Middletown residents and Wesleyan students, faculty, and staff all belong to the same community, and if our community is struggling, we owe it to them to do what we can to help. Even before the pandemic, about 12% of Middletown residents lived in poverty—higher than the state average of 10%. Nearly 15% were food-insecure. Hundreds of families were homeless. Meanwhile, Wesleyan has an endowment of more than $1 billion. The University should support our community by setting up a fund to distribute money to nonprofits and community organizations in Middletown. An effort of this kind would benefit people in need and help bind Wesleyan and our community into a greater whole.

We call on Wesleyan to create a Community Fund. Under our proposal, Wesleyan would set aside money each year to distribute to Middletown’s nonprofits, community organizations, event planning committees, and grassroots fundraising initiatives. We suggest that the University commit to spending just one tenth of one percent of its annual budget—currently, this would be a little over $200,000—to support the Fund each year. To determine who would receive funds, the University would convene a board of advisors, primarily representing stakeholders from the community, that would review applications from local organizations. Crucially, while Wesleyan would be using some of its administrative capacity to support this important task, Middletown residents themselves would play the primary role in determining funding priorities. The Fund would be an enormous step in demonstrating Wesleyan’s continued commitment to its home city.

The model we propose has been used before. In response to the pandemic, Yale University has funneled millions of dollars ($1 million in initial seed funding and more by matching fundraising) to organizations that provide New Haven residents with ways to meet their basic needs like shelter, food, and healthcare. These efforts have helped more than one hundred organizations serve their community. Wesleyan is a less wealthy school than Yale, and Middletown is a smaller city than New Haven. But we can still follow their example, and even go beyond it in two key ways. First, we can establish a high degree of popular control over the Fund, making sure that the people who we are trying to benefit are in the position of asserting their own wants and needs. Second, we can make a long-term commitment that outlasts the COVID crisis, so the Fund can make lasting change far into the future.

Although $200,000 is a drop in the bucket for Wesleyan, it would be a meaningful contribution to Middletown’s well-being. Our area is full of nonprofit organizations seeking to do good, but they receive the bulk of their funding from just four sources (Middlesex United Way, the Community Foundation of Middlesex County, the Liberty Bank Foundation, and the Peach Pit Foundation). These organizations cannot meet the community’s needs alone. The Community Fund would allow Wesleyan to give them some help.

The Community Fund would materially improve people’s lives by helping them meet their basic needs and organize in their communities, and build a stronger relationship between Wesleyan and Middletown, forging connections between our school and our surrounding community.

We should share the wealth, and create a Community Fund.