About
Alan Jennings worked
for the Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley for more than 40 years, serving as Executive Director since 1990 and retiring in June, 2021. During his tenure and despite many years of federal funding cuts proposed by every Republican president, he expanded the organization from one with a budget of $500,000 and no assets to one with a $30 million budget, $9 million in physical assets, mostly real estate.
In 1997, CACLV added a second subsidiary, the Community Action Development Corporation of Bethlehem. In 2001, he established a microenterprise and small business lending subsidiary, called the Rising Tide Community Loan Fund, the only federally-certified community development financial institution based in the Lehigh Valley. It lent over $9 million to more than 230 businesses.
Those community development efforts include replacing almost 200 sidewalks, improving nearly 200 commercial facades and over 100 residential facades, installing street lights, creating parks, planting several hundred street trees, creating community gardens, helping hundreds of entrepreneurs start or expand businesses, helping approximately 4,000 buy their first home, streetscaping major thoroughfares, acquiring, rehabilitating and selling dozens of houses and engaging neighborhood residents and their leaders in the process of community problem-solving.
In 2019, the agency merged The Seed Farm, an innovative training program for farmers, and the Lehigh and Northampton Counties’ Revolving Loan Fund, into the agency. The Seed Farm is operated by the Second Harvest Food Bank while the Loan Fund has become a fifth subsidiary of CACLV, administered by The Rising Tide.
Among the 1,100 Community Action Agencies nationwide, CACLV draws an unprecedented 68% of its budget from non-governmental funding.
His advocacy efforts led to a wide range of affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization projects, including Lehigh and Northampton counties’ housing trust funds, the West Ward Neighborhood Partnership in Easton, Southside Vision 2020 in south Bethlehem, and Upside Allentown in downtown Allentown, and Slate Belt Rising, the first and only one of its kind that combines 4 rural boroughs into a single program. He has worked hard to bring banks and community development groups together, negotiating well over $600 million in formal lending and investment commitments and hundreds of millions in informal commitments to low-income neighborhoods. He also conceived and led the creation of the Green Future Fund, an open space campaign that included $67 million in funding between Lehigh and Northampton counties.
The agency’s most recent initiatives focused on youth development, especially young people of color: one, called the Campaign for Racial and Ethnic Justice, is tackling wealth disparity between households of color and their white counterparts; the other, called SHE (She Has Everything), works with girls to help them make better decisions on relationships that can lead to a lifetime of poverty.
He has served in an advisory role to or on the boards of directors of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, the State Planning Board, and the Urban Availability Task Force of the Pennsylvania Insurance Department. Alan also served as one of five delegates appointed by Governor Tom Ridge to represent Pennsylvania at the Presidents’ Summit on America’s Future in 1997.
At the local level, Alan has served on the boards of directors of the Allentown Housing Authority, Planned Parenthood (local affiliates and at the state and national levels), Lehigh Valley Workforce Investment Board, and also was a founding member of the boards of directors of the PPL Sustainable Energy Fund, Allentown Neighborhood Improvement Zone Development Authority, New Bethany Ministries (Episcopal Ministries of the Diocese of Bethlehem), the Lehigh Valley Chapter of Habitat for Humanity and the Lehigh Valley Justice Institute. He taught for eight years as an adjunct at Lehigh University in social entrepreneurship in the College of Business and Economics. He also hosts a monthly public affairs program on WDIY (the National Public Radio affiliate).
As an outspoken advocate for low-income people, Alan lobbied extensively for progressive public policies, including testifying in front of many legislative and regulatory bodies at the local, state, and federal levels. The agency’s advocacy work has helped increase the minimum wage, create one of the nation’s only state-funded food assistance programs and emergency mortgage assistance programs, rein in predatory lending and prevent more cuts in low-income programs than were implemented. He has been instrumental in a number of lower-profile legislative successes dealing with housing, blight, funding, planning and mortgage regulations. He has also organized extensive studies on the economic and social status of low-income households.
In 2019 he published The Pursuit of Fairness: Fighting for What’s Right in a World That’s So Wrong. The book is a manual on how to be a change agent in a world that so desperately needs them. More than 1,000 copies are in circulation.
In addition to the recognition CACLV won, Alan received a number of personal awards. On January 1, 2000, The Morning Call named him one of the six most influential activists of the twentieth century. Other awards of note include the Neighborhood Hero Award from PBS39 (the local affiliate of National Public Radio), the Outstanding Leadership Award from Casa Guadalupe (2019), the Robert M. Coard Award for Advocacy from the National Community Action Foundation (2018), Education Champion by Communities in Schools (2018), Housing Advocate of the Year from HDC Mid-Atlantic (a non-profit housing developer serving three states) in 2016, the MLK Award from Lehigh University’s Office of Multi-cultural Affairs (2016), the Wallenberg Tribute from the Institute for Jewish-Christian Understanding at Muhlenberg College (2015), the first and only Peacemaking Award from the Lehigh Dialogue Center (2014), the Liberty Bell Award from the Pennsylvania Bar Association (2013), the Priscilla Payne Hurd Award from the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce, Bethlehem Council (2013), Community Builder Award from the Latino Leadership Alliance (2011), the first and only Leadership Lehigh Valley Impact Award (2006), Allentown Human Relations Award (2005), Ecumenical Service Award from the Lehigh Conference of Churches (2003), and the Distinguished Service Award from the Bethlehem Jaycees (1995), the Allentown-Lehigh County Chamber of Commerce (1994), and the Parkland Area Jaycees (1992). In 1997, Lehigh Valley Magazine identified him in their first annual “Movers and Shapers” list.
His agency has been covered by news organizations in Portugal, Scotland, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Japan and France. Domestically, in addition to widespread coverage in the Lehigh Valley media, CACLV’s work has been covered by the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, CNN, Al Jazeera (English), American Banker, Reuters News Service, WHYY and The Washington Post.
Alan is a lifelong resident of Lehigh County. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he majored in Political Science and minored in Education. He is married to the former Denise Reynolds, has three adult daughters, Stephanie, Greer, and Haley, and four grandchildren, Zeke, Xander, Sophie and Logan.