Amanda Zeidner & Jerry Calderon
Amanda Zeidner is the project manager for community planning at the Council for Watershed Health (CWH) in Pasadena, California. She supports CWH’s community based organization capacity building program, ReDesignLA. Amanda supports community based organizations, schools, and small municipalities across Los Angeles County in developing multi-benefit, community-centered green infrastructure projects. Additionally, she supports the watershed coordination team to implement engagement and outreach activities for the Safe, Clean Water Program, and has assisted with the Disadvantaged Community Involvement Program (DACIP). She graduated from UCLA with a Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) and Occidental College with a B.A. in Urban and Environmental Policy and Education. With a background in community organizing, popular education, and design, she is often thinking about creating and leveraging community power for environmental, economic, and racial justice.
Jerry Calderon serves as the Policy and Outreach Coordinator on behalf of the Tataviam Land Conservancy (TLC), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians (FTBMI). He assists the non-profit organization and the greater FTBMI community by helping develop land acquisition policies and working with various stakeholders to garnish support for TLC’s mission. Jerry remains particularly interested in Tribal sovereignty and how a Tribe’s sovereign authority over its homelands is imperative to its ability to practice critical functions like cultural heritage, meaningful ceremony, thriving economic endeavors, and independent government.
This interview was conducted by Renée Mazurek and Campbell Simmons on December 2, 2024.
Transcript
Renée Mazurek: Hi, and welcome to a special edition of River Networks at the Water Table. Today we’re shining a spotlight on the Urban Waters Learning Network, a partnership between Groundwork USA and River Network. The Urban Waters Learning Network has a peer-to-peer network for sharing practical, on-the-ground experiences in order to improve urban waterways and revitalize the neighborhoods around them. My name is Renée Mazurek and I’m the Resilient Communities Manager at River Network and a team member of the Urban Waters Learning Network. I use she/her pronouns and live and work at Asheville, North Carolina on unceded Cherokee land. You can learn more about the lands you live and work on at native-lands.ca. River Network envisions a powerful and inclusive movement that ensures abundant clean water for all people and nature to thrive. We believe joy and hope for our flows through our rivers.
I was so honored to host this interview with my colleague, Campbell Simmons, who you will also hear chime in with some questions for our guests, Amanda Zeidner and Jerry Calderon. Working in the Los Angeles region, Amanda shares her experiences with RedesignLA, a technical assistance and capacity building initiative of the Council for Watershed Health. RedesignLA brings together cohorts of community partners to foster solutions and access funding for implementing multi-benefit green infrastructure. As a member of the cohort, Jerry also talks to us about how partnerships have been instrumental for the Tatavium Land Conservancy, or TLC, a tribal nonprofit working in the Fernandena Tatavium Band of Mission Indians territory, which is today known as the Simi, Antelope, Santa Clarita, and San Fernando Valleys. Both Amanda and Jerry share recent experience with accessing federal funds and share insights on overcoming barriers and the importance of diversifying funding sources. Listen in as we say hello and share introductions before diving into the important work that both Jerry and Amanda are doing.
Hi Jerry, hi Amanda. This is my colleague, Campbell Simmons. Cam, do you want to say hi and introduce yourself?
Campbell Simmons: Hi, yeah, I’m Campbell. I am the Resilient Communities and Policy Associate here at River Network. I’m really excited to be talking to you all today. I love getting to work with Renée and when she looped me into this, I was like, “This sounds like such a cool project and thing to be involved in.” So I’m super happy to be here and to be talking to you all about this project.
Renée Mazurek: It’s so good to have you today. And we’re excited to have this conversation about federal funding and community-based organizations, and we’re going to see where this conversation takes us. I really just want to give you an opportunity to introduce yourselves. I will start with Amanda. Amanda Zeidner’s here with us from the Council for Watershed Health. Please tell me about yourself and your organization, and then we’ll hand it to Jerry, Jerry Calderon from Tatavium Land Conservancy, who will do a similar introduction.
