Online Event Archive Recorded: August 21, 2024
Are you making the most of your NCRC Membership?
Do you know NCRC offers health equity expertise and subgrant opportunities?
Join us to learn what resources, services, content and networking opportunities your membership includes and how being a NCRC member can help you in your fight for a #JustEconomy. NCRC staff share tips for making the most of your membership and walk through NCRC’s newest member features.
Download:
Speakers:
Devin Thompson, Director of Health Equity and Impact, NCRC
Laura Bentley, Director of Grant Administration, NCRC
Caitie Rountree, Director of Membership and Events, NCRC
Diane Ashong, Membership Engagement Manager, NCRC
Ralph Cyrus, Membership Engagement Specialist, NCRC
Transcript:
NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.
Ashong 0:10
Hi everyone. Welcome to NCR C’s membership webinar. Feel free to introduce yourself in the chat. Type in your city and state where you’re joining from in this webinar. So we’ll get started since it’s a couple minutes past one o’clock, and I am going to remind everyone to if you have any questions, submit that in the Q and A button at the bottom of your screen. And we’ll, throughout the webinar answer some of those questions. But there also be, at the end of the webinar a portion with Q and A Okay, all right, and I will turn it off to Ralph, who will talk about NCRC and what we do.
Cyrus 1:09
Welcome everyone. I am Ralph. I’m the membership engagement specialist for NCRC. Just to let you know a little bit about our organization, NCRC is the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. We were founded in 1990 and we have become a nationwide organization of over 700 member organizations with the mission of making a just economy a national priority and a local reality. We work with our members to close racial and social economic divides, as well as closing opportunity divides. As I said, we were founded in 1990 with the mission of advancing the goals laid forth in the Community Reinvestment Act, and to specifically advance credit lending and investment and moderate to income communities. We do this by advocating for policies that support community development and financial inclusion, we build partnerships with community lenders to negotiate CBA agreements with financial institutions and those CBAS are blueprints for how lending institutions will provide equitable chances of lending and development. We also provide technical assistance and training to community organizations to build out their capacity to provide better services to whoever their attended audiences and to make them as as effective as possible. And lastly, we convene events that bring stakeholders together to discuss and to discuss how the best create the most equitable solutions to the problems of a of an unjust economy. And with that, I will now turn it over to Caitie to see what highlights some of the main benefits that membership in NCRC brings and what we’re trying to expand upon.
Rountree 03:38
Hi, thanks, Ralph. I’m Caitie Rountree, NCRC director of membership and events. So thank you all so much for being here with us today. I’m going to briefly talk about some of the benefits that we see members relying on most heavily. These are some of the key tools which we deliver the value that Ralph just highlighted. So one of the key ways that we connect our members to one another and to us is through events you’ll you’re already hearing a little bit from us about the just economy conference. If you are on our email list, this is the national event for folks working to make a just economy a national priority and a local reality. Over 1000 people, community leaders, financial institutions, local and federal government agencies, academia, all coming together to network, share ideas, learn and ask hard questions to chart out a better future. This year will be in DC, March 25 through 27th members get a steep discount and get to participate in Hill day, where we send delegations to meet with congressional offices, and right now we’re taking proposals for sessions. So this is a great time to submit your best ideas for conversations that you want to lead at the just economy conference, and make sure you get those in by September 13. Another way that we convene folks in person, we have an annual summit that moves around the country. The just economy conference is a national event, but these summits allow us to dig deep into a particular region or metro area. Every fall, we go to a city where NCRC has been partnering for a while, and we work with our members there to convene a summit around local economic justice topics this fall will be in Detroit on September 24 so if any folks here are within driving distance of Detroit, that could be a really great way to connect with us in person in the fall, throughout the year, both in person and online, we also provide unique learning opportunities through our National Training Academy. NTA is a comprehensive training program that meets the needs of organizations committed to increasing access to credit in communities, and we do this by increasing the knowledge and skills of organizations seeking to expand their services. And you can check out our course catalog of live and recorded trainings. We’ll put the link to that in the chat. One of the key ways that folks look to connect with us is around our policy expertise, particularly as it relates to the regulation of financial institutions and ensuring that those institutions are good partners to communities. There’s a few different ways that we provide that insight. Radar is one of our most popular weekly newsletters where we curate some of the most important developments in the field. So make sure that you’re signed up for that. We also regularly publish papers and blog posts breaking down relevant policy issues and laying out potential ways for our members to engage. We hold a monthly ledge reg call to brief members and give our members a chance to ask questions and engage on policy developments. And then finally, we rally our members on particular policy campaigns, giving member organizations the opportunity to sign their names to comment letters on issues that matter. And we’ll share a link in the chat to see some of the different testimonies and issues that we’ve taken a lead on from a policy perspective. And the final research