In this inaugural episode of “The Pinnacle Pod”, host Maurice Watson speaks with 2022 Pinnacle Prize winner Brandon Calloway, CEO and co-founder of KC G.I.F.T. (Generating Income For Tomorrow).

Through the conversation, we hear from Brandon on historic redlining, discriminatory lending practices and the racial wealth gap in KC. Brandon also explains how G.I.F.T. works to tackle systemic disparities through resources and grants for Black-owned businesses, converting economically disadvantaged areas into areas of economic opportunity.

Transcript

Maurice Watson: I am Maurice Watson, and this is “The Pinnacle Pod,” a monthly podcast where we dive into the stories behind Kansas City’s most dynamic emerging leaders. Each episode celebrates the spirit of The Pinnacle Prize, an award that recognizes young visionaries sparking positive change in our community, from subtle ripples to citywide movements. Join us to listen, learn, and be inspired. Today our guest is Brandon Calloway, a veteran of the US Army, a former health and fitness trainer, and CEO and co-founder of KC G.I.F.T. As someone who grew up in the urban core of Kansas City, Missouri, Brandon has long been committed to finding ways to create transformative change in the areas of the city that need it most. And for the residents who reside there, he co-founded G.I.F.T. in 2020 to address Kansas City’s substantial racial wealth gap. Historic redlining, discriminatory lending practices, and lack of financial education services have contributed to racial wealth disparity and increased poverty-related crime and violence. G.I.F.T. works to convert economically disadvantaged areas into areas of economic opportunity by creating a clear path to prosperity and wealth for African Americans. Brandon also helped establish the Black business market, which takes place on the fourth Saturday of each month, giving Black businesses a consistent, free space to sell their products. In early 2022, G.I.F.T opened a business center to provide technical assistance to the small business community in Kansas City with free drop-in co-working space, business coaching, accounting, and marketing support, banking centers and non-profit and general consulting services. Brandon, welcome to our first ever episode of The Pinnacle Pod.

Brandon Calloway: Thank you for having me, Maurice. It is an honor to be the first guest.

Maurice Watson: Let’s start by having you tell us about yourself.

Brandon Calloway: I’m Brandon Callaway, born and raised right here in Kansas City. I was actually born in KCK and then moved over to KCMO when I was seven so I can play both sides if I want to—you know how that border war goes. I graduated high school, went to the Army, and I’ve long been trying to figure out ways that I can do my part and make some type of transformational change, specifically in the community that created me and who I am. It led me to do a lot of different things. It led me to fitness, and it led me to trying to use my skills in fitness to get inner-city kids college scholarships. So, I became a strength and conditioning coach for football. I’ve trained literally any type of athlete you can think of, all really trying to help use the skills that I have to create access.

Maurice Watson: So, let’s go back to that issue. What do you view as your special purpose in life? What drives you? What is the why for Brandon Calloway?

Brandon Calloway: I grew up on the east side of Kansas City in a house that sometimes had no lights, no water, no gas, all at the same time. My parents…they were learning, they were growing, and they were struggling. They struggled with drugs, they struggled with alcohol, and there are definitely worse stories and there are definitely worse situations than what we lived in. But we experienced a lot of struggle. Our neighborhood drug dealer got shot on my front porch when I was 14. Experiencing that level of lack of everything—lack of money, lack of food, lack of support—I took it upon myself to make sure that I do not experience that again. So, one internal driver of mine is just getting away from where I came from. Another thing I’ve learned in the army and growing up in the household that I grew up in: if you want to make something happen, you have to be the person to make it happen. If you complain about something and you’re not willing to do something about that same thing that you’re complaining about, even when you have the opportunity to, then what’s the point in complaining about it? We don’t complain about things that you’re not prepared to take action on, and you are the driver in making things happen that you want to happen or that need to happen.

Maurice Watson: In your life, you have been the one committed to making things happen. Not just talking about them, but making things happen.

Brandon Calloway: Right. You know, I didn’t have a big support system beyond that family, or even in that family dynamic. So mom, dad…but extended family—we weren’t really close to any of them. So, if we wanted to survive, we had to survive. I got my first job when I was 16. I bought my first car when I was 16. I signed my first lease for my apartment when I was 16.

Maurice Watson: So, how’d you make G.I.F.T happen?

Brandon Calloway: Well, we started G.I.F.T. when I was 29. I’ve had 40 jobs in my first 29 years of life because if I need to make something happen, then it’s gotta be on me. And there’s always a way to do something. So, if these jobs aren’t working, then I can add in another one. If all of these aren’t working well, let’s scrap those and let’s go with this one.

Maurice Watson: Now, tell us a little bit more about G.I.F.T. First of all, what does G.I.F.T stand for?