Amanda Zeidner: Thanks, Renée. Hi everyone. My name is Amanda Zeidner. I’m the project manager for community planning at the Council for Watershed Health, and in that role, I run a redesign LA program.The Council was founded by Dorothy Green in 1996 to advance the health and sustainability of our region’s watersheds, rivers, streams and habitats, both the natural areas and urban neighborhoods. Focused on LA County, we work to promote more efficient use of stormwater resources by providing leadership guidance and technical assistance to agencies and organizations to affect sound watershed planning and management. Our technical assistance and capacity building work is where my work comes in with my amazing team of coordinators. ReDesignLA has been around for the last nine years and is a capacity building program working with community-based organizations or CBOs and tribes throughout LA County to develop community led green infrastructure projects. Additionally, we support education and technical assistance around water and climate topics and support relationship building between agencies and our ReDesignLA CBOs and tribes. Over the last nine years, we’ve collectively raised over $119,000,000 and leveraged project funding from the diverse array of private state, local and federal grant programs to build community projects. We recently have been awarded 2 federal grants, which is a new endeavor for us as a group. So I’m really excited to talk about all of those things with you and pass it to Jerry.
Jerry Calderon: Hello everyone and thank you, Amanda. As Amanda mentioned, my name is Jerry and I serve as the policy and outreach coordinator on behalf of the Tataviam Land Conservancy. The Tataviam Land Conservancy or like how we say it TLC is a 501c3 nonprofit organization founded by the Fernandinho-Tatavian Band of Mission Indians in 2018 to acquire, safeguard, and restore the tribe’s traditional homelands, which comprises most of Northern Los Angeles County. This includes the Antelope, Santa Clarita, San Fernando, and Simi Valleys. Bear with me, but the past few months have been an incredibly exciting chapter in TLC’s short history. At the start of this year, we finalized the first land return donation to the organization, which was a 550 acre property in the Antelope Valley. This momentous event marks the first time the tribe has had access to land title in more than 200 years, opening opportunities for cultural, educational, and environmental multi-benefit programming. More specifically, the tribal community now has a designated place to immerse themselves. Families can come together and share stories linked to the natural landscape, the youth can learn how to gather native plants from tribal elders, and our organization and the tribe are better positioned to execute various cultural and environmental activities that it was not previously able to do so. Understanding the array of needs of the tribe, whole community, as well as our organizations, we hope that this is the first of many.
Kind of going beyond land return, TLC has been an immense proponent in uplifting tribal representation and identifying stewardship opportunities that, in partnership with the tribe, provide them a more robust platform and voice to direct the future of its ancestral landscapes. This has taken the form of an interpretive signage project with MRCA, otherwise known as the Mountains and Recreation Conservation Authority, to work with the tribe and its citizens to create and install tribal specific signage and public parklands that intersect with the upper Los Angeles River. And so, unlike other tribal signage projects that kind of depict Native people as being static, we’re hoping that this specific signage project allows the general public to meaningfully engage with the general tribal history, village specific history, ecology, and contemporary information of the tribe for that region.
We were also recently awarded a USDA Urban and Community Forestry Tree Planting Grant, which is a federal grant to boost canopy coverage in overburdened areas within the San Fernando and Antelope valleys, which I imagine we will have more time to get into later. But all that’s to say, great things are happening at TLC and I’m happy to be here to kind of reflect on those milestones and the organization’s art and efforts to kind of get us here to this point. So yeah, thanks for having me.
Renée Mazurek: Yeah, thank you. And congratulations. That is super exciting. And I’m so glad that we can share that out. Yeah. And I definitely want to hear more about the project that you’re working on with the USDA grant. Maybe we can start there, maybe just a little bit of background information about that project, and then we can go into some of what you’ve learned through this process?
Jerry Calderon: Yeah, I’m happy to start. TLC, like I said, recently received a USDA forestry grant in partnership with the tribe and with California State University Northridge to plant culturally significant native trees in overburdened communities within the traditional tribal territory. And so for more background information on this, most planning projects, especially those that are kind of focused in this region, tend to fixate on kind of sidewalks or public right of ways. And we wanted to be intentional with the project that we were offering. And it is different in the fact that it’s focused on private residences themselves and providing direct shading benefits to homes. So census tracts that we are kind of prioritizing for efforts include those that are subject to climate shifts, show a severe need for canopy coverage, and exhibit significant opportunities for habitat connection. And many of the trees that are actually going to supplement this effort are being sourced and grown from seeds in our new tribal nursery. That’s really cool. So yeah, I mean, this project marks TLC’s first federal grant, which can be daunting for any organization, especially like ours that I would consider that still in its beginning phases. Hence, we wanted to kind of partner with an organization like CSUN who has a proven record and experience working under federal grants. So naturally this partnership has kind of evolved into a mentor-mentee type model and has really equipped us, I think with the critical knowledge of the application process, creating federal budgets and reporting for federal grants. And, you know, something that I would really recommend for other organizations that are kind of veering into their initial applications and projects for federal grants is to kind of adopt a similar model. I imagine, I know we’ll get into that more later, but you know, working with an entity like that has provided us with a really good foundation and basis to how to approach federal grants in the future that I think would be a little bit more difficult to achieve if we were kind of doing this on our own.
