Scaling

Solutions II

A look at best practices in successful

public-philanthropic partnerships

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development | Office of Policy Development and Research

FOREWORD

FOREWORD

In 2012, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), jointly with the Council on Foundations (COF), created the Secretary’s Award for Public-Philanthropic Partnerships in order to raise awareness of the impactful partnerships between HUD grantees and foundations throughout the nation.

Since then, HUD and COF have recognized 60 public-philanthropic partnerships. The partnerships featured through the Secretary’s Award stand out for their measurable benefits to low- and moderate-income families.

The efforts have had a diverse set of benefits in the areas of employment, health, safety, education, sustainability, inclusivity and cultural opportunities, and housing access. By highlighting effective public-philanthropic partnerships, the Awards offer a set of best practices that can inform the development of other place-based programs and initiatives. In addition to the successful partnerships highlighted in this report, two key priorities of the Department also include the EnVision Center Demonstration and Opportunity Zones.

The EnVision Center Demonstration consists of four pil ars in order to provide communities with centralized hubs for support: Economic Empowerment; Educational Advancement; Health and Wel ness; and Character and Leadership. By reinforcing these core principles, HUD is helping to advance local solutions that put people first. The Economic Empowerment pillar provides government-assisted households with increased opportunities in order to achieve self-reliance. The Educational Advancement pil ar bolsters public-private partnerships in the education space. The Health and Wel ness pil ar is designed to improve health outcomes and increase access to better healthcare. Lastly, the Character and Leadership pil ar encourages citizens to become caring and responsible citizens by engaging with their communities through participation in volunteer and mentoring programs. EnVision Centers are opening their doors across the country to serve those most in need.

In order to stimulate economic growth in economical y distressed communities, Opportunity Zones were introduced in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Additional y, Executive Order 13853 established the White House Opportunity Revitalization Council (Council). Opportunity Zones are a key priority of HUD. As the Chair of the Council, which includes 17 Federal agencies and Federal-State partnerships, Secretary Ben Carson leads government-wide efforts to spur revitalization in America’s underserved communities. Currently, there are more than 8,700 economical y distressed areas that have been designated as Opportunity Zones, where tax incentives have been created to spur investment.

The Council engages with communities and residents, state and local officials, investors, entrepreneurs, philanthropic organizations, faith leaders, and more to bring about lasting, revitalizing investments in Opportunity Zones.

Scaling Solutions II features the recipients of the Secretary’s Award for Public-Philanthropic Partnerships over the past few years. This report showcases eight innovative partnerships between foundations and government that have been critical in transforming communities and improving the quality of life for low- and moderate-income residents across the country.

Seth D. Appleton

Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships

COntEnts

CONTENTS

Introduction ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1

The Gulf Coast Foundation �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 3

The San Francisco Foundation �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 5

City Alive Foundation ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 7

The Legacy Foundation �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������10

The Community Foundation of the New River Val ey ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 12

The Skillman Foundation ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 14

Seattle Foundation ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������16

The Greater Kanawha Val ey Foundation ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������18

Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships v

IntRODUCtIOn

INTRODUCTION

Published in 2016, Scaling Solutions provided a set of lessons learned from various philanthropies funded by the Sustainable Communities Initiative. It was designed to act as a guide for public, philanthropic, private, and nonprofit entities seeking effective partnerships in pursuit of a common goal. This fol ow-up publication, Scaling Solutions II, expands the scope beyond the Sustainable Communities Initiative and highlights partnerships that have received the Secretary’s Award for Public-Philanthropic Partnerships over the past few years.

“…the key to helping the vulnerable people and families we serve are the partnerships we have with the philanthropic community…creating opportunities in our communities can never be the job of just one sector—it has to be the public, private, nonprofit, and faith community working together.” (HUD Secretary Ben Carson)

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), in conjunction with the Council on Foundations (COF), has been awarding the Secretary’s Award annual y since 2012 (with the exception of 2015).

These awards are meant to recognize various partnerships that have developed as community strategies to increase the quality of life for low- and moderate-income residents across all American geographies—urban, suburban, and rural. Over the years, this award has given HUD many opportunities to celebrate the innovation and ambitious visions of cross-sector partnerships between philanthropic and public organizations.

