GIVE
A people-centered model and creating community has helped Brilliant Cities transform lives, one neighborhood at a time.
It’s the bright colors that adorn the website.
But it’s also the lustrous and bright name of the organization itself.
It’s the empowered staff, too, that are ever-present and keyed into every detail.
But then again, it’s the homes you walk into that exude care and comfort at every turn.
And each of those homes has a bright orange door that just shouts, “Please! Walk in!”
More than likely though, the telltale sign that Brilliant Cities is making real change in families’ lives are the smiles on the faces of the families themselves.
Brilliant Detroit is an early childhood development nonprofit co-founded by Cindy Eggleton, and Carolyn and Jim Bellinson in 2016. A neighborhood-powered model, the organization focuses on children from 0 to 8 years of age, ensuring they are ready for school, healthy, and feel supported. Their mission involves transforming houses into community hubs where families have what they need to thrive.
Eggleton now leads as Co-Founder and CEO of Brilliant Cities, the umbrella organization that recently formed for the quickly expanding Brilliant Detroit. A total of 19 homes are now located in the birthplace of the organization, Detroit. One hub recently opened in Pontiac, with three more planned there as well. With these additional locations, Pontiac will become its own entity. Philadelphia is next, with at least two hubs to open by the end of 2026 with eight neighborhoods in play after that. Chicago will follow. A total of 42 cities in 12 countries are in line to become the next
Brilliant Cities. The organization has had a waiting list from the start.
Expansion like this in a nonprofit less than ten years old is proof-positive of Eggleton’s solid leadership. But it was also personal experience with poverty growing up in Detroit that moved her to start Brilliant Detroit at all. Eggleton knew that people should be at the center of their own change, and that it required generation-to-generation action. “Not-for-profits need to provide more than just services; they need to build community. That’s what we are doing,” she says. “Our work is with, for, and by the people in the neighborhoods. We don’t do anything to anybody; we work alongside the families.”
Eggleton met the Bellinsons when they were looking to make an investment in early childhood education. Eggleton had a strong background in not-for-profit education, with her most recent role overseeing a huge portfolio that covered early childhood and high school education. She had already been able to see what worked and what didn’t. The three talked for a year.
“Carolyn and Jim wanted to invest in a program that worked, and I wanted to form the same. From the get-go, we asked ourselves, what if? What if we were able to do all the things we’re talking about out of houses in neighborhoods?”
It was a radically new idea, one, the three thought, whose time had come.
Fast forward nine years and the organization has served 30,000 people, increased reading levels in early elementary students, and nurtured significant improvements in education, health, and family support. The Brilliant Cities board comprises 11 leaders coming from varied backgrounds and their annual fundraiser generates an attendance in the hundreds – a mix of participating families, donors, volunteers, and partners. There is a podcast, a blog, free reading libraries, and a YouTube channel. Brilliant Detroit and now Brilliant Cities have been covered by national and local news, from Voyage Michigan to The Associated Press.
Eggleton and the Bellinsons wanted to see transformation, not just services provided for families in need of real solutions. “We focus on creating Kid Success, with an overall model of education, health, family, and support,” she says. The hubs may function as a quiet place for children to read and study, but there is so much more: tutoring and homework help (a love of reading is a huge emphasis); cooking for family dinners; a walking club; even Hustle Night. Walk into a hub at any given time and one will see any or all of this going on. “It’s support that helps them grow and develop. We watch families begin to connect with neighbors and other families to help them create community,” says Eggleton.
That belonging piece is key – being together, feeling safe with others—as is starting to learn and build technical skills that will further enhance people’s lives.
The organization holds true to several pillars, first and foremost that it’s neighborhood-powered. Brilliant Detroit is invited into areas where hubs are established, and once in, listens to the residents. Eggleton says they look at three factors in each neighborhood: The density of the children who live there; that the neighborhood is organized to a good degree to partner with Brilliant Cities; and the fact that residents have invited them in the first place.
Anywhere from six to 12 listening sessions then take place to make sure they’ve reached a representative group in the neighborhood—those who have lived there a long time, those who haven’t, those who would use the model, those who wouldn’t.
The second pillar is programming that’s evidence-based and grounded in research. It’s the focal point for everything they do. Eggleton says that when she did her initial research, she immediately gravitated toward a community-centric model, one that actually did this kind of listening, thus giving families what they needed to thrive. She had seen other successful models—like Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City, and Magnolia Place, based in L.A., that had the community as its center. Eggleton felt that Brilliant needed the same kind of holistic family-focused perspective.
Another tenet is hiring staff from the neighborhood at each location. “Approximately 33% of our employees are from the neighborhoods they serve. People become invested like this. When others from the neighborhood come through the door, they find a whole lot of love and care. It’s why they keep coming back,” Eggleton says.
When it came time to hire a new Executive Director for Detroit this year as Eggleton assumed her next role, she admits it took a while. “We needed someone who got these things in their bones.” Tarsha Gale was that person. As the new Executive Director of Brilliant Detroit, Gale felt a real kinship to the mission. She grew up in Detroit and was surrounded by a community that was nurturing where it needed to be. Gale was drawn to Brilliant Detroit at a time when she was ready to transition out of a long career in child welfare.
“Seeing how families are impacted by a system that prescribes ways of working with them made me realize this was a root issue that needed changing,” she says. “It wasn’t helpful. We were doing work we believed families needed, and all of it was also evidence-based, but it didn’t apply to the actual population we dealt with—generations of families in foster care, generations of families in poverty. What we were doing was not helping them.”
Gale recognizes those cycles, and the need to make real change. “Saying parents should know how to parent their children and then sending them to parenting classes isn’t always the solution. Telling someone, ‘If your child does this, you respond in this way,’ doesn’t look at trauma-based reactions that might be underneath it all. That wasn’t addressed. You can give someone all the tools in the world, you can check all the boxes, but then they may go home and do the same thing all over again.”
Holding space to listen to the parents who walk through Brilliant Detroit’s doors and asking what it was they never received, and what it is that they hope and dream for their children, is at the forefront of Gale’s mind.
“We want to give them the opportunity to thrive as a parent. Our parents care very much about their children—and they have to be cared about too. That’s the love, safety, and growth part that Brilliant does best. That’s how you see generational change, and that’s how you make impact.”
Has there been anything that hasn’t worked so far?
“I used to think I needed to know a lot,” Eggleton says. “I don’t. I need to listen.”
Children aging out of programming is another element that’s being addressed. “We serve children up to age 8 but have heard from our families that our kids need more. We’ve spent a year on this with a committee to figure it out.”
With her CEO hat on, Eggleton sees Brilliant Cities as having solid principles that are almost business-like in their return on investment. “If you value people, you’re going to have participants. It’s going to matter to them. We work with partners as well and are able to do this at an affordable cost with real results.”
Over 200 partners presently work with Brilliant Cities and there’s a waiting list of another 150. Their mission has sent a message: There’s a space, there’s good synergy, there’s evaluation, there’s a model, and importantly, there is value happening.
Brilliant Cities has set its sights on reaching a quarter million people in 10 years through the 42 cities on its docket. Eggleton believes this is the way to expand the model—“Because people will change the world, because they will have the right infrastructure and the right connections.”
She also knows that giving everyone a stake in their corner of the world is key, while recognizing that people often feel less and less connected. “There’s a need for connectedness. We’re all longing for it,” Eggleton says of the element that has become their secret sauce.
“We call it love, safety, and growth. It all makes so much sense.”
