Taylor Ryan, founder of Change Today, Change Tomorrow, has helped serve the Louisville community for years, especially in the West End where many residents struggle the most. Initiatives like Feed The West and Building Black Political Power has enriched the lives of dozens of Louisvillians across the city.
LEO Weekly had the opportunity to chat with Ryan, and ask her how she started her nonprofit organization, and where it is headed from here.
Some parts of this interview have been edited for clarity.
Who are you?
My name is Taylor Ryan She/Her. I'm the executive director and founder of Change Today, Change Tomorrow. We cultivate creative visioning alongside our staff, volunteers in our base.
We decipher what the community's needs are and regurgitate that information to funders. Awesome. So what inspired you to start Change Today, Change Tomorrow,
What inspired you to start Change Today, Change Tomorrow, and how has your journey with the organization influenced you?
So, while I was getting my 2nd master's degree at Marshall University, my first one is in adult education. My second one is leadership studies with an emphasis on nonprofits in the public sector. One of our classes, we had to create a fake non profit. And so I created the base of what Change Today, Change Tomorrow is now.
And then after I obtained my degree at Marshall University, I moved back to the city of Louisville. I went to Louisville initially and then moved away and then came back. I worked at a couple of nonprofits in the city and then ultimately decided to step out on faith and do my own thing. I felt like I had been working in the community and the nonprofit sector for the last 10 years.
If I can help other people run successful programming and successful fundraising campaigns, then I could probably do that same thing for myself and my people. And it's kinda here we are.
So, how does Change Today, Change Tomorrow ensure that its initiatives like Feed the West and Building Black Political Power have a long standing impact on the communities that you serve?
I think what we do is we take a unique approach to our programming in particular. We are not running passion projects with our staff members. We are actually asking people in the neighborhood what they want and then curating what people are saying that they want and need based on our current capacity with funding and spending.
And so I think when we make our work move for a long lasting it's because it's driven by people, for people, and we're not infiltrating neighborhoods and saying, “This is what you need.” We are in our own neighborhood asking our own neighbors “What is it that we want to see? What can we do together?”
What kind of challenges have you faced in balancing those needs of the community with the more broader goals of that social and political change, and how do you address those challenges?
We're really big on collecting our own data, and that helps us tell the story of our work. And so a lot of people think that we're just running this spring grocery program, and that's a band aid, and that's not really solve any long term issues. But they're unaware that we are having community advisory councils, and that we host a parent support group.
We have the only farmer's market in the West End. And so all of these different programs and things that we offer all stem from feedback from the people that we serve because we are the people that we serve.