benefit that I want to highlight is our research. NCRC research team regularly produces original work on topics such as redlining, gentrification, displacement, bank branch closures, segregation, public health outcomes and other topics. They also support our members through three few different ways, and we’ll link to some of these as well. The Fair Lending tool is a great interactive tool where you can look at Bank and lending activity in your area, in your community, across a variety of different factors. We help our members with data access. You know, how do I find this data? How do I get to that? Those are, those are questions that our research team is ready to help field. Our research team also does lender analysis to help our members understand how particular lenders are performing in their markets. They do mapping and data visualization and consultation as well. And then finally, sometimes members have particular research needs that are a little bit more involved than what those things I just listed can cover. In those cases, the research team can map out a contract at a discounted member rate to support analysis of lending, new bank branch site locations or other support, including the full production of interactive reports for public release. So starting with the fair lending tool is a great place to start look at some of the materials that our research team has produced, and then reach out, and they’re very creative and responsive and helping you really make sure that you’re using data to drive the movement for economic justice in your community. So those are some of the kind of the tried and true benefits that, again, that we see members really coming to us for over and over again and really leveraging in their communities. But now I’m going to turn it over to Laura from our community impact team, and then to Devin from our health equity team to talk about some member benefits that are evolving and emerging. So Laura, I’ll hand it over to you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about the community impact team.
Bentley 9:20
Awesome. Thank you, Caitie. Well, nice to see you all today. My name is Laura Bentley, and I am the director of grant administration with NCRC Community Impact team. You can see as well on the screen. Our other colleague within my team is Luis Ortiz, who hopefully you will all become familiar with as you continue to partner with NCRC. So to overview a little bit the community impact department. Our goal is to build member capacity through sub-grants, and that’s our effort. And we oversee three program lines for NCRC members, so I’ll be touching on those. The first is our housing counseling network, or HCN, as we call it. NCRC has served as an intermediary for our housing counseling network for over 15 years. Currently, we have 25 housing counseling agencies in our network, and just last year, our network served over 14,000 households. So we’re really excited to serve in our role as administrators for this network, and as administrators we, for example, apply on behalf, on their behalf, for both public and private sources of funding, such as through HUD, and then we administer this funding directly to our network and support them in reporting and disbursements. So for housing counseling agencies, being a part of the network with NCRC unlocks additional sources of funding, and it also simplifies their reporting process. So for example, outside of the network, you might have a different reporting system for each of your funding agencies as a housing counselor or housing counseling agency, but as part of our network, we use just one system. We have one point of contact for our housing counseling agencies, as opposed to, you know, a different contact for each funding agency. So we really look to streamline that process and maximize the system for our housing counseling agencies that they can focus their energies on doing the hard work on the ground. I will note as well that over the past 15 years, we’ve continued to evolve our housing counseling network services based on feedback from our network. So as we look into the coming year, we look forward to deepening our work with the National Training Academy that Caitie was mentioning to offer additional training and information sharing on housing counseling industry trends. We’re also looking to be bringing the network together more often than occasional huddle-ups to connect on common challenges, best practices, resources and additional shared learning opportunities. So we look forward to offering an even more robust service to our housing counseling agencies as we continue onward. Next, I’d like to highlight our fellowship for equitable development. We can move to the next slide. This is an opportunity to work with innovative new talent, where we pair master’s level students with our NCRC members to complete member-designed fellowship projects that advance your organization’s mission. So in this program, fellows receive a $20,000 stipend for their work, and hosts receive a separate $5,000 administrative stipend. This is a great opportunity for you as a member to test out, for example, a seed idea for your organization, such as through research or impact assessment, data analysis or support for a pilot project through the form of a fellow. The next fellowships will begin on September 9 of this year, so stay tuned to our social media and newsletter to see highlights and stories that are shared during this fellowship year, if you’re interested in applying to host a fellow during the next round, our third area for Community Impact is our field Empowerment Fund, or Fef, and this, in contrast, is an opportunity to level up an established service line to increase your baseline service to the community through an injection of grant funding up to $200,000 so applications for this program are live now through September 13. So if you’re interested in learning more, our informational webinar is available on the field Empowerment Fund website, which you see at the bottom of your screen, and there on that website, we have additional information and additional eligibility details, etc. So for any of these programs, if you do have any questions regarding this, you can always contact the community impact team at impact@ncrc.org and we’d be delighted to to serve you in these programs and to also connect on them. Thank you.
