PROJECT

Kin – Fiscal Sponsor

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Kin is a project created by Dominique Samari of P3 Development Group that aims to develop authentic cross-racial relationships in Milwaukee. These conversations grow into relationships that work to address the city’s challenges of segregation and inequality.

UEDA serves as the fiscal sponsor for Kin.

Goals & Challenges:

Kin is a 4-month guided conversation designed to create vulnerable and authentic connections. The conversations are the project, the relationships are the product.

Goals

  • Secure financial support to develop a platform that helps facilitate connections and conversations.
  • Create a new website to provide a consistent, semi-automated mechanism for connecting the participants to the project.
  • Work with partners to market and expand the reach of Kin to participants in companies, schools, churches and other community organizations.

Challenges

  • Milwaukee’s deep segregation can make it difficult for people with different lived experiences to connect.
  • There are not many spaces where people can experience the vulnerability that leads to more authentic relationships and deep conversations.

Approach:

In alignment with our mission, UEDA provides capacity building support to a variety of community and economic development initiatives.

  • Serving as a fiscal sponsor is one way we can support emerging projects and programs.
  • Provide administrative support to secure philanthropic support during the growth and evolution of Kin.
  • Members of UEDA staff were involved in early efforts to develop and establish the program.

Impact:

  • Assisted Kin to receive and manage funding to support the project’s launch.
  • Kin launched their first cohort of participants from the 2018 Belonging Project to test the guided conversation model. Many were eager to continue the conversations that were started there.
  • Created a new website for the project (www.wearekinmke.com) with support from Mueller Communications.
  • Seeking additional philanthropic grants to expand participation in Kin and manage the conversation platform through the next stage of the Kin project.