One observation that comes out of these various partnerships is that there is no one single formula to produce a successful partnership. Instead, the focus should be to develop a partnership that is unique to the community it will serve and to use tools and resources in a sustainable and effective manner. These partnerships share the goal of making the world a better place, but they work toward that goal in ways that are most effective for their own communities.

While they vary in program lengths, goals, approaches, scopes, and geography, there are certain elements that hold true: relationship building with communities and stakeholders, targeted approaches, and community empowerment stand out in particular. These elements have produced successful partnerships and projects that were able to thrive.

“…to deliver tangible, measurable, and lasting results, all the philanthropic groups, nonprofit organizations, and federal and state agencies…must align and combine resources, share best practices, and closely coordinate action.” (HUD Secretary Ben Carson) Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships 1

IntRODUCtIOn

Scaling Solutions II, like Scaling Solutions, starts from the recognition that philanthropy goes beyond grantmaking, as demonstrated in the partnerships and networks described in the fol owing pages.

Scaling Solutions II highlights how philanthropic organizations can utilize their knowledge and network to partner communities with experts and ideas they might not have access to otherwise.

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Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships

tHE GULF COAst FOUnDAtIOn

THE GULF COAST FOUNDATION

The Gulf Coast Foundation won the Secretary’s

Award for Public-Philanthropic Partnerships

in 2014. It is a philanthropic organization

that has been doing work in Florida’s Sarasota and

De Soto Counties since 1995. The Feeding Hungry

Families Initiative was started in 2014 by the Gulf

Coast Foundation. It has continued since then through

partnerships with schools, libraries, food banks, and

local public entities including county and municipal

government and hospitals.

The Gulf Coast Foundation uses an entrepreneurial

“col ective impact” strategy when deciding how to develop their projects. That is to say, they seek out large community issues as opposed to sitting back and waiting for people to write grants. Feeding Hungry Families, which is the initiative for which they received the Secretary’s Award, was a product of this. The Board of Directors learned that a majority of children in Sarasota County were receiving free or reduced-price lunch.

They were shocked that so many children in their community were in such a vulnerable position.

Another inflection point in the foundation’s early work was a 2014 study they commissioned about food insecurity among schoolchildren in Sarasota and DeSoto Counties. The study found that a large number of children in both counties were experiencing “food insecurity without hunger.” That is, they had regular concerns about having enough food. Recognizing the scale of the problem, the foundation decided to work on improving the distribution of healthy, nutritious food to children in need in their region. This began with some fact-finding about food deserts and early engagement with the All Faiths Food Bank. Looking further into the issue, the foundation’s Board found that the need was even greater over the summer, when kids weren’t receiving meals at school.

Having found a point of focus in the need for summer meals, the foundation soon became frustrated with the rules that governed how the federal y subsidized meals were distributed during the summer. The U.S.

Department of Agriculture (USDA) has rules in place that limit where and how the meals can be distributed and require the kids to eat most of the food on site. In order to improve the distribution, the foundation decided to develop their own network using public partners and private donations. This program is the Campaign Against Summer Hunger (CASH) initiative, referred to as CASH and Cans. CASH has been able to raise just over $1

mil ion a year, serves 34,000 kids, and, unlike the USDA-sponsored programs, al ows and even encourages children to take the food home and share it.

Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships 3

tHE GULF COAst FOUnDAtIOn

The fundraising model used by the foundation for CASH differed from the usual strategy. Rather than getting high-dol ar amounts from a relatively small number of individuals, Gulf Coast put a cap on the dol ar amount that any individual could give. Previous campaigns had become dependent on a few individuals writing big checks. This became unsustainable, since those sources could quickly disappear for a variety of reasons.

For CASH, no individual could donate more than $25,000 in each round of the campaign. Even with this limit in place, the foundation was able to raise about $650,000 annual y from their investors group. Outreach by community partners brought in a match to this amount, raised from individuals contributing $25 or less.

This outreach also increased awareness of the campaign.