Thompson 13:44
So good afternoon. Thank you for joining us. I’m Devin Thompson. I am director of health equity and impact here at NCRC. Appreciate your time today. So a little bit about this work. So for all of you who are been around with us for a while, you probably heard this health equity is kind of this newer body of work for us, and it is we’re kind of the first piece of this in place-based approach that we’re bringing to our work out of our new strategic plan. And you may be asking, Well, what does health equity have to do with a just economy and the community development work that you do? The reality is that every year there’s about $450 million sorry, $450 billion in economic growth that does not happen in the communities that we stand alongside due to health disparities. And so health equity is really just the premise that we can create a system where in which individuals are able to be healthy by their own choices and have a fair and just opportunity to be that healthiest self, where there aren’t those systemic barriers to health, which are similar in a lot of ways, those systemic barriers to wealth that you all have historically focused on. And the reality is of that, you know, $450 billion a year, 70% of it is economic growth that does not happen in predominantly Black and Brown communities. And so health equity as. See right the terms of health and comprehensive development have a lot of commonalities. So when we talk about comprehensive development, really talking about the notion that all of the work and all of the work to improve in a neighborhood is interconnected, and that that neighborhood thrives when a number of those factors are in place, effective schools, low crime, good jobs, quality, affordable housing, healthy residents, local retail and that they’re all interconnected, that we improve community safety when we’re transforming abandoned properties into affordable housing, or when we’re engaging at-risk youth in the community development efforts in the community, when we reclaim parks and make them spaces for families to play, or when we help commercial corridor become a vibrant place to shop and increase foot traffic. All of these things impact these other things. It’s that they’re deeply interconnected, and because more than 50% of health outcomes has to do with zip code by improving those outcomes, we’re also improving the health of the community members there, so that way they can continue to be engaged members of their own community. When we impact health outcomes were impacting wealth outcomes and vice versa.
Now at a highest level, next slide. Thank you. All of this really is engaged with the recognition that these outcomes are near interconnected, but they provide feedback to each other. So when we increase a parent’s income, we’re improving the likelihood of improved childhood education outcomes. It’s a generational virtuous cycle, but the work that we do and the work that you do doesn’t just end at what’s in the tree. A lot of our work is midstream or upstream. It’s that stuff that’s in the soil. It’s how we work on housing afford unaffordability as a systemic support. How do we work on and disaggregating communities and creating increased access to social capital and economic capital within the communities that we do, which are the outcomes of work of community development, and when we fix those structural barriers to ill health. We’re also fixing the structural barriers to wealth development. So that’s kind of at a top level why we’re doing this work. Now. A little bit on the how, if I could get next slide. So it all really starts with knowledge. That’s, you know, you heard us talk about research and policy work, NCRC, at our core, we’re great, and we view our best selves when we are finding what works in communities across the country and helping spread it to our other members. All of this in the support of the fact that our job, you heard, our mission, is to create a just economy, a national reality and a national priority and a local reality, and we do that by increasing the flow of of capital to the priorities of communities, especially in our place-based work. So as we figure out what works, and hear from you and support you in building out what works to do that, especially in MySpace, when we talk about health industry capital slide, we then drive that information back down to you, our members. When that happens, we’re helping you build better policy or program recommendations that become your advocacy agendas. We help you build up better outcome measurement structures that way you can then engage with other types of investors. We are not reaching, for example, in MySpace again, health investors that can be hospitals, it could be payers, it can even be your local departments of health. And when we can inform your project and program pipelines and those measurements, we can help you be better positioned to make those cases. We also engage directly with those investors. We connect that same information to those non-monetary