A Message to 1256 Applicants in 2025

It keeps me awake some nights. Your house problems keep me awake. As founder of an organization with a purpose to improve home ownership for Black Tulsans, one of my biggest frustrations is not being able to say yes to every request for home restoration today. We have your applications and we haven’t forgotten you, whether you applied when we began in 2021 or yesterday. We haven’t lost your data, and we know many of you are still waiting.

We’re coming alongside people like Janet Chappelle, long-time Tulsa resident and homeowner (pictured with Greg Taylor). Janet grew up in the house she is standing in front of. She showed me a photo what her parents looked like in 1958 when she was growing up in this house. The youngest of nine children, she has inherited this home, which is where her children, grandchildren, grand nieces and nephews, and great grandchildren love to hang out. When she saw 1256 featured on OWN, she completed an application to replace her leaking roof. As a donor, your funding helped 1256 partner with Sam Tate and Blackheart Roofing to replace Janet’s roof. Now she can pass this family inheritance of home and land to her descendants in better condition. She is so happy and expresses her appreciation to 1256 supporters saying, “God is good,” to which we reply, “All the time!”

So let me say this to you and I hope you will join me in prayer and fundraising for this cause. We have served twenty-five of 250 applications with funding for home improvements and we have been in contact with another one hundred. We still have about 100 of you that have received an auto-response with your application but you may not have heard from us. We appreciate your patience and understanding and ask that you bear with us and lean in to the next half decade as we re-commit to scaling up our efforts in three major ways.

1. We have hired an executive director for the first time in our non-profit history. Chukwuso Oputa is our new executive director and he is already making positive changes and moving us toward our 2025 goal of serving 48 families.
2. We have set a fundraising goal of 500,000 in 2025. We don’t know how it’s going to happen but we are doing the work and preparing for it. We have believed that doing all that we can with an average of $50,000 of annual funding is the grass roots way to do the work these past five years. We’ve been faithful, we’ve made mistakes, we’ve tried and failed at times but also successfully helped Black families improve their homes. So we’re ready to scale up and have the capacity to do so.
3. We are focusing on contractor development. Chukwuso and I (Greg) are meeting frequently with public and private organizations to work on improving capacity of contractors to do the work we have in your applications. Do us a favor, if you know a good contractor, email Greg and Chukwuso and tell them about them. We are making a new and improved contractor list and doing our best to keep them busy improving your homes! Write us at info@1256movement.org.

We are an accessible organization that answers the phone, so please call us. We want to hear from you, learn from you, update you on your application so don’t hesistate to call us. We may not give you the answer that makes you feel good but we’ll do our best to pay attention to the details of your application, where you stand, and how we can partner with you, our organization, and other partners, public and private, to get your work done and improve your home.

God bless you!!

Greg Taylor
Founder, 1256 Movement