Connect Detroit

🎨 Detroit Excellence in Youth Arts (DEYA) works to ensure all youth have equitable access to Detroit’s rich cultural legacy and art sectors, providing important resources and opportunities for Detroit youth to elevate their voices and create pathways to creative careers.

The organization collaborates with Connect Detroit and local providers to create hundreds of paid summer art jobs for Detroit youth.

As we prepare to kick off the 2026 season, we’re looking back at a major highlight from 2025: the Young Professionals Conference.

Held July 31 at Huntington Place, the conference brought together more than 450 young people for a day focused on Building Resiliency for the World of Work. Participants explored topics like mental health awareness, financial literacy, conflict management, self-care, effective communication, and positive relationships.

With breakout sessions, a resource fair, wellness activities, and entertainment, the day created space for youth to learn, connect, and grow. Over 90% of surveyed attendees reported a positive overall experience.

Thank you to Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network, Connect Detroit, and all of the partners who helped make this event such a meaningful part of the 2025 GDYT season.

Strong communities are built when local organizations have the resources, partnerships, and support to solve the problems closest to home.

From safer homes to healthier neighborhoods, community change happens when nonprofits, government partners, and funders work together toward shared solutions.

Good decisions start with good information. Whether addressing lead hazards, after school programming, food access, or youth employment, better data helps communities understand the need, align resources, and move solutions forward.

Demand is rising while funding is becoming less predictable.

For communities, that can mean longer waitlists, fewer programs, reduced hours, or less support when people need it most.

Supporting nonprofits is not just about generosity. It is about protecting the services, relationships, and local knowledge that help communities respond in real time.

Whether you donate your time, help connect others to local resources, or make a financial contribution within your means, your support can make a difference.

Nonprofits are often described by the programs they run, but they are more than just their programs. They are an important part of the infrastructure that helps communities respond, adapt, and grow.

Since 2001, Connect Detroit has helped bring nonprofits, government, funders, and community partners together to solve local problems, mobilizing more than $150 million and supporting dozens of collaborative initiatives across youth employment, mental health, arts access, data, public health, and more.

At a time when nonprofit organizations across the country are navigating rising demand and uncertain funding, collaboration is not optional. It is how communities build capacity, share resources, and move solutions forward.

That is the role Connect Detroit is proud to play: connecting people, partners, and funding around work that strengthens Detroit.

Learn more or become a funding partner: connectdetroit.org

Then and now, the heart for impact has always been there.

We’re looking back at a few familiar Connect Detroit faces, from childhood snapshots to the leaders, organizers, and changemakers helping move our work forward today.
Swipe to meet a few of the people behind our mission.

Then and now, the heart for impact has
always been there.

We’re looking back at a few familiar Connect Detroit
faces, from childhood snapshots to the leaders,
organizers, and changemakers helping move our work
forward today.

Swipe to meet a few of the people behind the mission.

Congratulations to Shuna Hayward, Interim President & CEO of Connect Detroit, on receiving the Ecosystem Impact Award at the YDRC Summit on May 7.

This award recognizes an individual or organization whose work has created sustainable, systemic impact by fostering collaboration, innovation, and growth across sectors and communities.

We are especially proud that Connect Detroit’s own Nicole Hill had the honor of presenting this award to Shuna. A well-deserved recognition for leadership that continues to strengthen Detroit’s ecosystem and create lasting impact.

Congratulations, Shuna!