outcomes that they’re seeking from their investments. And so that way their community development investments are able to then their investments in health equity outcomes are community development investments. And at the highest level, next slide, when we bring it all together, we facilitate inclusive investment coalitions. They identify projects in community that meet investors intent and we support investors education process to learn how to engage in participatory investment with communities that frequently don’t have a high level of trust with them. Today, as I frequently remind my colleagues internally, banks didn’t start knowing how to do equitable community investment. It’s taken decades of education, insured learning, to get there, and we’re in the similar process right now with Hospital and Health and Health payer investors one more if you would, thank you now to help support that environment, and because you know you all know us from our national level advocacy work, there’s a recognition that we can take that same information and use it to help drive policies that drive more equitable investment from those healthcare agencies to community identified outcomes. This is looks a lot like state policy work, because frequently it is because those are the entities who actually have oversight. This is less of a federal body of work, and when we find out and identify what works for two’s example, hospital and health facility. Sectors, we can work with you as our members to build local coalitions around those key topics that run very parallel to those coalitions that you’re already working in, because it’s the same intent of driving capital to the things that we know actually work as interventions. So that’s the bigger picture. How are we helping you as our members do that today? Next slide. Proud to get to share off our work in this new office hour. So how do we more directly support you? So besides the research work, and hopefully you’ve all had a chance to pop onto our website at some point and seen some of our you know, our research spotlights, that way you can build better case statements, some of our op ed work, so we can actually identify and help provide you with language to work in your own community. We’re also launching, starting this coming month, set of open office hours and member office hours. The open office hours are exactly as they sound. They are open to not members and non members alike, where we’re going to dive deep into a topic. So the coming six weeks, we’re gonna be focusing on transparency and efficacy of health facility mergers. So big topic right now you saw recently on the hill, and a couple of states are picking up local legislative, local local legislation around it, much of which we think could be significantly improved. So topics like that are going to rotate on a monthly by bi-monthly basis, but focused on the intersection of health, justice, investor accountability and those community-led development work that you all are doing in your communities. There, we will have open conversations, find out what’s worked, lift up what’s worked inside the network, as well as bringing other examples in from outside the network. As a member side, we recognize that the situation in any given locale might not be the same as what’s going on in other jurisdictions, and so we want to create spaces for you to get tailored information and tailored responses to what you need. Now, what that can look like is going to be 30-minute deep dive sessions together where we’re going to focus with one organization, or coalition, if it’s multiple organizations, working together on a topic, where we’re going to deep dive into what’s going on in your community and what sort of supports you need. Now this is the start of a process, but it’s creating an entry point for you to start getting access to the to the additional supports that you need in your community. This could be the beginning of identifying how to build a local investment pipeline that is multi axis, and actually is able to therefore engage multiple different types of funders, not just banks. It might be larger legislative or policy play around how to create better local legislation to actually so to actually bring accountability and oversight to health facility mergers, what it’s going to look like is, again, going to be tailored by you and what you need as members and as coalitions. I will say we’ve been putting out a lot of webinars on this topic to make sure that we’re going to be respectful for everyone’s time. We are actually making those, well, at least one of those trainings a prereq for engaging with these office hours and members-only sessions. The links for those are going to be available. And actually, I believe they just went live on these events just went live on our web page today, so you should be able to sign up for the open office hours or member-only sessions as of earlier this morning. I think that is everything. So I think I’m going to turn it back over to you,Diane. You, Katie, sorry.
