Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave's On the Ground Battle Creek series.

BATTLE CREEK, MI —Taking it to the streets is becoming the new delivery system for the Battle Creek Community Foundation’s (BCCF) Annual Report to the community.

For the second consecutive year, leadership with the BCCF will host a Block Party on August 20 to share the numbers and progress made, while also gathering input from community residents. The event will take place from 4–6 p.m. on Michigan Avenue in the city’s downtown area, offering free food, games, and activities for children and adults, as well as the opportunity to connect with anyone and everyone, according to a press release from the Foundation.

“This feels like such a great way to build organically and authentically for the community to know how accessible we are to them,” says Mary Muliett, President and CEO of BCCF. “This is not just for certain people, it’s for everyone.”

Foundation leadership will spend a bit of time talking about what the organization does and what it did last year as a community partner. There will also be comments from local individuals about how they have benefited from the Foundation’s work. This will all be done while attendees sample free food from local eateries and listen to live music.

But, it is input from the community — the entire community — that will guide the Foundation’s ongoing work.

In October, Muliett says BCCF will be launching into some vision and values, and strategy work.

“John GrapThe Battle Creek Community Foundation has named Mary Muliett as its new president/CEO,It will be the better part of a five or six-month process, and we’ll be enlisting community stakeholders as well as our team and our board.  We are their community foundation. The Block Party inspires community input into that process.”

Muliett says she doesn’t know if other foundations have gatherings like the Block Party to share their annual reports with their stakeholders.

“If I think about it, every community foundation moves differently,” she says. “There’s this thought that, ‘If you know one, you know one.’ For us, it really should be shaped by our community.”

The idea for the Block Party came about in 2024 as a way to celebrate the Foundation’s 50th Anniversary. Muliett says BCCF was encouraged to do it again this year based on positive feedback and compliments received from people representing all areas of the community. She told her team that as long as the cost could be covered through the generosity of sponsors, as it was in 2024, she wanted to do it again.

“We saw folks from all over the county. It was just such a cool organic mixing of those in our community,” she says.

The best part of last year’s event, says Muliett, was seeing people from every corner of the community interacting, talking, finding common ground.

As an example, she recounts a moment from the 2024 event when Dr. Kimberly Carter, Superintendent of Battle Creek Public Schools, in conversation with a student, learned that the student had not been able to register for the new school year.

Residents from across greater Battle Creek are welcome to attend BCCF's Block Party and Annual Meeting on August 20. As a result of that in-person connection, Carter reached out to their parents and worked with the family to get the student placed in classes for the new school year.

“This is the real importance of events like BCCF’s block party,” Muliett says. “Through connecting with our neighbors and friends and building true community, a community where we look out for each person calling Calhoun County home, great things can be accomplished.”

Outreach shaped by values

In a time when in-person interactions are increasingly being replaced by social media-driven interactions, Muliett says touchpoints like the Block Party “lean right into the values I hold as a human being and how my parents raised me.”

It is a well-known fact among many in the community that she freely shares her personal cellphone number. She also has made sure that residents know how to reach BCCF team members, saying that, “Conversations don’t have to happen with just me to access resources.”

This accessibility and transparency is something she spoke about shortly after assuming leadership of the organization in March 2024.

Several area residents turned out for Battle Creek Community Foundation's Block Party in 2024 to celebrate BCCF's 50th anniversary. “I need to build those connections and networks. I’ll need to really hear from our community about what they need, lifting voices, and bringing the community together to understand. I want to know what folks' hopes and desires are and what they envision for themselves. I want to gather those voices and reinvest in our community.”

Those voices will have a say in possible changes to the BCCF mission statement.

“We have a wonderful mission statement. It’s very typical for community
foundations to have a very functional mission statement. And I have
a passion for creating mission statements that are visionary and
dreamy,” Muliett says. “It’s just time. We’re fifty-one years into
our work, and our current mission statement has stood the test of time, 
and I think we can dream as a community. There should be some dreaming
in that mission statement. It’s more of a theory of change, who we are for
community.”

BCCF, like numerous nonprofits and philanthropic organizations, is bracing for potential changes of another type given federal funding cuts being made to many health and social service providers that depend on those funds to care for the most vulnerable. The Foundation is among many local organizations that have been meeting collectively through Battle Creek Truth and Racial Healing to think about what they can do together to maintain the seamless delivery of services to residents.

Muliett shares that with pending federal cuts, BCCF will not be able to shore all funding needs for the community, “however, we continue to work to build funds with our donors and the community at large to remain a steadfast partner for our non-profit partners.”

“We have about 1,000 funds, and folks can decide where they want their impact to be made. There are parameters around starting new funds. We have established two new collective funds that support housing, food security, and transportation. I think about the collective impact that is possible.

"Past leadership established many amazing funds that have stood the test of time. Residents came together to contribute what they could. This is the time to come forward as a community and decide what it looks like to us to shape our future, future, time for us to step forward once again to build grant-making funds for our community.”

Muliett says the doors are always open at BCCF for anyone who wants to know how their dollars make a difference.

“We’ve done a lot of going out into the community, and we’ll continue to do that,” she says. “We leave it up to community members to decide where they’d like to meet. We’re trying to make sure we’re getting to our community.”