In November 2014, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon created the Ferguson Commission in response to months of unrest following the killing of Michael Brown Jr. by a police officer. Ten years later, the Ferguson Commission's legacy rests on three things: its diagnosis of structural racism as the root of the region's problems, its policy recommendations, and the process it built and left behind to sustain the conditions for change. Through the voices of commissioners, organizers, institutional leaders, and community members involved with the Ferguson Commission and the response to it, this report traces that story, examining what "impact" has meant in practice for a decade, with the aim of offering lessons to communities pursuing equitable systems change elsewhere.

Why This Matters

Many racial disparities today are as entrenched as they have ever been, and some have deepened and are compounded by widespread unaffordability and economic immobility. At the same time, signs of progress serve as reminders that these inequities are not immutable. St. Louis and many other cities continue to pursue equity-oriented systems change, supported by local and national organizations and funders, against significant political resistance.

What We Found

The Ferguson Commission's story is one of incomplete and imperfect yet nonetheless radical work—it involves a process that centered people, healing, and structural change rather than symptomatic change. We trace that story from the Ferguson Commission's unlikely origins—the conditions those origins created for a diverse and atypical roster of commissioners, and the process they used to arrive at producing recommendations for structural change. We find the following:

• Process builds the infrastructure for change. The Ferguson Commission modeled public dialogue about race and systems, forged lasting relationships, extended an open invitation to the region, and developed tools that organizations continue to use today.
• Voluntary accountability has limits. The Ferguson Commission broke new ground by naming specific bodies responsible for each policy call to action, putting those entities on notice and creating public expectations that they would act. Some did. Many didn't. Without mechanisms to escalate from voluntary commitments to binding obligations, and without institutional, especially governmental, officials willing to create such mechanisms, implementation depended on good faith. Where that good faith was absent, change stalled.
• Those who benefit from the status quo resist changing it. Regional power brokers identified as accountable bodies largely failed to provide the coordinated leadership, sustained resources, or collective commitment that comparable governors' commissions have historically secured. Funders reverted to familiar practices. The corporate sector was repeatedly cited as misaligned or resistant. And some community partners, unable to sustain the uncomfortable and unglamorous long-term work of organizational transformation, drifted away.
• Systems-change work requires systems-level investment and shared accountability. Forward Through Ferguson emerged to maintain momentum but was expected to catalyze region-wide transformation without commensurate resources, formal authority, or institutional backing. The scale of work demanded one level of infrastructure; the region provided another: a reflection of deeper choices about where wealth flows and what work gets sustained support.
• Despite these obstacles, the Ferguson Commission produced real and lasting gains in policy, organizational capacity, and public narrative. That change was driven by Forward Through Ferguson and by the many individuals and organizations that took up or continued equity-oriented systems change work after the Ferguson Commission sunsetted.

The Ferguson Commission's story illustrates how systems change happens: not through linear policy implementation, but by creating the conditions—relationships, shared language, accountability structures, expanded capacity—under which change becomes possible. Understanding that arc holds lessons for any communities pursuing equity-oriented transformation.

How We Did It

This report draws on 25 interviews with Ferguson Commissioners, elected officials, nonprofit leaders, community organizers, and researchers central to the Ferguson Commission's work or the equity efforts that followed; community canvassing data from approximately 250 St. Louis residents about their concerns and hopes; and a review of policy, capacity, and narrative changes catalyzed by the Ferguson Commission over the past decade.