Furthermore, our kind of work with RedesignLA has influenced our ability for federal grants by one, kind of recommending grants that apply to our organization’s missions and goals, and we think we could be a strong candidate for. And two, really helping us build an internal infrastructure that enables us to be more proactive in the grant application process.
So I would say this includes RedesignLA support and recommendations to really build out a living grants library that has kind of helped us streamline grant applications by establishing a more adaptable kind of basis of language, you know, that could, could easily kind of reuse and allocate to different grants that we’re applying to. Redesign has really been instrumental in connecting us with community-based partners who can offer technical assistance and recommendations for executing some of the project activities whose expertise that we may not have in-house. And then I would say really, kind of on my end, the biggest thing that RedesignLA has kind of really supported us with is just kind of minimizing the uncertainty that can come with applying for larger grants like federal grants by allowing us to use our kind of routine meetings as a soundboard to ask questions and get advice from fellow cohort members, many of whom have been successful in securing similar grants. You know, I just think it’s a really strong safe space that allows us to really be intentional and be able to partner with one another and kind of get those ideas across that I don’t think we really get the opportunity to do outside of spaces like those.
Renée Mazurek: That’s really great. mean, River Network, we are a network. We understand the importance of learning and sharing with one another. Yeah. So I guess just kind of following up on that, I’d love to hear, you know, as a tribal nonprofit participating in federal funding, what have you learned from the process? Is there any like takeaway? I know partnering with these folks and being able to connect with others who are doing this. Is there any other takeaway that you’d like to highlight?
Jerry Calderon: Yeah, I think just kind of understanding that grants are not necessarily all a monolith, but some of them have varying reporting and programmatic needs and requirements and really just getting the ability to do so with this kind mentor-mentee model has been profound in our ability to kind of navigate how we’re looking towards the future as well. I think you could set up and prepare as much as you can, but it’s really when you’re in the moment and finally having the grant under your belt and actually trying to accomplish a lot of the project goals that you initially kind of listed on your onset. It’s really where a lot of that learning comes to fruition. And I just think being able to do that in the way that we have been able to do that underneath this kind of framework has been really instrumental. It’s kind of like those little training wheels that are just helping us be able to navigate on our own. Yeah, I would say it’s all a takeaway and in a larger thing, it’s all been a takeaway because it’s new to us. And I mean, just being able to do it in the framework that we have been has been so invaluable.
Renée Mazurek: Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing. I think Amanda will turn to you. I’d love to hear more about the grants that you all have received and how RedesignLA is approaching federal funding as well.
Amanda Zeidner: Yeah, definitely. So like I mentioned earlier, RedesignLA hasn’t historically gone after federal funding. We’ve been prioritizing more local funding, private philanthropy, smaller scale. The closest we’ve maybe gotten was some of the California EPA grants that have been offered. And a part of the reason for that is a recognition that we’re working through RedesignLA with organizations that have pretty limited administrative capacity, right? That’s a piece of the program is being able to support really small community-based organizations and tribal entities. And oftentimes federal funding has really high administrative burdens. And so that has been a challenge in the past. So we collectively decided when there were some grants that looked like a good opportunity for our program to go after them together with the understanding that we would be doing it together. And so hopefully some of those administrative burdens could be shared, but that also would be a co-learning process. know, the Council for Watershed Health helps facilitate RedesignLA, but we very much believe that we are all learning together through this process. So we are learning from folks in RedesignLA every day. Everybody brings a different expertise to the table. And I think the beauty of going after these federal grants together has been that there have been folks that have more experience going after federal dollars and were able to learn together through this process. So thankfully, my team has been the group that’s sort of been tasked with applying for the grants and handling all of the administrative back and forth to take that off of folks’ plates, but when it comes to having to detail your budget or come up with the paperwork needed to actually follow through on those grants, that’s been something we’ve been doing together, which has been a really great opportunity.
