A non-profit private foundation, POC is dedicated to listening and working together with Rhode Island’s Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities to empower and create individual success stories by investing in education, job skills training and entrepreneurial ventures.
In December 2020, The Perry Group was engaged to create an omni-channel community relations campaign to introduce POC to Rhode Island’s BIPOC communities, explain the foundation’s goals; and to begin earning the trust of organizations working with and for communities of color.
The resulting “Here to Listen. Here to Help.,” campaign we created exceeded all objectives for its first year. Campaign components included community conversations across the state aimed at connecting with individual communities of color, launching the POCFoundation website, hosting the state’s first ever BIPOC Waterfire, creating the Transform RI high school scholarship contest and creating opportunities for communities of color in the areas of education, skills training and entrepreneurship. More than 50 non-profits connected with POC and collectively received $50 million in multi-year commitments for funding by the end of 2021.