A message from MACDC President, Joe Kriesberg, regarding Coronavirus
March 2020
Joe Kriesberg
Dear friends,
As all of us come to terms with the scale and scope of the Coronavirus Pandemic, I wanted to let you know how MACDC is responding to both the public health crisis and the growing economic impact. This is our strategy as of now, but clearly could change as new information arises.
Our first priority is continue to do our work as best we can while fully protecting the safety of our staff members and all the people with whom we work. Toward that end, we will be switching all of our committee meetings and peer group sessions to an online format and canceling or postponing all public events for the next few weeks or until further notice. We are also allowing our staff to work from home and may institute a requirement to do so at some point. Thankfully, a few years ago we moved our information technology infrastructure to the cloud so our staff can work from home without any interruption and with full access to all of our files and systems.
Our second priority is to help our members navigate these unchartered waters. We plan to provide online opportunities for information exchange and peer learning. CDCs must deal with so many complex issues from office operations, to property management, construction project schedules, small business lending, youth programs, senior services and more. Therefore, we are looking at how to support CDC professionals across these different work areas. We also want to serve as a conduit for information flow from public officials to our members and vice versa.
Our third priority will be to advocate for special public policy initiatives that protect low- and moderate-income people who are most vulnerable during a crisis like this. This will include policies and programs to protect tenants, homeowners, hourly workers and small business owners. We will also be advocating with public and private funders to provide nonprofits with some leeway and flexibility regarding deliverables and deadlines that cannot be met due to the crisis.
Obviously the situation continues to evolve quickly and we will respond as new information and new circumstances dictate. Please contact us if you have any thoughts or ideas about how we can help our communities get through this crisis.
We hope everyone will take necessary precautions and stay safe. We look forward to seeing some of you online in the coming days and hopefully, before too long, in person as well.
At its heart, community development is based on the notion, as the late Senator Paul Wellstone used to say, that "we all do better when we all do better." Never has this been more true than during this pandemic. We are truly all in this together. Let us hope - and work to make it so - that while this crisis requires social distancing now, that it will ultimately bring us closer together as one Commonwealth, one Country and one World.
Joe Kriesberg
President