Recently Leadership Greater Washington received the DC Housing Justice Award from the birdSEED Foundation. Equitable access to housing in the region has been a driver for many of our programs, and we were honored to be recognized not just for this work, but by an organization that has its roots in LGW itself. As we celebrate our 40th anniversary, the LGW impact is an even more important story to tell, and the birdSEED Foundation is one of those impacts. We recently sat down with lisa wise (‘20) and Marla Dean (‘20) to learn how it all began…

It all started with a walk.

In the midst of the COVID pandemic, lisa wise went on a walk. Like many others during the 2020 lockdowns, she enjoyed these opportunities to get out of the house and clear her mind. But this one was different. Between the pandemic and protests that summer, lisa – who in 2009 had founded Nest DC, a community-focused property management company – could not stop thinking about the racial wealth gap. With her years of experience in the housing sector she knew it all too well. “I do believe that the real estate industry is sort of squarely responsible for [it],” she says, “and have done a beautiful job denying generational wealth through home ownership. And no one in my industry is talking about it!”

lisa knew the power of wealth transfer. She credits purchasing her first home as a life-changing moment, and it would not have been possible with small inheritance that turned into a down payment. She was also no stranger to transformational giving, having started a program within Nest called birdSEED that provided no-strings-attached microgrants to “doers, makers, and disruptors.” And it was on this walk that she had the germ of an idea: what if we applied this model to home ownership?

Thus the birdSEED Foundation was born. “The idea was that I would create an opportunity for people that don’t look like me to buy homes with a forgiven grant… of $10000.” lisa not only knew the power of generational wealth and home ownership; she also knew housing insecurity. That inheritance she had received that kickstarted her journey was not an easy one. She had spent years in Arizona caring for relative who eventually died of AIDS, leaving her a car that she sold for $8300. $8300 that turned into a home and transformed her life. And she wanted to make that transformation happen for others.

Taking root with LGW.

Like much of the world, the Class of 2020 was directly impacted by the pandemic as in-person program days switched to virtual once gathering together became impossible. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but the LGW spirit helped them persevere. And it also laid ground for the birdSEED Foundation to blossom.

“It gave everybody a chance to think about things differently because they had time and bandwidth,” lisa says. “If I tried to get everybody on board with this now, it would be kind of like herding cats. You had the room to really ponder things differently.” At first the “everybody” in question was her team at Nest as well as Leslie Case[MD1.1], now Co-Executive Director at the Foundation, who helped her establish the administrative and operational side of things. But it was also her Class of 2020 classmates, including Marla Dean.

“Like lisa said, one of the things we benefited from was a captive audience in the pandemic,” Marla shares, “where people could in many ways stop, take a breath, survey the landscape and see all that was going on in the world. And I think that’s critical to the story because it got LGW members engaged.”

At the time, Marla was working for Bright Beginnings, a nonprofit that took a two-generation approach to supporting children facing housing instability. “The concept of a home was very important to me,” Marla says, “and I was always thinking about issues not just of economic stability, but economic ability and building wealth. And so when lisa landed on the lever for change being the purchasing of the home, I wanted to be a part of it.” She had seen statistics showing black homeownership decreasing in DC, and that concerned her. “This was an opportunity to have an actual impact.”

Marla was one of the first LGW Members to get involved, serving on the advisory board with other members of her class, helping screen applications and other administrative tasks. She’d learned more about lisa after their class year, and was moved by lisa’s story and the motivation behind the birdSEED Foundation. She wanted to support.

But by that time lisa’s plans had started to grow. “I was working on another startup concept that we were expanding to Philadelphia,” she says, “and I don’t feel good about doing business somewhere I hadn’t invested [in the community].” Philadelphia was a logical next step for the Foundation – “it’s the largest poorest city in the country,” Lisa adds, “homebuying is more achievable there, and the grants can go farther. We tested the waters and Philly was very receptive.” However, it wasn’t as straightforward as expanding giving up the Northeast Corridor. Her new plan required a new 501c3 nonprofit foundation, and that foundation needed a national board of directors. And that board needed a chair.

LGW showed up again. “Marla stepped up from the start,” lisa shares. 

“When I get involved with something I want to take it seriously,” Marla adds. “It wasn’t complicated, I was doing what chairs should do – finding out how to keep things going and taking it to the next level[MD2.1].” To date she has been able to raise nearly $4m for birdSEED.

She sees the birdSEED model as emblematic of the LGW experience. “When you have an issue you're trying to address and you're trying to solve, I think you should pull out your LGW directory and say, who can I bring to the table? A good base of support will always be your class, a place to start a conversation, to try and figure something out.”

“That should be the legacy of the Signature Program.”

Spreading SEEDs for the future.

So what’s next for the birdSEED Foundation? And what role can LGW continue to play?

“I want to have an impact in communities around the issue of wealth building,” Marla shares, “I want to make sure there are black homeowners in DC. I want us to expand – there are other cities that are prime for our model, places where prices are on the precipice of getting outrageous where we could have a real impact for people of color around home ownership.”

“I agree with Marla that there’s a lot of opportunity for people to see what we’re doing and making sustained investments,” lisa continues, “and I think that there's an opportunity for [birdSEED] to resonate with people in ways that giving doesn't normally do. I believe that we could, with the right visibility and the right exposure, create a giving campaign for small donors to really make a difference.”

“I think one of the places that I would love for us to get more resources from is really from banks,” Marla shares, “lisa started the conversation around policy that created some of these conditions, redlining, that created wealth for some communities by taking it away from others. I would love to see the banking sector be a part of this conversation as well.” But it’s not just about financial support. “I think it's important for forecasting and really knowing what you're going to be able to do in the future, to bring in these entities who do have the capacity to have game-changing inputs into an organization. We have to ask ourselves who are the people who played a role in this current situation, and how can they play a role in addressing it?” 

“I think the city does need to acknowledge and support what we're doing,” lisa adds, “We're filling a need in this city and the city has not spent any time endorsing and or giving visibility to what we're doing. I think Janeese [Lewis George] will likely be more enthusiastic about what we're doing. You have to knit together private, public, nonprofit. We can't do all of these things unless we're supporting each other.”

It’s the kind of cross-sector support that LGW is built to provide.

“I think LGW members should always be thinking about other members who are in different sectors and bringing them together to try and figure something out,” Marla says, “I think we need a lot more cross-sector collaboration in the region.”

And the birdSEED Foundation isn’t slowing down anytime soon.

“We have over 70 people that have closed on their homes, and we have wire transfers out to another five people,” lisa shares, “So by the end of the week or next, we’ll have 75 people that have closed on their homes. And that’s up from 59 in the middle of May.”

“It’s good news every day.”

Visit birdseed.org to learn more about the birdSEED Foundation and how you can get involved.