Brandon Calloway: Generating Income For Tomorrow. So, a nonprofit organization—grassroots level nonprofit. We’re raising money, we are giving grant money as well as technical support to Black businesses on the East Side of Kansas City—the Black businesses that operate in the historically red-lined area of Kansas City—so that they can grow, they can create jobs for the community and begin to create this economic engine that has an overall impact on the upward economic mobility of the entire area. Because if we do that, then we’re able to see things like median income levels increase, we’re able to see school funding increase, we’re able to see poverty related crime decrease. Through entrepreneurship and Black business expansion, we’re able to create something that has a ripple effect in all of these areas of Kansas City, which is good for everybody. It’s good for you if you live on 35th and Prospect, it’s good for you if you live out on 135th in Olathe.

Maurice Watson: So, The Pinnacle Prize is very much invested in the concept of leaders like yourself, creating a ripple effect, creating value and benefits to the wider community. When you talk about G.I.F.T. and the origins of G.I.F.T., it seems like such an obvious need in our community. Was that need being met at all before you started G.I.F.T.?

Brandon Calloway: It depends on who you ask. I would say no. Kansas City has this really big racial wealth gap. East Side of Troost, so East Kansas City, is 75% Black with 36% poverty; west side, 91% white, 5% poverty. All of that goes back to—I mean, you can drive it all the way back to slavery—but most recently it goes back to redlining and the fact that the banks, as well as our local and federal government, allowed disinvestment into the east side of Kansas City into Black communities all across the country. Take that back from the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s, and fast forward to now: those communities that were disinvested in are still the communities that are the highest concentration of Black poverty. And so what was being done about that? Everybody knows this. These are facts. You know what was being done? There’s a community reinvestment act. The government says, “okay, redlining was bad.” We passed the CRA in the 1970s to say, “okay, now you must reinvest in the communities that were disinvested in.” You get things like CDFI—community development financial institutions—to help increase this access to capital. You get all types of programs from all types of municipal governments that are trying to figure out ways to address the issue and tackle the problem.

Maurice Watson: What was the outcome?

Brandon Calloway: When we started, the current racial wealth gap was that 75% Black with 36% poverty.

Maurice Watson: No impact.

Brandon Calloway: No impact.

Maurice Watson: No positive impact.

Brandon Calloway: Right. Or I can’t say no—I’ll say minimal.

Maurice Watson: No meaningful.

Brandon Calloway: No meaningful. And the racial wealth gap is continuing to grow. And so my question is how is it possible that we have all of these things that are addressing these things, and the problem is still getting worse? And so to us, it seems so simple to say, okay, this problem was created because a group of people intentionally decided to not put money into Black communities to intentionally create a hub of Black communities that were also disinvested in. And so they did that directly by depriving those communities of money—by not making business loans, not making mortgage loans—and so wealth goes down, home ownership goes down, the school system does not continue to improve. So to us, if you’re trying to fix that problem, it seems that you should fix that problem. If the problem was, we took a bunch of money from Black people, it seems that the solution should be let’s give a bunch of money to Black people. But what has been happening is that the CRA and nobody wants to say Black. Nobody wants to say Black.

Maurice Watson: What’s the CRA by the way?

Brandon Calloway: Community Reinvestment Act. And so the Community Reinvestment Act is literally the law that was passed to address redlining. Redlining was a racial issue. But the CRA focuses on low to moderate income communities. So, it does not address race at all.

Maurice Watson: So Brandon, you’ve done a very comprehensive job describing the problem and why we have the racial wealth disparity in our community and communities like ours all over the country. But more importantly, you’ve come up with a solution, and the solution is G.I.F.T. So G.I.F.T. has some really impressive impact numbers. In your last annual report, you’ve gone from $82,000 in sales at your market to over half a million dollars—$550,000 in grants that you’ve provided. What did these results mean to the community?

Brandon Calloway: There’s a whole bunch of numbers in our annual report, and there are a few that I think are really, really important that lay out the current and potential impact. So our grant program is obviously focused on giving grants to Black businesses on the east side—help them grow and create jobs. We give out $10,000, $25,000 and $50,000 grants. So, in our three years total, we’ve given out $1,237,000 to 63 different Black-owned businesses on the east side. Those 63 businesses have created 108 new jobs. Those 108 new jobs have an average hourly pay rate of $16 and 6 cents. So those are the numbers at the end of year three. When we go back to the end of year two, it was $687,000 given with 62 new jobs created. We go back to the end of year one, it was $227,000 given with 22 new jobs created. One of the things that our annual report does a good job of showing is that pretty consistently year over year, we’ve shown for every $10,000 that we give to a Black-owned business on the east side, we’re able to create one job, give or take a few thousand. Now we’re able to show that not only does that $10,000 create one job, that $10,000 creates a job that pays $16 and 6 cents. So that $10,000 creates a job that pays around $30,000. So you ask what do these numbers mean to the community? It means that with the grant money as well as the technical assistance that goes into that grant money, we have figured out a way to be aggressive, as aggressive and intentional as the disinvestment was. We have figured out a way to match that same intentional aggression and put money into the community in a way that results in real, tangible, measurable impact. A hundred jobs in three years is magnificent. But if we go back to that big racial wealth gap, 33 jobs a year is not changing a whole bunch.