Because the initiative was new, the first year functioned more as an awareness campaign than an actual

fundraising campaign. The outreach by their community

partners was important to get it off the ground and to

increase awareness. Without those partnerships, the

initiative’s success would have been much more limited.

These partnerships included working with the dozens of

agencies that work as distribution points for the All Faiths Food Bank. The foundation also put into place standards of cleanliness and improved the refrigeration facilities, which made the partnerships even more effective.

The foundation began the initiative working with smal community organizations, although problems with inconsistency filtered out some early strategies and partnerships. The first year of the initiative was difficult.

Without community awareness and strong relationships with partners, there was very low turnout. This was a valuable lesson for the foundation. They switched gears and ended up becoming engaged with the local government through partnerships with libraries and parks. Libraries and parks became their most prominent and important partners largely because of their reliability. They consistently produced programming that resulted in a reliable attendance so that they could provide reliable meals.

One of the more eye-catching elements of the initiative is the Sprout Mobile Market, a van that travels across Sarasota County to fill the gaps in the region’s many food deserts. Bringing fresh produce is only part of the Sprout van’s mission; it also provides a physical platform for food preparation and cooking classes. The foundation is also supporting community gardens in the region by using Sprout to deliver water to gardens that are lacking it. These gardens give the children who work in them the chance to eat food that they’ve grown.

The Feeding Hungry Families Initiative has proven to be a success for several years in a row and highlights how effective, thoughtful partnerships among philanthropies, public institutions, and community leaders can transform how services are provided. Thanks to the work of the Gulf Coast Foundation and its partners, thousands of children are receiving meals year-round, communities have increased knowledge of and access to healthy foods, and institutions like libraries and parks are centers of community engagement.

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Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships

tHE sAn FRAnCIsCO FOUnDAtIOn

THE SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATION

The San Francisco Foundation won the

Secretary’s Award for Public-Philanthropic

Partnerships in 2014 for its HOPE SF project.

HOPE SF is composed of the San Francisco Foundation

(SFF), Enterprise Community Partners, and the City and

County of San Francisco. SFF houses the partnership

and has taken on the civic leadership of the project, as it has lasted through several mayoral administrations.

The Mayor’s Office leads the overall design and vision

of HOPE SF while Enterprise Community Partners

brings national best practices around housing

affordability and mixed-income inclusion.

At a superficial level, HOPE SF has a similarity to HOPE

VI and the Rental Assistance Demonstration program (RAD) in that it is replacing distressed public housing with higher quality buildings. However, HOPE SF shifts the focus away from the physical properties and onto the households living in them. This shift is expressed in the initiative’s three main goals: replace obsolete public housing with mixed-income developments; improve social and economic outcomes for existing public housing residents; and create neighborhoods desirable to low- and middle-income families alike. There is an additional cross-cutting goal of “generating the systems change necessary to promote and sustain the desired outcomes.” This sets HOPE SF apart from previous redevelopment programs that focused on building new housing rather than finding ways to address deeper social issues. A central concern to HOPE SF is to avoid displacement and empower residents; HOPE VI has been criticized for resulting in fewer public housing units and causing the displacement of families.

Planning began in 2005 to redevelop five public housing developments in the city: Hunters View, Alice Griffith, Potrero Terrace, Potrero Annex, and Sunnydale-Velasco, which have a total of 1,904 units. The quality of the housing is very poor; much of it was built in the 1950s to early 1960s and was not meant to last as long as it has. Then-Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Board of Supervisors authorized a $95 mil ion bond to support the effort to redevelop the housing in 2006, and the late Mayor Ed Lee expanded the city’s engagement by hiring a director and staff to run the initiative from the mayor’s office. The current governance structure involves several committees composed of agency staff and leadership, community members, and other stakeholders.

HOPE SF was created in 2010 to engage the philanthropic sector in achieving HOPE SF’s goals. The partnership’s philanthropic participants have since grown to play essential roles. The San Francisco Foundation houses the partnership, provides administrative support, and acts as the civic leader, while Enterprise Community Partners bring a considerable range of expertise: providing technical support to developers and property managers, creating and maintaining affordability, and placemaking and attracting anchor institutions.

Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships 5

tHE sAn FRAnsICsO FOUnDAtIOn

As of late 2017, the project has seen great successes and very positive outcomes for the families. Two of the four sites have been finished, with all the original families now living in new homes. The successes go beyond rehousing. The initiative has so far had a 90 percent retention rate for families in the redeveloped developments; the median income for the rehoused families has increased; and chronic absenteeism levels for school attendance have dropped from 53 percent in 2011 to 27 percent in 2016.

Two programs that demonstrate HOPE SF’s deeper

commitment to resident empowerment are the Resident

Leadership Academy and the HOPE SF Summer

Achiever program. The Leadership Academy helps

adults build their leadership and professional skil s.

Many of the program’s graduates have gone on to enroll

in and complete professional certification programs.

Some residents who participated in the Academy also

participated in the Peer Health Leadership program and

became community health workers in the pilot health

and wel ness center in the Sunnydale community.

The Summer Achiever program is designed to help residents in the four HOPE SF communities overcome the disparity between their opportunities and those elsewhere in the city. It provides youth between the ages of 13 and 24 with leadership development and skill building; team building and network building; coaching and mentoring; and access and exposure to a network of educational, professional, and social supports.

The problems that HOPE SF seeks to solve are myriad and complex in nature, produced by generations of disinvestment and isolation from the city and the services it provides. In a report published in 2017, the initiative shared the major lessons they have learned through the HOPE SF process. Most of them address the structural issues that have kept the communities isolated from the rest of the city. The solutions presented by HOPE SF

include building trust and community leadership, using that leadership to create community transformation, and maintaining the strong cross-sector col aboration that has made HOPE SF successful. It is a strong example of how public-philanthropic partnerships can catalyze change in underserved communities.

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Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships

CItY ALIVE FOUnDAtIOn

CITY ALIVE FOUNDATION

A recipient of the Secretary’s Award in 2017,

City Alive is a cross-sector col aboration in

Albuquerque, New Mexico, that is funded

by the Living Cities Integration Initiative program.

Living Cities has been in the community development

space since 1991, starting as the National Community

Development Initiative and becoming Living Cities in

2007. The Integration Initiative was started in 2010 across five cities: Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Newark, and Minneapolis-St. Paul. Albuquerque was included in the

second wave of cities in 2014, alongside New Orleans,

San Antonio, San Francisco, and Seattle/King County.

New Mexico and Albuquerque both tend to fall relatively low on many measures of economic and social wel -being. The Integration Initiative was created to produce

“system-level” change in local policy environments through cross-sector col aboration. In the case of Albuquerque, the Initiative’s support was used to create a “col ective impact initiative” through a partnership that includes public institutions, philanthropic organizations, and the business, education, and nonprofit sectors.

Through the collective impact initiative, City Alive, these organizations and their leaders collaborate to ensure that al hard-working entrepreneurs in Albuquerque—regardless of race, income, or background—have the support and resources they need to turn good ideas into businesses that succeed.

The overall mission of the col aboration is to close the gap in business ownership and leadership with a focus on people of color. The col aborating organizations do this through several avenues of action. One way is by working to increase the availability of and access to both high-quality business development opportunities and the capital required to start and grow businesses. Another way is to foster up-and-coming entrepreneurs by growing opportunities for talent and skil development in both traditional and nontraditional tracks.

The partnership has also made a commitment to building Albuquerque’s economy from the ground up. This is done by buying local and supporting homegrown businesses as the default institutional practice throughout the city. Complementarily, the partnership supports the advancement of Albuquerque’s infrastructure to connect people and places in new and impactful ways, making sure that the city’s communities along with its businesses experience the benefits of development.

City Alive was not the first col aborative project in Albuquerque. The others that preceded it helped prime the policy environment for such a large-scale initiative. ABQ Heading Home was another public-philanthropic initiative that brought together city government and local nonprofits to address homelessness for individuals who have been chronical y homeless and are medical y vulnerable. Another col aborative project, Mission Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships 7

CItY ALIVE FOUnDAtIOn

Graduate, brought together public and private

organizations to increase the graduation rates.