Rountree 23:25
Yeah. Thank you so much, Devin, and thank you, Laura, those were really great. And I know that was a lot of information, so just a reminder, we’re going to share this recording and slides with all registrants. So if you weren’t able to digest all of that or take notes or get screenshots, don’t worry. It’s coming to you as a follow-up after this event. In a minute, Diane’s going to share some of the nuts and bolts about member eligibility costs and how to manage your membership. So hold on to those questions for right now. But before we dive into that, we wanted to give an opportunity to answer some questions about the member benefits that we just talked about. And there’s one actually in the in the QA box that I wanted to start with, because I thought this was just fantastic. The question was, to what extent does NCRC promote the research publications and advocacy efforts of members? For example, my organization regularly publishes original research and blogs. How does NCRC highlight that work, promote that work and bring attention to the advocacy efforts of membership organizations? I love this question, can we? Can I hire you to promote this? We have a form that can be found on the membership hub that day, and we’ll talk through it a little bit. It’s called Field Notes, and we are constantly looking for our members to share back with us what they’re doing that we can then amplify through our blog post, through our social media. So that field notes form, we’ll post it in the chat here, but that’s the best way to tell us that you’ve got something that you really you think that the rest of your peers would be really interested in. I frequently say that the real benefit of being a member of NCRC is not actually what we staff provide, but it’s the it’s the membership itself. And so when y’all are willing to tell us what great work you’re doing you’re actually providing a real value and benefit to your fellow NCRC members. So please do that. We’d love to amplify that work, and we would also love to be able to let your fellow members know about that work. I am checking I am going to ask that questions go in the QA box or in the chat so that we can make sure that we get to those. I did also want to highlight we answered this in the chat, but just to make sure that folks saw it, Sandy asked about the geography for the Field Empowerment Fund. We actually are opening that up. There is a list of priority geographies, but there is limited, limited funding now available for organizations outside of that target geography. And those geographies may shift a little bit and are not consistent from one funding opportunity to the other, so that’s something to pay attention to. When you see those opportunities as different funding opportunities have different restrictions on them. Let’s see. I’m waiting to see if I see any other questions about either the health equity work, the Community Impact funding opportunities, or any of those benefits that I highlighted earlier around research, policy advocacy, the events that we hold, or the training academy. Feel free to keep thinking about them. We’ll have more time for questions at the end, but I think in the interest of time, I’m going to go ahead and move us to Diane to walk us through eligibility and how to join.
Ashong 27:20
Okay, thank you, Caitie, so bear with me. I’m going to share my screen. Okay, okay, so we are here at the NCRC membership page to become a member, especially in organizational membership, click on join today. And just as a reminder, when you’re on the main page of NCRC, there is a membership button which will take you to this membership page. So just look up at at the top of the main page of NCRC, and it’ll take you to the main page of the membership. So to become a member and to see the eligibility, just click on join today, and we have three categories for organizational member. For instance, we have a nonprofit category with three levels, and dues are based upon your organization’s budget. So we have a small option which is 170, $5 per year, a medium option which is three, $50 per year, and a large option which is $900 per year. So take a look at that. If you qualify for the nonprofit category, if you are a government entity, we also have a government category that has two options, a local which is $900 per year, and a state option, which is $1,500 per year. And then lastly, we have a education category for any educational institutions like universities, your dues rate will be $900 per year. And I did also want to highlight, as you scroll further down on the membership page, a frequently asked questions. So please check that out. These questions may answer some of the things you’re wondering about. For instance, eligibility, payments. How do I pay if I sign up adding team members to your due subscription with us? So check that out first. If you can’t find any answers to any of your questions or concerns, you can always email us at membership@ncrc.org Okay, so if you do not qualify for the organizational membership, we also have a individual membership option, and this is located at the top of the page of the member. Page, and individual membership is called just economy club members. So you’ll click here on the just economy and it will take you to the individual membership page one second, all right. So as an individual member, you have three options. You can be a monthly member, a yearly member, or a one-time member, and each of these options have varying amounts, so see what works for you, and figure out if you want to be a monthly member, if it’s an easier, you know, contribution that way, or yearly member, or one-time member, all right, so that’s how to join as an individual member or organizational member. I actually want to pivot towards something that we have just for members only. It’s a called the member hub, and ultimately you get to this page. Let me revert back to the membership page. Is again, up at top, there’s a member login that you will click, sign in with your email and password, and then it will then take you to the member hub, which is just for our members only. And what the member hub is a portal where, for instance, you can update your information, your email, your organizational organizations, address things like that. Check out also, you know your current subscriptions, download invoices, things like