Anchor Institutions

Leveraging the Power of Local Institutions

Research Director Steve Dubb’s Leveraging the Power of Local Institutions presentation at the American Independent Business Alliance’s 2014 Go Local, Grow Local conference is available.

How Communities Can Make the Most of Their Anchor Institutions

Ted Howard
Governing

In his guest column for Governing, Ted Howard makes the case for anchor engagement in low-income communities, targeted at measurable outcomes and results. Read the article

Roosevelt Institute Campus Network: Rethinking Communities

Tim Price
Roosevelt Institute

On January 13, 2014, the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network announced an intiative where student leaders on 21 campuses across the country will useThe Anchor Dashboard to evaluate and rank their educational institution's commitment to positive community impact. Learn more

Can Anchor Institutions Do More for their Neighborhoods?

Nathan Sterner
Maryland Morning

Ted Howard talks to WYPR about The Anchor Dashboard and how hospitals and universities can help lift up low-income communities. Listen now.

A Guide for Your Local Eds and Meds to Become Better Neighbors

Bill Bradley
Next City

Hospitals and universities hold a lot of sway in communities.They spend more than $1 trillion a year and employ 8 percent of the country’s labor force. But sometimes the success of so-called “eds and meds” can have an undesired effect: Gentrification and subsequent displacement.

The Anchor Dashboard — a new 40-page paper and not, sadly, an interactive dashboard with fun renderings — is trying to change that. Courtesy of the Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland, the paper identifies 12 areas where anchor institutions can be more effective at the neighborhood level, from business incubation to local hiring.

“If you don’t do this work right, it can lead to the kind of gentrification that can blow a community apart,” said Ted Howard, executive director of the Democracy Collaborative. [...]

Report Proposes Ways to Measure Colleges’ Impact on Communities

Andy Thomason
The Chronicle of Higher Education

Universities need better ways to measure their impact on surrounding communities, according to a new report.

“The Anchor Dashboard: Aligning Institutional Practice to Meet Low-Income Community Needs,” released on Tuesday by the Democracy Collaborative, a research center at the University of Maryland at College Park, seeks to provide the basis for such a methodology in the form of a broad set of goals for communities and indicators of progress toward those goals.

The report’s “dashboard” consists of 12 desired societal outcomes that “anchor” institutions like universities can work toward­, including affordable housing, educated young people, and a healthy environment. The report also offers specific ways to measure the progress being made toward each goal. For example, the amount of money an anchor institution spends on helping local residents file their income taxes can serve as an indicator for the goal of financially secure households.

Report Proposes Ways to Measure Colleges’ Impact on Communities

Andy Thomason
The Chronicle of Higher Education

Universities need better ways to measure their impact on surrounding communities, according to a new report.

“The Anchor Dashboard: Aligning Institutional Practice to Meet Low-Income Community Needs,” released on Tuesday by the Democracy Collaborative, a research center at the University of Maryland at College Park, seeks to provide the basis for such a methodology in the form of a broad set of goals for communities and indicators of progress toward those goals.

The report’s “dashboard” consists of 12 desired societal outcomes that “anchor” institutions like universities can work toward­, including affordable housing, educated young people, and a healthy environment. The report also offers specific ways to measure the progress being made toward each goal. For example, the amount of money an anchor institution spends on helping local residents file their income taxes can serve as an indicator for the goal of financially secure households. [...]

Smarter Philanthropy for Greater Impact: Rethinking How Grantmakers Support Scale

Kathleen P. Enright, Jeffrey Bradach, Abe Grindle, Katie Merrow, Patrick T. McCarthy, Michael Smith, Carla Javits, Daniel Cardinali, Dr. Robert K. Ross, Nancy Roob, Jane Wei-Skillern and Lori Bartczak
Grantmakers for Effective Philanthropy

A wide range of non-profit leaders, including Carla Javits of REDF, Michael Smith of the Social Innovation Fund, Patrick McCarthy of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and Dr. Robert Ross of the California Endowment discuss ways to scale impact in this Grantmakers for Effective Philanthropy report. Among the key findings for funders: provide flexible, long-term support; invest in capacity building; fund data collection and analysis; and support movements (and not just organizations)

The New Barnraising

Gareth Potts
German Marshall Fund of the United States

This new toolkit from the German Marshall Fund offers policies and practices to empower communities to preserve civic assets such as public parks, libraries, and recreation centers in the face of public and private resource constraints. Based on research conducted in Detroit, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Baltimore, the guide offers a range of strategies to raise money, awareness, and community involvement for the preservation of community assets.

