unanimous vote came that we are 1) going to apply a position to work as the glue for this work, the connector, the liaison between city government, the nonprofits, and the citizens. They committed to half an individual salary that works in the city manager’s office. They also committed to grant funds, up to $5,000 each, up to $25,000 to have as what I call putting skin in the game. If someone has an idea to help our communities, whether it is individual research or some other funding source, we wanted them to be able to have the opportunity to apply for up to a $5,000 grant and then leverage that with either another nonprofit or another grant or other work that is going on to make actionable goals actually become reality. Each committee developed two actionable goals they would work on during the year with some funding tied to it. We have seen some great partnerships happen out of that. The biggest part of the work was breaking down the silos. Silos are a terrible word sometime. Getting people to talk to each other, sometimes entities that are responsible for federal dollars, state dollars, never really talk. Everyone needs their own system of data collection, their own outcomes. We are all still in one city. If you are responsible for human services work or social services work, and the city is appropriating funding, maybe there is another agency that is responsible for poverty reduction with federal dollars. If we never force the conversation, and everyone to come to the table to say what are the hand-offs, how come we are all serving the same families, how can we serve them differently. You may do this very well and have less funding. We have some money here that can be used, but we have never been able to do this work. It’s getting people to come to the table and getting them to talk. They may not have the plan laid out, so you have to come to the table ready knowing there is not one answer already there. We are working toward the answers. Every day that we have conversation, every day that we create the expectation that this is for the benefit of our community. I said it in several meetings, if you set the tone that we want this to be operating in the spirit of excellence. Whatever ideas, whatever resources, we want to put our best feet forward. We want folks to have stellar service and opportunities. Then we have to build it in that way. We can’t do things mediocrely. I feel like sometimes in the history over time, it was easier to be mediocre. We get to a certain level, and then it’s too hard. We work a grant, and then the funds are dried up, so the work goes away. But people still suffer. If you leave work half undone or you are not able to complete it or continue it, then you leave a neighborhood, folks who are sometimes left behind. There has not been a focus that has been on that neighborhood. Our students coming out of environments that are not healthy maybe for them. What do we do to make that better, improve? It’s all connected. Hugh: I mentioned a large portion of your work as mayor. I like to help clients do all kinds of things all over the world in reframing leadership as influence rather than authority. You can lead from your mayor position of authority, but from my experience, you are an influencer. You probably spend a lot of your time connecting and building relationships. You can pick something to delegate to. Who would do that? That person stepped up. Many leaders think delegation is a sign of weakness. You validated yourself a few times. You know delegation is a strength of leadership. You also understand we can meet some common goals when we come to our table. Besides being an influencer, you’re an encourager. I think sometimes people don’t think of that. Treney: We all have skills and talents. I recognize where I am weak in certain areas. I have learned over time. I have worked for private and public organizations. I have worked for superintendents, worked for the public school division here. I have seen the importance of building a great team and having a deep match. It’s great to have people that you know. They can get in and build a vision. They understand why we’re doing something. We trust people to be able to do their job and say, “This outcome is a reflection of all of us. It’s not just me.” As a politician, and that is what I appreciated about the previous mayor when she put me aside her as vice mayor. She had led dialogues on race and racism and healthy initiatives in our city. As far as being an organizer and understanding how to pull people together, I watched her do it over my first couple of years here. Coming into a political leadership if you will, I had the benefit of having worked for the public school division, sitting in on every school board meeting for eight, nine years, sitting in on joint city council and school board retreats. I was the public information officer, so I watched how leadership engaged and interacted and talked to staff and built their teams over the years with various city managers and school superintendents. Building a team of folks who understand their roles and allowing them to carry it out toward that mission or that vision just worked better. When you respect people for what they bring to the table, their background, their experience, they are invested, and they know they are part of a group doing some great work. You have to have the flexibility to have that freedom within yourself to say, It’s okay to let go a little bit. You watch and come back and are available to talk to folks about questions, concerns. How is this shaping up? Are we seeing the outcome? Are you seeing what’s expected? If not, what do we need to do? We are sometimes afraid to tweak the work. It’s important because there is no perfect solution out the gate. That is one thing about Poverty to Progress. Media stories will say, This didn’t go right. Where is the right and wrong? We are working toward something. We are local. We are home growing this if you will. We can go back and reset. We can reevaluate. That’s what we do with this process, with the Poverty to Progress. We merged with another group that was doing similar work from the regulation/policy side. It wasn’t about who started first. But they were a regional focus. We were Lynchburg-centric. We were really focused on Lynchburg. Once it became that they were pretty primarily working with Lynchburg residents and policy/regulation, another locality started looking at its own county to see what they could do for themselves because they were rural and we were city. We have merged the groups now, created a collaborative leadership team that is getting re…
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