that. And as you scroll further down, we have a compilation of what’s new at NCRC, different articles. You know, any new work that we’re doing, it’s all in one area within this portal. Before I move further down the page, I will show you where to update information that I have just mentioned. So you’ll click on Account, and it will take you to a view where you’ll see your different subscriptions. So right here under account, you’ll see your name, preferences, mailing address. This is where you can update that type of information. On the left-hand side, there’s also subscriptions. You can see what’s active in your due subscriptions with us, as well as within the order section, you can download invoices or view the invoice to there’s also a add a credit card portion, where, for instance, you want to switch the credit card tied to the membership and update the information or that credit card was expired. This is where you’re able to provide the new numbers and things like that. So go back to the member hub, and I will show you a couple more functions of this portal. I think many of you would be interested once you become a member. So as you scroll down further, and I know this was referenced in a couple of mentions from Devin, from Laura and from Katie, but we have a research section, as you can see, this is a compilation of any member tools they released or reports. You can also reach out to them through this link here to request any customized reports or data visualizations only. And as we scroll further, we also have a section for events and learning. There are some upcoming events. Feel free to check out the calendar here and some summaries and videos of those events and webinars. And as you scroll further down, and I really want to highlight this portion of the portal is our Field Notes section. What this is, is we want to hear from you as members, what are you doing? What upcoming programs, we want to showcase your contributions and successes within the work that you do. So if you want to share those stories and share those updates and projects and campaigns, you’ll click here, submit here on this button, this will take you to the form to provide that information of the successes that you want to share, and we’ll promote that within our social media communications that will be seen from other industry partners. So definitely check out that Field Notes section and submit your information within this form to share your story of what the work. That you’re doing and what you want to highlight. And I know we’ll drop in the chat the link of this field notes form as well. And the last bit, as you go further down to the page, we have a few more sections of for instance, on our reader. That’s a compilation of different newsworthy articles within our industry, as well as press releases and in the news of what NCRC is doing. So these items in the news and press releases are some official documents of artwork, all right. And so that’s it for how to sign up. How, if you’re eligible for organizational membership or individual membership, and a little bit more about the member hub, which is just for members, and that ultimately is a portal where you could see all the different benefits any upcoming work that N series is doing, or upcoming events, as well as submit any highlights and success stories that you want to showcase in your work. Alright, I will turn it over now to Caitie.
Rountree: 36:15
Sure and thanks, Diane, I’ve seen a number of questions come through, so we’re going to spend a little bit of time on that before we wrap up here. But I saw a couple of questions about individual membership, and so just wanted to talk a little bit about how we approach that, and how to know whether organizational membership is right for you or individual membership. If you are an organizational member, you have all the benefits that an individual member would have. So that probably is the right choice for you. If your individual members get the same level of access to most of the data benefits, the research benefits that we provide, they also do get a discount to events. It’s not quite as steep as the organizational discount. There are some ways that organizational members are served slightly differently for funding opportunities. For the most part, you need to be an organizational member to be able to access those. And there are some advocacy campaigns that are geared towards individual members. On occasion, we’ll have something where individuals can sign as well. But a lot of that work is is geared around organizational members. With that said, individual membership, there’s a very wide it’s kind of choose your choose your level in terms of payment. It’s a great way to stay connected. A lot of times, we see folks where their organization isn’t ready to join as a member yet, or they’ve, they used to be at a member organization. They’ve moved, or just their their their vocational institution isn’t member-eligible, and they still want to be connected to this work. And so those are the folks that we tend to see join as individuals. So I hope that’s helpful. You know, happy to take some follow-up questions on that. There was a data question, which I’ll confess, I had to double-check with our research team, and they’re so responsive that I got an answer before it was time for me to answer that question live. So the question was whether NCRC is able to share data from private entities like Zillow or ATTOM, which might be pronounced Atom, but I’m not a data person, so I’m not going to try to remember so they don’t have to incur the cost of trying to acquire that data. And just want to be transparent about the fact that a lot of those platforms have restrictions that preclude us from being able to share the data we do use we, the data that we use and share with members is usually available without you know, our the data that we share is not paywalled. And then we’re in large part, trying to help sort and sift. If anybody has looked at Raw Honda data, it is not user-friendly, and so we’re really focused on using developing tools and analysis that makes sense of publicly available data that frequently is just not very user-friendly. And then I’m actually going to turn it over to Laura to talk a little bit more about our housing counseling network and how that works with NCRC. So Laura, let me hand that question over to you.