Cleveland Clinic

As the largest employer in the region procuring more than $1.5 billion in goods and services on an annual basis, Cleveland Clinic has worked more consciously over the past several years to support its surrounding region.  For example, it has altered its purchasing to support local and minority vendors, spending more than 10 percent directly in Cleveland and 17 percent in NE Ohio in 2010.  Cleveland Clinic has also supported several neighborhood revitalization initiatives, including the Greater Circle Living program and Evergreen Cooperatives, and has increasingly worked closely with Fairfax Renaissance Development Corporation in the neighboring community.

University Hospitals (UH)

The second largest employer in Northeast Ohio with more than $800 million in purchasing, University Hospitals intentionally strives to leverage its economic impact to improve the local economy.  Its Vision 2010 initiative, which laid the foundation for a ground-breaking, citywide Community Benefits Agreement, set specific goals to procure from local, minority- and women-owned businesses and continues now to create new supplier capacity within the city.  Most recently, UH used its purchasing power to persuade a key supplier, Owen & Minors, to move its operations into Cleveland's urban core. UH has also been a key supporter of the Evergreen Cooperatives, investing more than $1 million in Evergreen's internal loan fund and through its efforts to direct procurement.

Cleveland Foundation

The oldest community foundation in the country, the Cleveland Foundation was established in 1914 to pool the charitable resources of Cleveland’s philanthropists into a permanent endowment for the betterment of the city.  The Cleveland Foundation currently has assets of $1.87 billion and has made over $1 billion in grants.  One of its priorities is the Greater University Circle Initiative, which has generated hundreds of millions of dollars of new investment in the community by leveraging the economic strength of the area’s large anchor institutions.  Through this initiative, the foundation played a key role in catalyzing the Evergreen Cooperatives.  Another unique program is Neighborhood Connections, which has made over 1,600 small grants totaling over $5 million since 2003 to support the ideas and projects of community residents.

Building Community Wealth: An Action Plan for Northwest Jacksonville

Steve Dubb and David Zuckerman

This report, prepared by the Democracy Collaborative and submitted to the City of Jacksonville, Florida, highlights key strategic opportunities to leverage existing assets to build wealth in a neighborhood facing concentrated poverty and disinvestment.

Working Together

David Coates
Lancashire Evening Post

Exective Director, Ted Howard, met with Preston City Council, Lancashire County Council, and top leadership from Lancashire’s anchor institutions to make the case that, by linking anchor institution procurement to cooperative development, Preston’s employee-owned businesses could thrive. 

Working Together

David Coates
Lancashire Evening Post

Exective Director, Ted Howard, met with Preston City Council, Lancashire County Council, and top leadership from Lancashire’s anchor institutions to make the case that, by linking anchor institution procurement to cooperative development, Preston’s employee-owned businesses could thrive. 

Building Community Wealth across the Pond

City in United Kingdom develops new Community Wealth Building Initiative

The broad appeal of the ‘Cleveland Model’ and of community wealth building in general is becoming evident in a growing number of communities around the country, and—increasingly—overseas as well. Read more about Building Community Wealth across the Pond...

Measuring Anchor Impact: Q&A with Ted Howard

Join us for a free ICIC webinar on June 5
So many anchors are now engaged in some sort of community and economic development locally. But how do they know if they are truly benefiting local residents? Having metrics and indicators to track the impact of their engagement is tremendously helpful in order to ensure that both the institution and the community are benefiting.