So the two grants that we ended up going after, one was the US EPA EJ Government to Government or G2G grant. And for that one, we’re partnering with LA County Public Works because the intent behind that grant was that a government entity had to be the main applicant. So LA County Public Works submitted in partnership with RedesignLA. And for that one, we will be supporting and actually working with the County Sustainability Office as well in supporting their climate-ready communities effort. So we’ll be working in specifically unincorporated LA County communities that have been deemed highest risk around climate and supporting them in identifying climate adaptation strategies. And for the other grant, it’s the US EPA EJCPS grant or collaborative problem solving grant. Lots of acronyms in this work. And for that one, we as Council for Watershed Health are the main applicant and a number of groups within RedesignLA that are focused in the LA River Watershed, which is just a geographic region we needed to be specific for the grant, will be continuing with their project work and really focused on community-focused, multi-benefit green infrastructure and climate adaptation projects in their communities. So the benefit, I would say, of doing two at once is there have been some parallel things that we’ve maybe learned from one and been able to transfer to the other process since we’ve been awarded. But to also be really clear in this conversation, we are not under contract yet for either. So the work has not actually begun for the work we’ll be doing on these grants, but as anyone who’s done anything with federal money, you know that there’s a really long process getting to go. And so that’s sort of the place that I can talk from at this point and sort of how our program as RedesignLA and all of our organizations are kind of learning through that process together.
Campbell Simmons: Thanks so much for that answer, Amanda. This next question, you’ve both spoken to this at least a little bit, but I’m curious, what are some of the barriers for community-based organizations and tribal entities to accessing funding? How has RedesignLA worked to tackle these barriers? And then if you’d also like to get into what advice would you give to other groups who are trying to form partnerships to access tools, resources, and funding?
Amanda Zeidner: Yeah, so I’ll speak for just what I’ve learned through RedesignLA, and I’m sure there are other experiences in this too, but I think particularly with federal funding, like I mentioned, there’s some really high administrative barriers. And I think realistically, it’s also difficult for some organizations to do reimbursement-based grants as well. With a reimbursement-based grant, you do work and you invoice for that work and then you get paid. And that payment schedule is, you know, set by the grant. For each grant, it varies. Usually within the federal government, there’s a set period of time that you need to get paid by. But that’s difficult if you have a staff of 3 and need to make payroll. Sometimes that can be a big burden to going after these grants. And so for some of those reasons and others, we’ve, like I said, RedesignLA, stuck to a little bit more flexible funding in the past. So working with private philanthropy, with local grants, with state grants that have had a little bit more flexibility when it comes to those things so that the organizations we’re funding and supporting are able to participate in the work that we’re trying to get funded.
I think the place that I also lift up that is important is through that we’ve also had some really good conversations with funders and I think there’s, you know, it’s another opportunity for co-learning that we’re able to sort of share some of those barriers. And there are times when funders are open to hearing that feedback and understanding what the barriers are to groups receiving funding from them. I think we are really wanting to see funding going into the most vulnerable communities throughout LA County and seeing that sort of direct funding, actually fund projects where communities feel like they have the ability to control what’s going to happen in their community. And they’re not just being told what projects are coming into them. And with that comes some administrative challenges. Like people don’t always have the capacity to fill out really in-depth forms or have an admin person on staff that can help fill out invoices each month. And so that’s some of the capacity building we’re doing within RedesignLA is just supporting organizations and understanding what these funding sources will need from them and making sure they’re only doing the funding sources that feel feasible. We never want folks to feel like they’ve signed up for something that is going to be too difficult for them in the long run, but that also funds the work! We’re all really committed to making sure that communities throughout LA County have green space, have access to green infrastructure, are able to be climate adaptive as things evolve. And this is how that happens. So I think it’s finding the balance between supporting organizations and growing their capacity to be able to access these funds and then also working with funders to make sure that they’re understanding those limitations and seeing sort of the other side of it as well.
