This is the third in a series of four blog posts celebrating the work of the 2014 NCRP Impact Awards winners. Check out a video recap of the event here.
On June 9, the District of Columbia’s Hill-Snowdon Foundation received the 2014 NCRP Impact Award for Small/Midsize Foundation. Hill-Snowdon is an important fixture in the D.C. metro area, fighting with low-income workers on important initiatives like a minimum wage that’s a living wage. Nikki Lewis is a D.C. local who has found success – both in her personal life and career – through her experiences with Hill-Snowdon.
For 17 years, Nikki worked in restaurants, in the retail industry and as a dog walker in Washington, D.C., and Maryland. Her mother held similar jobs for more than 40 years. Both worked for low wages, without health benefits, and endured bruises, burns, cuts, slips and falls, strains, fractured bones, extreme heat, extreme cold, verbal abuse, discrimination, sexual harassment and wage theft. Sometimes they had to live week to week, not sure if they could pay their bills, and endure the stress that comes with that reality.
In 2009, Nikki found the D.C. organizing community, full of people who envisioned a different reality in which all workplaces and industries could be transformed to treat people with dignity and respect. With community support, she was hired as an organizer and started organizing other service sector workers and teaching them about what she had learned – about the history of unions, churches and students who had led the greatest social movements in American history. Along with religious groups, lawyers, academics, unions and community groups, Nikki and other low-wage workers advocated and organized around the need for paid sick days and higher wages for all in D.C. Together they led the fight to increase the city’s minimum wage to an indexed $11.50/hour AND to simultaneously win paid sick days for D.C. workers, once and for all. These important accomplishments were made possible partially because the Hill-Snowdon Foundation funded DC Jobs with Justice, one of the leading organizations in this effort, and other organizations in the regions who work on multi-issue organizing.
Established in 1959, the Hill-Snowdon Foundation is committed to its vision of a fair and just society where low-income families and communities can thrive. Since the early 2000s, HSF has focused its grants on organizations that use multi-generational approaches to address issues facing marginalized youth, multi-issue organizing that promotes family-supporting and community-strengthening jobs, and resident-led decision-making within the District of Columbia. More recently, the foundation has helped to create Grantmakers for Southern Progress, a network of southern and national funders who seek to strengthen the infrastructure for social change work in the South. In supporting groups like DC Jobs with Justice, the Hill-Snowdon Foundation clearly fulfills its mission.
Today, Nikki Lewis is the proud executive director of DC Jobs with Justice. She reflects:
“Although I am now in a position of privilege to lead this work every day, this victory means the world not only to me, but also to my working class family and friends. This victory is a step towards restoring balance and dignity in the American worker’s life. It’s a step to restoring our faith and the real possibility that if one does work hard enough, we can actually sustain our lives and health. It’s a step for hundreds of thousands DC area workers to actually have a shot at their own dreams. DC thanks the Hill-Snowdon Foundation for believing in and supporting us through the entire journey!”
Thank you, Hill-Snowdon, for the great work that you do!
Check out our video recap of the 2014 NCRP Impact Awards, celebrating the work of the Hill-Snowdon Foundation, and that of fellow awardees Liberty Hill Foundation, The California Endowment and Ben & Jerry’s Foundation.
Jeanné Isler is field director at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP). Follow NCRP on Twitter (@ncrp).
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