Welcome to Chinatown Quarterly Letter (March 2024)
Hello Friends!
The Year of the Wood Dragon is in full swing with the Lunar New Year Festive Season past us. And although the celebrations have winded down, the year’s symbolism of strength, ambition, and prosperity will carry us through 2024 and beyond.
One of my favorite questions we often get asked is how do we do this? 2023 was a transformative year for Welcome to Chinatown: we moved away from a fiscal sponsor and finally achieved our own 501c3 status as Welcome to Chinatown Inc.; we established a new Board of Directors and Associate Board; we hired two full time employees (including myself!); we signed the lease for The Hub at 115 Bowery; and we piloted five months of programming under our forthcoming Coach, Connect, Invest, Innovate modules. All of this happened on top of our existing small business support, advocacy efforts, and community events. In 2023 alone - we had a whopping 52 events (60% occurred during the Hub’s pilot period).
What does this boil down to? There’s a lot happening in the organization, and perhaps sometimes, too much. Welcome to Chinatown, having just celebrated our fourth birthday, is at a crucial juncture – we have to think critically about our mission, vision, and work, and how all of this positively contributes to Chinatown’s economic development and empowerment.
When we started in 2020, our work was reactive by nature –we were reacting to the world around us. Four years later, we have the opportunity to think deeply about how to build lasting change for Chinatown’s vitality. As we shift from reactive responses to proactive solutions, this transition demands not just a reevaluation of our initiatives, but a committed investment in our core—our people, our processes, and our operational tools.
To guide us through these transformative decisions, our team kicked off 2024 with our 2nd annual strategic offsite - this time in Houston, TX. Houston, with its rich diversity and unique urban model, offered a fresh perspective outside of our usual environment, allowing us to explore effective community engagement, program innovation, and of course- their Chinatown. We met with highly impactful organizations like Southern Smoke Foundation and Project Row Houses. Our key takeaways were the importance of maintaining a focused mission, and the power of work that is informed by the specificities of your community. This method will help us build and cultivate generational wealth from within the neighborhood. Likewise, a visit and chat with the Ion Center gave us insights on operational efficiency and success metrics. All of these lessons underscored the need for clarity in our mission and innovation in our approach.
Once we returned from Houston, our team jumped right into Lunar New Year with 13 events, all co-hosted with friends and partners. Our LNY celebrations were rooted in what the Year of the Dragon symbolizes – we wanted to not only create joyful moments to celebrate and come together, but also uplift community leaders and create positive ripple effects that can be felt throughout the year. The closing of our Hub's pilot period with a Lunar New Year celebration was a heartwarming testament to the progress we've made and the journeys yet to embark upon.
Wrapping up our 2024 Q1 is the news I’m most excited to share: we’ve reached our fundraising milestone!! Fundraising $785K to build The Hub – a first of its kind space gathering place to empower small business owners, build bridges, and champion sustainable growth – was no small feat. We’re truly grateful for our supporters and partners that helped us get here. Construction is now underway and we’ll reopen in 2024 Q4. While the Hub is under construction, our team will be taking all of our pilot learnings to fine tune programming that excites us and sunset programming that we’re no longer the best suited to operate. Though we may be quieter as we build (literally and figuratively), rest assured, impactful work is happening behind the scenes.
Admittedly, we need to get better at communicating our mission, vision, and intent. We’re often hitting the ground running, deep in our work, and push aside the “behind the scenes” updates. These are all part of the learnings of a growing organization. We’re constantly evolving, and within that process, evaluating how we can improve. Moving forward, you’ll see quarterly updates from our leadership team alongside the day to day updates and a forthcoming Annual Report (our first ever as Welcome to Chinatown Inc.!).
We invite you to continue walking this journey with us. Your feedback, involvement, and support through donations are crucial to our mission. Together, we can ensure that Chinatown remains open for generations to come.
With gratitude,
Vic