Jerry Calderon: You know, many of the points that you’ve brought up are kind of the things that I was going to bring up. So I guess I’ll kind of restate some of them, but you know, depending on the grant and the grant agency, you know, funding programs can be a significant undertaking. And, you know, I will say, some of that could be federal funding. Some of it could be different types of funding. It’s not just kind of, it doesn’t just stick to one funding type. Like I said earlier, it’s not a monolith and it could differ from grant to grant. So organizations, think those that are especially in its kind of beginning phases with varying levels of capacities face different hurdles, I think, in maintaining some of them. And some immediate examples or some of that frame of reference that comes to mind, kind of repeating some of the things Amanda said was like, there are some grants that have really strict funding requirements that necessitate or require hiring capacity for management and reporting. And that’s not always feasible for organizations who have lower capacity to do so. I will say, some grants, have really low indirect cap rates and obviously indirect rates are the rates that kind of refer to the percentage of funds that an organization could kind of allocate to its daily operations. And, you know, especially if you have an organization, Amanda, like you mentioned, like a three staffed organization who are working on many different projects, you know, that can be a little bit difficult to kind of maneuver.
And another one that comes to mind is that many grants require, I think especially in the application process, many grants require a significant amount of information to even apply. And I will say like some of that could, some grants could require data assessments, maps, species intakes, et cetera. And depending on the data that is needed and the organization’s kind of in-house expertise, you know, an organization may need to outsource that ability to get that data. And that comes with additive costs, different workings administratively, and something that all should be considered, but I think are all very pertinent hurdles in these applications or these grant programs in general. But getting to your point about how RedesignLA has helped tackle these barriers, just being an entity as part of the cohort, I think RedesignLA has done a lot of significant work in helping us kind of really establish our internal systems to be able to navigate these different types of programs. And I know I said this earlier, but really creating budget templates, creating grant libraries that allow us to not have to, you know, go into every grant application new. You know, we’re able to kind of look at things we’ve previously written and build upon that work rather than having to start fresh every time. I think their ability to kind of really identify grant programs that fit our organizational and programmatic needs has really assisted us. There’s so many grant programs and the truth is not all of them are a great fit for your organization and just kind of their ability to kind of wade through those waters and pass along those that they think would be great fits is a really great help to us. Providing technical support with mapping, grant writing, but I think especially mapping in particular, so many of the grants that we’ve applied to have required a lot of that expertise that we don’t necessarily have in-house staff that are specifically designated to or have the expertise to do. I think more instrumentally, and something that I’m appreciative of is kind of RedesignLA’s intention when working with funders to kind of advocate on CBOs and tribal nonprofit’s behalf has been really impactful of us and always making sure to uplift different perspectives, especially those from the tribe. And then of course, naturally within RedesignLA’s program itself, really connecting cohort members to experts who provide expertise and facilitating those thoughtful brainstorming sessions have been really, really a big assistance for us.
There was another, another question is like, what advice would we give to other groups, correct?
Campbell Simmons: Yes, I was about to follow up with that piece.
Jerry Calderon: Perfect. Yeah. I know this sounds so simple, but I really can’t express it enough. And I think organizations interested in partnering with other organizations to, you know, access tools, resources, and funding should really not hesitate to take that initial step and reach out and connect with that organization that they already identify that they would like to collaborate with or ask help or guidance from. Much of our initial work for creating a project like our USDA Tree Planting Program was TLC literally cold emailing other tree planting nonprofits and asking them if they would be willing to meet with us and kind of talk through their tree planting efforts, their operations, share the tools they use to supplement their work and how they ensure continued funding to sustain their program. This proved to be so beneficial for us and we learned so much through this process and our project, I think significantly benefited from it. And, you know, I think if an organization doesn’t know necessarily who to contact, what organizations to kind of work with. And they shouldn’t hesitate to even email other organizations who they already have good relations with and asking them if they have recommendations. We have actually done that several times with our RedesignLA cohort members for various needs. And every single time, someone has had a viable recommendation that has left us in a much better place than where we started. And I just think it’s about taking those initial steps to really kind of begin that branching out and creating that framework for synergy.
