With an election year upon us, the pace of policymaking in Washington, D.C. will soon grind to a halt. As a Hill staffer, I used to joke that the pace of policymaking was inversely correlated with the renaming of U.S. post offices – so expect a new name on your local post office soon.
Stagnation in Washington is especially bad news for what my colleague Erica Price Burns has dubbed a “new breed” of philanthropists focused on driving “broad-based change” through a “blend” of approaches, including policy advocacy. The good news is that while federal policymaking hits pause, leaders at the local level are still working to tackle some of the nation’s most complex challenges, and the “new breed” of philanthropists are also partnering with cities.
Josh Elder, who leads grantmaking at Siegel Family Endowment, a relatively new philanthropy founded by computer science pioneer David Siegel, told me that “collaborating with local government can certainly present challenges, but it also presents one of the most powerful levers for change.”
Former Indianapolis mayor and Harvard professor Steve Goldsmith told me that “while the challenges faced by American cities are similar to national priorities – housing affordability, infrastructure, economic development – the root of these challenges is often hyper-local, which means the solutions aren’t always the same from one city to another.”
In his most recent book, Growing Fairly, Goldsmith explains how policymakers and businesses can build stronger and more inclusive economies. It’s an area where philanthropy can play a powerful role. As he put it to me: “One of the reasons that philanthropic partnerships are so impactful at the municipal level is that they can challenge the status quo and spark – or scale – solutions that bring community members to the table. Philanthropic capital is often the best way to take risks on the sort of cross-sector solutions required to address these grand challenges.”
Here in Denver, our new mayor is poised to be the beneficiary of such investments. As the former CEO of Gary Community Ventures, Mayor Johnston is no stranger to public-private partnership. In his prior role, he leveraged the power of business, policy and philanthropy to “increase opportunity for Colorado kids and their families,” spearheading investments to improve school readiness, youth success and family economic mobility.
As mayor, Johnston will no doubt tap the expertise of a vibrant, local philanthropic sector to address critical social and economic issues, including homelessness, housing affordability and public safety. His experience at the intersection of philanthropy and policy should also make Denver an attractive target for national donors looking to make an impact.
As Denver works to ensure that the benefits of economic growth are broad-based, it should pay close attention to what’s happening in the southeast – which is fast becoming an economic hotspot in the wake of COVID-era migration trends.
Atlanta is now the region’s largest economic hub and one of the nation’s fastest growing cities, but it is also grappling with the reality that nearly 20% of its residents live in poverty. Rather than take an outside-in approach, Siegel Family Endowment has cultivated partnerships with community leaders in Atlanta, putting “risk capital” to work through organizations like the Constellations Center for Equity in Computing at Georgia Tech, which is expanding access to computer science for students in underserved communities in order to “cultivate” a more inclusive “local talent pipeline.”
If it works, they’re hopeful that Atlanta’s story can help to prove that gentrification and economic growth don’t have to go hand-in-hand. Elder explained to me that Siegel Family Endowment “selected Atlanta as a partner because of its strong leadership, engaged nonprofit sector and the fact that its unique combination of diversity and a booming tech sector are critical ingredients of what we see as the future of inclusive economic growth.”
Siegel Family Endowment’s approach, which hinges on building trust and preserving autonomy, has earned respect among local stakeholders. A core component of their ground-up approach has been centered on facilitating deeper collaboration between school and city leaders, starting with the dedicated and engaged community of educators and families in the Douglass Cluster – a group of eight schools serving 5,000 students from households with an average income of $31,000 per year (well below the city average). The principles developed in the Douglass Cluster are now being used to identify opportunities and generate buy-in for city-wide investments across Atlanta’s education ecosystem.
A short drive down Interstate 20 in Birmingham, leaders are working to build an innovation economy rooted in the legacy of children who marched for equal rights 60 years ago — and won.
Mayor Randall Woodfin, a rising national star, campaigned on the importance of creating opportunity for the city’s high school students. Early in his administration, Woodfin launched Birmingham Promise, which aims to ensure that Birmingham City School students and alums have the support and resources they need to thrive after high school, whether that means attending college or pursuing other pathways and apprenticeships that lead to high-quality jobs.
He then “kicked” Promise out of the Mayor’s office, transforming the initiative into a nonprofit that will outlive the mayor’s time in office with backing from local corporate partners including Alabama Power, Regions Bank and Altec.
Woodfin also serves on the board of Prosper Birmingham, a unique nonprofit working to align investments and steward a collaborative civic agenda focused on inclusive job creation, job preparation and job access. It’s filling a gap by focusing on often-overlooked aspects of economic growth while playing a critical “intermediary” role for both national and local grantmakers.
“Birmingham’s business community is focused on inclusive economic growth because it knows that creating pathways to prosperity for everyone in the city makes us more attractive to major employers that want to call Alabama home, “ said JW Carpenter, Prosper’s president. “That means not just attracting new investment, but nurturing the vast pool of talent that we have to ensure we have the skills and human capital that will power our innovation economy.”
And in Birmingham, the innovation economy is booming. From the food scene (which includes a growing number of James Beard award winners) to the startup scene (Shipt was acquired by Target for $550 million) and one of the nation’s largest hospital systems, the energy is palpable. Birmingham is also home to Innovate Alabama, an initiative of Republican Governor Kay Ivey that is making investments to spur innovation and back startups throughout the state. Birmingham Talks, which aims to make the city America’s sandbox for innovation in early childhood education, is using “talk pedometers” to close literacy gaps for thousands of children. Prosper is also the driving force behind Operation: Backing Black Businesses, which is helping Black entrepreneurs across the region to source and acquire capital.
As for Denver, Mayor Johnston is just over three months into his first year on the job and has promised to house 1,000 Denverites by the holiday season. Residents – both housed and unhoused – are counting on the mayor to solve one of the greatest challenges facing the city in decades. Mayor Johnston will undoubtedly leverage his connections to and experience with philanthropy to bring solutions to this urban humanitarian crisis. There may be no other way to solve one of the greatest challenges facing the city and its residents. But if the experiences of cities like Atlanta and Birmingham provide any guide, partnership between civic leaders and philanthropies has the potential to transform lives in Denver — and to inspire other cities to leverage the power of philanthropic capital themselves.
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