Real Chances Inc., which Aisha Bullard started in 2011, is a nonprofit dedicated to supporting underserved communities — people who live on the margins because of homelessness, prior incarceration, poverty or mental illness. Some programs offered by Bullard and her team include the Richmond Urban Ministry Institute, a school and dorm providing leadership opportunities to the disenfranchised, and Glenwood Farm, which teaches cultivation techniques via urban agriculture, including a retail outlet through farmers markets.
Bullard’s background as a corporate lawyer led her toward the nonprofit sector after she saw the way corporate banks are able to devote funds to organizations designated to help. She runs Real Chances with a corporate eye but a passionate heart. “Somebody told me recently, ‘Oh, I’ve never heard of your organization before,’ ” Bullard says. “That sort of hurts us when it comes to funding — that people don’t know the breadth and depth of what we’re able to do — but it also allows us to be nimble because we don’t have 20 people to be held accountable to. We’re able to, under the leadership and direction of myself and a small team of leaders, jump in to fill needs quickly.”
With the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, Real Chances immediately went into action mode, teaming up with Homeward, another nonprofit, to provide housing for people who need it most. “When I look back on the past six weeks, to think that we were able to take in 50 new people and connect them to the services that they need, house them and feed them so quickly and during a pandemic,” Bullard says, “I’m like, ‘Wait a minute — are we superhuman? How did we do that again?’ ”
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