Maurice Watson: Right.

Brandon Calloway: A hundred jobs a year would.

Maurice Watson: And that’s what you aspire to.

Brandon Calloway: It is.

Maurice Watson: You aspire for this trajectory of improving economic opportunity in your target community to continue.

Brandon Calloway: Absolutely. I know that with growth in our fundraising, with growth in our funding, by getting to the level of being able to actually grant out a million dollars a year, we would be able to and have the staff capacity to support the businesses that we give those grants to. We’d be able to create a hundred jobs a year.

Maurice Watson: Brandon, I do want to take this opportunity to congratulate you for being one of the two winners of The Pinnacle Prize in 2022. And I’m really interested in what you’ve been up to since you won the Pinnacle Prize last year.

Brandon Calloway: It was a surreal experience. You know, you are always proud of the work you do—it’s the work you do, right? And so when people ask you “oh yeah, out of everybody doing work in the city, our work is the best work, right?”, then there is the realist that that says everybody says that and everybody thinks that, and it might not be true. So very surreal—it was humbling to get a recognition like that. In the past year, the past day, the past month, the goal is always working towards what I just talked about, of how do we get to a level of actual meaningful impact.

Maurice Watson: So, the work you’ve done through G.I.F.T. and your recognition by being awarded The Pinnacle Prize is an inspiration to many. So I wonder, what advice would you give to a young Brandon Calloway, young people in our community who are looking to have the kind of impact that you’ve had so far? What advice would you give them?

Brandon Calloway: Going back to the beginning, you have to be the driver. You really do have to be the driver. You do have to be the person that is willing to do some of the things that other people are not willing to do, and that other people might tell you that you shouldn’t do. So, you gotta be the driver and you can’t drive alone, because if you’re driving alone, then it’s gonna be such a rough ride. It is gonna be a very rough ride. You most likely won’t get very far.

Maurice Watson: When you started G.I.F.T. there were others. There was a team that worked together.

Brandon Calloway: Yep. So there was me, my co-founder, Cornell Gorman, and then we had a third co-founder who was down in Houston. Cornell has a magnificent skillset in marketing. I am good at the fundraising. I figured out program development. But this wouldn’t be here were it not for him. Was I the driver? Yes, but I wasn’t gonna go nowhere if I didn’t have Cornell right there in the car with me. So, you gotta be the driver, you gotta be willing to make it happen, and you also need a team. And it’s not gonna be as fun as you think it is.

Maurice Watson: It’s hard work.

Brandon Calloway: Yeah.

Maurice Watson: And frustrating at times.

Brandon Calloway: Yep. And then ego will get in the way, and sometimes you feel like you should be thanked when you’re not being thanked. There should be gratitude, like, “I’m doing great work, why does everybody not care?” And sometimes people don’t care and that’s okay. That’s something that you need to be prepared for.

Maurice Watson: What’s next for you?

Brandon Calloway: So one, I’m trying to balance. I’ve been answering professional questions this entire time and I’m trying to balance. I have talked about moving out at 16 and 40 jobs and blah, blah, blah, being go, go, go. And so I’m trying to go and live life on the way instead of living life once I get to this destination. So that’s something I’m working on and I’m actively trying to do that. And G.I.F.T. is growing. We are on track. In our annual report, when we just wrapped up, we ended up raising $1.6 million last year. We’re on track to raise $2 million, potentially go a little bit over $2 million in year four.

Maurice Watson: That’s great.

Brandon Calloway: And so the goal being that by year five we should be at 2.5 to 3 million hopefully, which will allow us to hit that sustainable impact that we’re trying to get. We could potentially give out a million dollars at that level.

Maurice Watson: So, what are some of the challenges that you think you are likely to face as you continue to grow and expand?

Brandon Calloway: So, Cornell and I were the two and we started it, and now we’re eight full-time employees now. And so the same leader that it took to run a two-man organization, it’s not the same leader that it takes to run a four-man organization. It’s not the same leader that it takes to run an eight-man organization. As we continue to grow, the team will grow. And so the leadership will have to continue to grow our skills so that we can be the resource that we are needing to be for our staff and our team, and our people.

Maurice Watson: What is most reassuring is your understanding of the need to continue to develop, mature as a leader and for your organization to develop and evolve. Brandon, how can our listeners contact you?

Brandon Calloway: You can reach out to us at kansascitygift.org. You can email me, bcalloway@kansascitygift.org. But if you go on our website, you can find our office phone number, our main email, or you can directly email me and then you can follow us on all social medias. It’s just @kansascitygift.

Maurice Watson: Thanks for listening. And be sure to sign up for our newsletter at pinnacleprizekc.org to continue to listen, learn and be inspired by dynamic emerging leaders in our community.

Hosted By Maurice Watson

Maurice is a recognized community leader and has more than thirty years of experience working in law, social and public policy and board governance as a lawyer, advisor, and board member. He is the co-founder and principal of Credo Philanthropy Advisors.