Guest Blog: Powering Communities Together: Brooklyn Org, United Way of New York City, and National Grid Foundation Launch Landmark Energy Affordability Initiative

Feb 24, 2026

Dr. Robert Simmons III, Executive Director of the National Grid Foundation

PUBLISHED ON LINKEDIN

A Partnership Built on Purpose: In a city where nearly one in four households struggles with energy costs that consume more than 6 percent of their income, the question of who gets a seat at the table — and who shapes the solutions — matters enormously. Brooklyn and Queens together account for more than half of all energy-burdened families in New York City, with over 193,000 households in Brooklyn and nearly 158,000 in Queens bearing high energy burdens according to New York City data. For too long, these communities have been the subjects of programs designed elsewhere, by others. That model is changing. Brooklyn Org and United Way of New York City have announced a landmark multi-year partnership with the National Grid Foundation — a co-designed energy affordability initiative that puts residents’ lived experiences at the center of the work. Rather than prescribing solutions from the outside, this initiative invites the community to build them from within.

The initiative spans two boroughs and addresses two urgent dimensions of the energy affordability crisis: workforce opportunity and housing stability. In Brooklyn, Brooklyn Org will lead the Brooklyn Energy Initiative, investing in eight nonprofits focused on STEM and energy-related careers for young adults, and six nonprofits working directly with households facing the highest energy burdens. In Queens, United Way of New York City will lead the Powering Possibility in Queens Fund, building a learning-centered approach to energy navigation, direct financial assistance, and community feedback loops.

Programs built with communities rather than for them simply work better: Co-Design Models in Philanthropy

For decades, the dominant model in philanthropy has been one of extraction and prescription: foundations and institutions identify what communities need, design programs to address it, and deliver those programs to residents. The results have been predictably mixed. Programs built without meaningful community input often miss the mark — they fail to account for cultural context, language barriers, trust gaps, fractured relationships with institutions, and the deeply local knowledge that comes only from living with a problem every day.

Co-design flips this dynamic. As a model, it is defined by the active, equal collaboration of the people most affected by a problem in designing the solutions to address it. It treats lived experience not as a nice-to-have supplement to expert knowledge, but as a form of expertise in its own right — one that is often more accurate, more granular, and more durable than anything a program officer or policy consultant can provide from the outside. Evidence of co-design’s effectiveness is growing across sectors. A recent publication—A Systematic Review on Co-Design, Place-Making and Social Capital (Pearson, et al., 2025)—suggested that co-design models can ultimately enhance well-being. The World Economic Forum has documented how co-design applied to community food access in Minnesota led to the establishment of culturally specific food shelves, simplified sign-up processes, and new protections for food bank clients — outcomes that top-down program design had consistently failed to achieve. The same logic applies here: residents of Brooklyn and Queens know their neighborhoods, their neighbors, their languages, their barriers, and their assets in ways that no outside organization can fully replicate.

“The most effective solutions are shaped by the communities closest to the challenges.”
Dr. Jocelynne Rainey, President and CEO of Brooklyn Org

This is not just a feel-good philosophy. Community co-design builds the kind of trust that makes programs actually function. According to researchers who have studied participatory design in depth, co-design is impossible without relationships and trust — and trust between communities and institutions is not given; it must be earned through consistent demonstration that community voices genuinely shape outcomes. Initiatives that establish this trust yield benefits that extend well beyond the program itself: higher participation rates, stronger word-of-mouth, and communities that remain connected to organizations long after an initial engagement ends.

Accountability, Feedback, and Lasting Impact

One of the most powerful features of the co-design approach embedded in this initiative is its commitment to ongoing community feedback. The Powering Possibility in Queens Fund is explicitly designed as a learning-centered model — one that treats the initiative not as a fixed program to be executed, but as an evolving set of strategies to be refined based on what communities experience and report. This kind of iterative feedback loop is what distinguishes co-design from more traditional community consultation models, in which input is solicited once and then set aside. Research in public health and community development shows that the most effective co-design processes are iterative: even after a program launches, communities continue to provide feedback, and designers continue to adapt. This is the difference between programs that achieve their stated outcomes and those that achieve outcomes communities actually care about. The inclusion of convenings, shared learning, and ongoing community feedback within the Queens initiative reflects exactly this understanding. The data on what happens when communities are not engaged in program design is equally instructive. Programs that lack authentic community ownership often face adoption challenges that no amount of outreach spending can fully overcome. Conversely, when co-designers from communities stay connected to the organizations and initiatives that engaged them — as has been documented in successful co-design initiatives across the country — program reach and effectiveness multiply organically.

“This initiative is about more than utilities — it is about dignity and the opportunity to thrive.”
Kanchana Suggu, Senior Vice President and Chief Impact Officer, United Way of New York City

The Brooklyn Energy Initiative’s commitment to working “alongside trusted community-based organizations” reflects a sophisticated understanding of how co-design actually works in practice. Trusted intermediaries — nonprofits that are already embedded in and accountable to their communities — serve as the connective tissue between the initiative’s resources and residents’ real needs. These are not program vendors; they are co-designers. Their knowledge of neighborhood conditions, their existing relationships with residents, and their track records of credible engagement are precisely what make this initiative different from a standard grantmaking program.

A Model for the Field

The National Grid Foundation has been explicit about our co-design approach from the beginning. This work is designed to “amplify community awareness” and ensure families in need know where to turn for help. That framing matters: it positions the initiative not as charity delivered from above, but as information and resources flowing through community channels that already have credibility and reach. The National Grid Foundation’s long-term commitment to co-design models in philanthropy is reflected in our decision to raise our endowment distribution from five percent to seven percent specifically to bolster local organizations in our grantmaking area. In an era when many philanthropic commitments are measured in pilot grants and one-year funding cycles, our shift in the structural investment strategy is meaningful. For my colleagues in the broader corporate philanthropic sector, this initiative offers a compelling model. Energy affordability is a complex, intersectional challenge. No single organization — however well-resourced or well-intentioned — can address it alone. What Brooklyn Org, United Way of New York City, and the National Grid Foundation have built is a partnership that is greater than the sum of its parts: one that combines philanthropic resources, institutional relationships, and community trust in a structure that is genuinely designed to produce results.

And results, ultimately, are what the families of Brooklyn and Queens need — not only in the form of emergency heating assistance and energy efficiency retrofits, but in the form of good jobs, real information, and the confidence that the systems around them can be made to work in their interest. This initiative is built to deliver all of that. The communities it serves helped design it. And that, more than anything else, is why it has a real chance to work.