Nonprofit of the Year | Midsize: Drew Lewis Foundation Inc.

From its northwest Springfield headquarters, the Drew Lewis Foundation Inc. continues to look beyond providing short-term relief for those it serves. Instead, the organization led by CEO Amy Blansit focuses on long-term stability and self-sufficiency to address root causes of poverty.

Aside from programming it offers at The Fairbanks, a community resource and poverty reduction center in the Grant Beach neighborhood, DLF’s core initiatives include its homeownership program, the Blue House Project, and the RISE program, which stands for Reaching Independence through Support and Education. The latter initiative is a yearlong effort to help participants reach financial stability through coaching coupled with curriculum in areas including education, employment, debt reduction and parenting.

“We do adult education, personal, professional and financial empowerment, helping moving individuals from crisis to contribution in our community,” Blansit says of RISE.

Blansit says there are a lot of organizations that serve downstream crises – think resources for people dealing with societal issues such as hunger, or those recovering from natural disasters. But she says not many serve upstream crises, which is a community gap that DLF seeks to fill through its 16-person workforce and over 150 volunteers. Its current operating budget exceeds $2 million.

“The type of crisis that I think I became most passionate about because I knew a solution to it was the crisis of the person who’s sitting next to you at work, or sitting next to you at church, who is doing everything right, but they’re still living paycheck to paycheck because of circumstances outside of their control,” Blansit says.

Blansit says an avenue of nonprofit work DLF serves is the empowerment of education and advocacy for social mobility. Officials say through the RISE program, participants experience an average increase in household income of roughly $735 per month and a credit score increase of 60-120 points.

“The second layer of that then is obviously homeownership. Homeownership is one of the few ways that individuals can build wealth,” Blansit says.

Through its Blue House Project, more than 30 homes have been rehabilitated through the program, resulting in a community investment of roughly $4.5 million, she says. Houses in the Grant Beach neighborhood are bought, renovated and rented primarily to RISE members who have graduated the program with the goal of selling the home to them within two years.