Amanda Zeidner: I thought of something else when I was listening to you, Jerry, that I want to lift up. Something that we talk a lot about in RedesignLA, because we’re often focused on what kinds of community engagement can happen throughout a project process. So not just doing engagement at the beginning, but doing it throughout. And the groups that are a part of RedesignLA are really well positioned to do that engagement because they’re embedded in the communities, they have trust within those communities and are going to be there after the project gets built, which isn’t always true for the entities that will be coming in and building the project or doing the engineering or whatever it might be. But a struggle that I often see and I’m always trying to be a vocal advocate for is that when you have a budget for something, you’re going to have really high rates for folks like the engineers or the landscape architects or the groups that are doing construction. And in no way do I want to take away from their expertise or what they’re going to get funded to do in a project. But the folks that are bringing community expertise really need to be compensated for the level of expertise that they’re bringing to a project as well. And so I think when we talk about accessing funding, it’s also about making sure that folks aren’t minimizing what they’re bringing to a project and that they’re actually getting compensated and making sure that their community is getting compensated for the feedback they’re providing. And hopefully the actual participation in the design process and sort of throughout the time we’re building a project, it doesn’t just happen at the beginning, it happens throughout, even into stewardship once a project is built. And there’s such expertise that our partners within RedesignLA are bringing. So that’s another piece of this too, that I think being in coalition together has given folks the confidence to sort of talk about rates and talk about their expectation for what they need to be paid to do engagement on a project or to partner with folks.
And then on the other side of that, Council for Watershed Health has a long history of of working with local agencies. That’s actually why our organization was founded was to really break down the silos between water agencies locally, make sure folks were talking to one another. And I very much see that legacy continuing with us working with agencies to understand sort of the benefit of bringing CBOs and tribal entities into their work and paying them to be there. I think that also sort of lends itself to a conversation I know we’re about to have around sort of diversifying funding sources. But I think making sure that folks are really getting enough payment for the work that they’re being done and seeing their work as expertise, even if they’re not the engineer on a project, is something that we talk a lot about within RedesignLA as well.
Campbell Simmons: Thanks for that answer, Amanda. I just have one more question for you two, which is just both your organizations are committed to an environmentally just future. So I’m curious, how can diverse funding sources help support that vision for you all?
Jerry Calderon: I will start off by saying that’s a great question. Most funding sources were created, are created, to mitigate and address the express needs of different communities. And while this is true, I think some funding programs will kind of limit their scope of eligible project activities to kind of reinforce the dominant views for achieving the kind of programs desired solutions that they originally kind of put on the onset. And so doing this programmatically leaves little room for flexibility and can be restrictive for organizations whose communities may have recommendations for multi-benefit projects that extend beyond the scope provided. So instead of kind of mandating or creating these kind of stricter limitations on projects, I think diverse funding sources should meet applicants in their communities where they are and equip them with the resources they need to follow and act their priorities, their values, and distinct problem-solving recommendations, similar to what Amanda was bringing up earlier. General structure and guidance are great, but adaptability and diversity are essential for the longevity of projects and their impacts.
And so such changes can enable more community-led and culturally aware projects to materialize, leading to a more diverse and equitable future, which could be done with some of those simple changes. I think moreover, funding pools should be established to cover all facets of a project or do every best that it can. Often funders will support the initial implementation of a project, which is great, but will not have as much funding or not have funding at all for continued planning, operations and management, infrastructure and equipment for those parts of those projects. So organizations are kind of then forced to scramble and piecemeal various funding streams together, which is difficult, especially for sensitive environmental projects that depend on continued day-to-day funding.
And I think with more informed funding streams that cover the total cost of projects, organizations can achieve community goals without the pressure, or at least the constant pressure of constantly researching and identifying funding opportunities to cover unallocated parts of the project. You know, I think so much time, especially for organizations that are smaller that are working on projects like those I mentioned, is designated to ensuring that there’s that constant stream of funding. And I just think that if there’s more opportunity to take a breath and immerse ourselves in the projects that we’re doing, the results will be a lot better and a lot more, I think, multi-beneficial and reflective of the solutions of the community and the solutions that the community is even bringing up itself. I will say, know, grants are a great thing. They’re a great help. But I would like to also kind of spotlight direct funding and even private philanthropy and knowing that like, yes, a lot of that could be top down, but a lot of it could also be bottom up as well in terms of like, you know, kind of grassroots work. And it doesn’t mean that someone has to be, you know, donating like a hundred thousand dollars. I think even $5 or, you know, however amount could be really impactful for an organization if everybody adopted that mindset.
And I think that’s something that should be kind of really kind of reiterated in a lot of these discussions as well. But yeah, I’ll pass it to you, Amanda.