Bentley 39:49
Thanks, Caitie, let me just see here. Ah, yes, okay, so regarding the housing counseling network, so the question is, how. Does the kind of application work and how does the funding support the housing counseling network? So in that regard, we do apply directly to both private sources of funding as well as to federal sources of funding, like to HUD. So we apply every year for funding on behalf of our housing counseling network, and then that funding we receive kind of the entire source of funding for the network, and then we sub grant that to our network members, so they really only have to interface with us, and we provide them support in that reporting. But yes, we do apply directly to kind of those main sources of funding on behalf of our members. I believe that answered the Q and A, but feel free as well to kind of send me follow-up questions that didn’t clarify it.
Rountree 40:51
Thanks, Laura, that was really helpful. Um, yep, and I am just checking we have just a couple more minutes, um, for one or two additional questions. So we’ll give a minute for that before we wrap up and close. And just to reiterate, because I did see this question again, we will share the recording as well as the slides and resources. And Laura, this looks like another question related to HCN. If I can ask you to answer Sandy’s question, and I believe I know the answer, but I’ll let you answer it.
Bentley 41:42
So I would say maybe Sandy, it’s worth connecting with us offline as well, because I might be a little confused on your question. But essentially, if you are part of the housing counseling network, you also have to be to get HUD funding. You would need to be a HUD approved agency as well, and certainly NCRC can kind of support with for example, our National Training Academy has training assistance on how counselors can be approved by HUD. So in terms of getting HUD funding through NCRC as an intermediary, the agency does also need to be HUD-approved. In terms of additional source of funding, HCN also does, as I mentioned, apply for private sources of funding, but we distribute that to our HCN members. So if you’re a housing counseling agency looking to get funding for your housing counseling services through HCN, you would need to be a part of our housing counseling network, the other programs that I mentioned, like the field Empowerment Fund and the fellowship, those are available to all members of NCRC, whether or not they’re part of the smaller housing counseling network. But I can mention, as well, the Community Impact email, if there’s further questions, we could get on a call and discuss that.
Rountree 43:06
And I see a question actually, about how to add context to your NCRC account, which is a great one of the nice things about having an organizational membership is that you can have multiple staff members engaging with those member benefits. So Diane, why don’t I pass that one over to you to walk through just really quickly how to do that?
Ashong 43:31
Sure thing. The best bet would be email us at membership@ncrc.org so we can see how many you want to to add. But for if you want to do it on your own, give me one moment, and I will share my screen so it will basically be through your member portal and under you remember under quickly, it will be, let’s go To the top, under your account. Click on under Account subscriptions within your NCRC membership team, and that’s where you can add your team, your additional teammates, or change out old members to be removed, as well as add new members. If you’re running into issues like I said, feel free to email us at membership@ncrc.org and we can do that for you, especially if it’s a bulk update of different contacts, people who may have left or joined. We can do that. Okay.
Rountree 45:02
All right, awesome. And speaking of that, membership@ncrc.org email address, if there are other questions that you think of after this or that we didn’t get to today, that is a great first stop, and we will be happy to schedule time to talk through any questions as well. We also have, as we move towards wrapping up here, we have a survey that we’d love for you to fill out. We do these types of webinars with some regularity, and we’re always working to figure out how to make them clearer and more helpful. We’d really love to have your feedback on that so that we can continue to improve. And that’s really, that’s kind of it for today. I do want to say just one last word from me. You know, we’ve talked a lot about different really kind of tangible benefits that are part of being an NCRC member. But I do really want to remind us all that beyond getting access to cool data or being able to pick Devon’s brain about health equity work or getting funding for your organization, really membership with NCRC is an invitation to join over 700 other organizations in a bigger movement. It takes all of us to bring together a coalition to bridge America’s historic racial and socioeconomic wealth, income and opportunity divides, and we really need you to be a part of that movement. And you need all of us. We’re really, really grateful for the work and the energy that our members do, and we really do encourage you to to join us. And for those of you that are members, use it leverage, leverage us. Leverage these benefits and stand with us as as we’re working together. Yeah, so that’s our final call. Thank you again for joining us today, and we’ll be in touch soon, and again, we will share the recording in the slides. Thanks so much. Have a good one you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
