Schedule

1:00–4:00 PM

Detroit Ecosystem Site Visits: Infrastructure in Place

Optional
Experience Detroit through the people, organizations, and institutions building community-rooted infrastructure. Site visits will explore what communities have built, the relationships and resources that sustain it, and what it takes for community infrastructure to endure.

Experiences may include: Birth Detroit, Womb Institute, Mothering Justice, and a Detroit History & Community Infrastructure Tour.

5:00–8:00 PM

Welcome Reception 

Connect with fellow attendees through food, conversation, art, and cultural experiences celebrating Detroit’s legacy of community leadership and innovation.

Featuring the Black Birth Joy photo exhibit, Detroit small business vendors, and opportunities to build relationships across sectors.

8:00–9:00 AM

Breakfast & Networking

 

9:00–9:20 AM

What Will It Take to Last?

Opening & Grounding

We’ll begin with a welcome to Detroit and ground ourselves in the people, place, values, and possibilities that will guide our time together—and in the central question of the Summit: What will it take for the people, organizations, and community infrastructure advancing birth justice to endure?

9:20–9:50 AM

State of the Birth Justice Ecosystem

FBJE will share emerging intelligence about the birth justice ecosystem—from funding patterns and capital flows to workforce and organizational durability, community birth infrastructure, ecosystem vulnerabilities, and opportunities for greater coordination.

9:50–10:20 AM

Signals From the Ecosystem

Conditions Shaping Birth Justice

Birth justice is shaped by far more than the health care system. Leaders working across housing, economic justice, reproductive justice, mental health, environmental justice, family policing, immigration, democracy, and other sectors will offer brief perspectives on the conditions communities are navigating.

10:20–10:35 AM

What the Data Doesn’t Tell Us

Data can help us see patterns—but it cannot tell the whole story. Funders and field leaders reflect on what requires lived experience, local knowledge, relationships, and deeper context to understand.

10:35–10:50 AM

Break

10:50–11:30 AM

Collective Interpretation

Understanding the Ecosystem Together

Participants move from receiving information to making meaning together. Through facilitated table conversations, we’ll explore what resonates, what may be missing, what is changing, where vulnerabilities are emerging, and what strengths and possibilities deserve greater attention.

11:30 AM–12:00 PM

What We’re Learning

Patterns, Gaps & Possibilities

We’ll bring the room back together to surface patterns, unanswered questions, community assets, vulnerabilities, and opportunities emerging from our collective interpretation of the ecosystem.

12:00–1:00 PM

Lunch

1:00–1:15 PM

Every Mother Counts Spotlight

HR1 & Implications for the Field

Every Mother Counts shares emerging insights on HR1 and what the changing federal landscape could mean for maternal health, community-based providers, and the broader birth justice ecosystem.

1:15–2:15 PM

What’s Lost When Birth Justice Infrastructure Disappears?

What do communities lose when trusted organizations, workers, leaders, relationships, and institutions become unstable or disappear? This conversation examines the ripple effects of funding volatility and disappearing infrastructure—and what it will take to protect what communities have spent years building.

2:15–3:15 PM

Matching Capital to What Communities Are Building

Different needs require different forms of capital. This conversation explores how grants, public investment, reimbursement, mission-aligned capital, facility financing, reserves, and other resources can strengthen community organizations and infrastructure—and when capital can unintentionally create additional risk or burden.

3:15–3:30 PM

Break & Transition

3:30–4:45 PM

Strategy Labs

Choose one of three conversations.

 

Breaking Real & Manufactured Constraints in Philanthropy

What actually prevents philanthropy from moving differently? Participants will distinguish genuine legal, fiduciary, and institutional constraints from norms and assumptions that have become accepted as inevitable—and identify where philanthropy already has the authority to act.

Beyond Maternal Health

Cross-Sector Conditions Shaping Birth Justice

Housing, economic security, reproductive justice, mental health, early childhood, environmental justice, family policing, immigration, and civic power all shape the conditions surrounding pregnancy, birth, and family wellbeing. This strategy lab explores where movements intersect and where aligned investment could strengthen work already underway.

 

Policy, Power & Infrastructure

From Policy Wins to Lasting Community Change

Winning policy is only the beginning. This conversation examines what it takes to translate policy victories into meaningful community-level change—and the roles of organizing, public financing, implementation, community infrastructure, political power, and philanthropy in closing the gap.

4:45 PM

Day 1 Concludes

We’ll carry the strongest questions, tensions, and possibilities from these conversations into Day 2.

 

8:00–9:00 AM

Breakfast & Networking

 

9:00–9:20 AM

What We’re Learning

Insights From Day One

We’ll begin Day 2 with a synthesis of the conditions, assets, vulnerabilities, questions, and opportunities surfaced across the first day—and consider what they ask of us as we turn toward durability and action.

9:20–9:30 AM

Transition to Strategy Labs

9:30–10:45 AM

Durability Strategy Labs — Block One

What Will It Take to Last?

Choose one of three conversations.

Sustaining People

Workforce Durability & Caregiver Sustainability

What does a durable workforce need beyond training and credentialing? Explore compensation, benefits, supervision, professional development, mental health, rest, childcare and caregiving support, career pathways, and what philanthropy must fund differently if we expect people to remain in this work.

Sustaining Ourselves, Sustaining the Work

Birth justice cannot be sustained through the exhaustion of the people carrying it. This conversation explores rest, healing, mental health, grief, joy, caregiving, and collective care as movement infrastructure—and what it means for both leaders and philanthropy to invest in the conditions that make care possible.

Leading for Durability

Executive Leadership Conversation

Invitation Only

A candid peer strategy conversation for foundation executives and senior philanthropic leaders about leadership responsibility, institutional authority, risk, and opportunities to use executive power in support of durable community infrastructure.

10:45–11:00 AM

Break & Transition

11:00 AM–12:15 PM

Durability Strategy Labs — Block Two

Choose one of three conversations.

Sustaining Organizations

What It Takes for Community Institutions to Last

What allows community-rooted organizations to survive, adapt, grow, and lead over time? This conversation explores organizational durability across different stages and structures—from building individual organizations to sustaining collaborative infrastructure across institutions.

 

Sustaining Community Birth Infrastructure

Building, Owning & Protecting Community Systems of Care

What will it take for communities to build, own, finance, and sustain the infrastructure through which care is delivered? Explore birth centers, midwifery systems, perinatal hubs, facilities, capital access, reimbursement, community ownership, and long-term stewardship.

 

Organizing From Within

Building Power to Change Philanthropy From the Inside

How do people working inside philanthropy build power to change their own institutions? This strategy conversation explores internal organizing, institutional resistance, leadership and boards, risk, authority, and moving from individual advocacy toward collective action.

12:15–1:15 PM

Lunch

1:15–2:30 PM

From Conversation to Coordination

Where Can We Act Together?

We’ll move from analysis toward action around priorities emerging from the Summit. Participants will identify where leadership already exists, who needs to be connected, what capital and other resources are needed, and where greater coordination could strengthen work already underway.

The goal is not to create new initiatives for their own sake. It is to identify where we can act together—and what could move in the next 90 days.

2:30–2:40 PM

Break & Reset

2:40–3:30 PM

Closing Conversation

Building What We Need to Last

What are we building that needs to outlast us?

This fireside conversation looks beyond individual grants, programs, and organizations toward the long-term stewardship of the birth justice ecosystem: what communities are building, what must be protected, what should exist ten years from now, and what responsibilities funders, organizations, and community leaders share. We’ll close by reflecting on what we heard, what we are carrying forward, and how the learning and relationships emerging in Detroit will inform the work ahead.