Amanda Zeidner: Thank you, Jerry. Yeah, I completely agree with a lot of the sentiments Jerry just shared. I think diverse funding sources are really critical to the sustainability of our movements and our project work. And part of that is just a recognition that funding sources don’t always stay the same, right? So even if we’re diversifying the kinds of work that we’re going to, or the kinds of funding sources we’re going to get, those private philanthropy foundations close, or sometimes their focus changes or their funders will want to diversify what they’re funding. And so having a diversity of funding sources is a really critical piece to making sure our organizations are able to be resilient in the face of climate and infrastructure needs moving forward. So I think making sure that we’re stacking funding, especially around these really large infrastructure projects that we are all working on right now. Some of these projects’ budgets are millions and millions of dollars. So finding resources that will fit together to accomplish that goal is an important piece of this. But then also within RedesignLA, we’re really focused on making sure that organizations are sustainable as well. So their staff has the capacity and the time to work on these efforts, they have flexible funding to cover those indirect costs or the kinds of things that their organizations need to exist, and to pay folks a living wage. So I think those are all components to diversifying funding that just makes us all a little bit more resilient to any of the changing things that are happening right now.
Which is why it was exciting, I think, for RedesignLA to go after federal funding. It was another way to diversify the kinds of funding we were going after and also to learn what that takes, right? Now we’re a lot more prepared in the future to go after a really administratively high grant, both in the sense that we know what to expect, but also that we can prepare a little bit more. So when we decide to go after something, we know what that might actually mean in a much more real way for our organization.
I think the advice I give to anyone trying to go after these kinds of funds is really just to talk to folks that are going through it. I think we’re all learning together and the more we can share what those experiences are with each other, like in these conversations, the better off we all are. And to not put all of our eggs in one basket, right? Like we never really know what’s the future of funding. I think even in my time working in water, the kinds of trends around funding that I’ve seen come through, like it’s always going to be a different era of funding, but I think ultimately it goes towards the same thing. So just being able to keep up with that and understand sort of where the focus is right now and be resilient to what the next focus might be and ways to fund the work that we’re doing is a key to that.
Renée Mazurek: Yeah, thank you so much. I think I could talk to you all for a lot longer, but we are almost at our time. I’m glad that you brought up things like multiple needs and, you know, trying to keep organizations just who need operating costs covered and then including that and how you’re looking for funding. I think that those are so important. I do a lot of work with our community partners on equitable development, and this is something, and I think Jerry, you said this too, about having some space to breathe, trying to like slow down the process a little bit and figure out how to make all of those multiple parts work together, I think is it’s a question that a lot of people are asking is like, how do we do this effectively? How do we do this work and make sure that the communities are able to have all of the multiple benefits? Maybe the green infrastructure is great, but what else is a need in the community?
Yeah, so just really happy to have you here and have your insights on this and so grateful for you to share with us and to be with us here today. So if there’s any other last thoughts that you would like to share, just want to open the space and give you the floor for a couple more minutes.
Jerry Calderon: I just want to say that I’m very appreciative of this conversation. I think it’s important. I think it’s also important given the time, you know, different organizations and needs. Just, yeah, I’m happy to do this. And I will say, if anybody is interested in learning more about the Tataviam Land Conservancy, you could always kind of head to our website, which is tataviam.land. That’s T-A-T-A-V-I-A-M dot land. And then you could also kind of follow us on our social media, which is @tataviamlandconservancy on Instagram. And then also if you’re interested in learning more about the tribe, the Fernandesia Tatavian Banyamish Indians, you could find them at their website, is tataviam-nsn.us. And then their Instagram is @FernandesiaTatavian.
Amanda Zeidner: Yeah, thank you so much for this conversation. I guess all I’ll add is I’m excited to continue it once we’re underway with this work too. There’s so much more I think we have to learn and carry out with these federal grants that RedesignLA is working on and our future work too. So I’m looking forward to continuing the conversation as well.
Renée Mazurek: Yeah, for sure. Cam, anything you’d like to add?
Campbell Simmons: Just that I am so appreciative of getting to learn from you all and share this really incredible work that you’re doing. It’s really amazing. And I’m so glad that Renée, you also invited me to participate in this conversation. So thank you all for having me. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. I’m happy to be here.
Renée Mazurek: Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode of At the Water Table, connect with us at RiverNetwork.org. And you can look for more urban waters resources at www.urbanwaterslearningnetwork.org. The initiative funded by EPA’s Office of Water in collaboration with the National Park Service, Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program and co-coordinated by Groundwork USA and River Network. This is Renée signing off and wishing you well. We hope to see you around.