Both of these proved successful and showed that

collaborative efforts were beneficial.

City Alive owes at least part of its existence to

an original steering table made up of the City of

Albuquerque, University of New Mexico (UNM),

and Nusenda Credit Union, institutions that have

become more intentional y engaged in the economic

fate of New Mexico in the years after the Great

Recession. In 2012, UNM published a report cal ed

“Expanding UNM’s Role in Economic Development,” which laid out the ways in which UNM could leverage its own resources to help pull New Mexico’s economy back on track. This included supporting an innovation initiative, using UNM’s institutional resources to secure patents, pushing for in-state procurement of various supplies, and developing a curriculum to educate others about how to support a more entrepreneurial economy.

One manifestation of UNM, Nusenda Credit Union, and the City of Albuquerque’s col aboration is the creation of an “innovation district” in downtown Albuquerque.

The first phase of this project included the construction of the Rainforest Building, which houses offices for several technology developers, including the Air Force Research Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and STC.UNM, UNM’s technology-transfer and economic development organization. The building also has housing for UNM students and two floors that are leased by the Navajo Nation to give Navajo students a “cultural y sustaining” residential space while they are in school.

The Rainforest Building also houses the Innovation Academy, which gives UNM students the opportunity to pursue entrepreneurial goals while in school. Students living in the Rainforest Building have a remarkable amount of access to resources that support technological entrepreneurship, including support in their entrepreneurship from the university and exposure to organizations and individuals that can help move their ideas to the next level.

On the other end of the spectrum of City Alive’s support for entrepreneurs is the support provided to local businesses. Some of the support for the entrepreneurs listed above has come from Co-op Capital. Co-op Capital is a “relationship-based micro-lending” program. Organizations identify individuals or small businesses that they want to support and use a deposit account at Nusenda Credit Union to sponsor the loan. Nusenda in turn takes care of the origination, the servicing, and all the reporting. This model of lending al ows organizations to identify and support lower income entrepreneurs in Albuquerque’s communities who would otherwise have a difficult time accessing capital.

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Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships

CItY ALIVE FOUnDAtIOn

These are only two examples of how City Alive has pursued its mission. Taken as a whole, the City Alive initiative can be seen as an effective col aboration between the public sector resources of the City, the County, and the University and the private civic institutions like Nusenda, the National Laboratories, and the other local and national businesses and nonprofits that have become engaged in the initiative. City Alive has helped Albuquerque take advantage of its own internal resources and encourage economic development on its own terms.

Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships 9

tHE LEGACY FOUnDAtIOn

THE LEGACY FOUNDATION

The Legacy Foundation is a community foundation for Lake County, Indiana. The foundation awards grants to nonprofit organizations, presents scholarships, and leads community initiatives. In 2014, the Legacy Foundation’s Neighborhood Spotlight Initiative won the Secretary’s Award for Public-Philanthropic Partnerships.

The Neighborhood Spotlight Initiative is a place-based initiative for reinvesting in communities. The initiative provides a framework for capacity building, planning, and implementing community development. The idea for the initiative came about when the city of Gary, Indiana began the Strong City, Strong Community Initiative (SC2). The Legacy Foundation sought more engagement with residents and businesses in the community to better leverage their resources and looked at the community-engagement approaches of other organizations in the cities of Chicago and Indianapolis. The Legacy Foundation met with the SC2 team in Gary and began working in tandem with SC2 to develop a ground-up approach to engage residents, build up a base of volunteers, and engage the community.

The Legacy Foundation partnered with Prosperity Indiana, a statewide membership organization for community development, to develop technical training and design a collective impact model. The training focused on leadership, networking, and mobilizing people to create change. They offered training to many neighborhood groups interested in the Neighborhood Spotlight Initiative. After the year-long training, the foundation invited the neighborhood groups to apply for the initiative. The foundation selected two neighborhoods to participate during the first year and another two neighborhoods the following year. Once selected, the neighborhood groups received further training and developed surveys for their neighborhood outreach. They began their outreach and conducted hundreds of one-on-one interviews within their respective communities. They received a lot of quality feedback from their outreach about what was important to these Lake County communities.

The Neighborhood Spotlight Initiative brought

residents together and empowered them to take

ownership of their respective communities. The

resident-led initiatives varied in each neighborhood

according to its respective community feedback.

Through the initiatives, residents created networks

and action groups, developed community gardens,

advocated and created a kayak launch with weekly

sunset paddles, and held a variety of events for youth

in the community. They began First Fridays, which

are community events featuring small businesses,

local artists, farmers markets, and so forth.

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Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships

tHE LEGACY FOUnDAtIOn

The Neighborhood Spotlight Initiative gave a voice to residents in their respective communities, opening up a dialog with the public sector. In Gary, the spotlight neighborhoods met quarterly with the mayor to identify pressing issues in the local neighborhoods. One issue was il egal dumping in the area, and in response to the neighborhood group advocating to the mayor, the city posted more signage to discourage illegal dumping.

The spotlight neighborhoods in Gary would also organize community cleanups, often including artists to paint murals.

While the initiative gave voice to Lake County residents, the lack of community development organizations was a hurdle for the initiative. There simply are not many community development organizations in Lake County to implement many of the ideas birthed out of the Neighborhood Spotlight Initiative. In response to this barrier, Legacy Foundation is launching a community development corporation that can focus on community

development in Lake County neighborhoods.

Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships 11

tHE COMMUnItY FOUnDAtIOn OF tHE nEW RIVER VALLEY

THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION

OF THE NEW RIVER VALLEY

The Community Foundation of the New River

Val ey is located in Christiansburg, Virginia, in

Montgomery County and provides services to the

counties of Floyd, Giles, Montgomery, and Pulaski, as well as the city of Radford, Virginia. The New River Val ey is a rural region with some centers around higher education, including Virginia Tech, Radford University, and New

River Val ey Community Col ege. In 2016, the Community

Foundation of the New River Val ey won the Secretary’s

Award for Public-Philanthropic Partnerships for its work with the Aging in Place partnership, which formed during the New River Val ey Livability Initiative.

The New River Val ey Livability Initiative was a 3-year regional planning initiative funded through the Federal Partnership for Sustainable Communities, and the Community Foundation was a core partner of the initiative.

A demographic analysis was conducted as part of the Livability initiative, and the data revealed the doubling of the older adult population in less than 20 years. This significant finding led to the creation of the Aging in Place Leadership Team, which comprises representatives from AARP, the New River Val ey Area Agency on Aging, Floyd County, Habitat for Humanity, Virginia Department of Rehabilitative Services, New River Val ey Home Consortium, the New River Val ey Regional Commission, the Town of Blacksburg, and the Community Foundation of the New River Val ey, among others. The Aging in Place Leadership Team has now met monthly since 2012 to help implement the series of strategies to improve opportunities to age in place for the New River Val ey Region identified during the Livability Initiative. These strategies are outlined in the Home Matters report and an aging-in-place

workplan that included the

Lifespan Friendly Homes

Program, the New River Val ey

TimeBank, and an aging-

in-place workbook, “Aging

in Place: Your Home, Your

Community, Your Choice.”

The Lifespan Friendly Homes

Program provided home

accessibility, safety, and

energy modifications to low-

income adults—these are

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Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships

tHE COMMUnItY FOUnDAtIOn OF tHE nEW RIVER VALLEY

priority needs in the region. The program provided the modifications for 24 low-income adults—12 in the Town of Blacksburg and 12 in the surrounding New River Val ey area—at an average cost of $5,000. The program was funded by the Community Foundation of the New River Val ey and Funders Network’s Partner for Places program. The 2-year pilot program had the short-term goal of increasing participants’ ability to age in place and the long-term goal of determining how to implement a sustainable aging-in-place program.

The pilot program revealed larger issues with establishing a sustained program over the long term. One issue was that the homes of some applicants were in disrepair beyond that which could be fixed through the modifications provided by the program. Many applicants put off home maintenance and repair for more immediate needs like food and healthcare. Deferring home maintenance eventual y caused more structural and systematic damages to the homes, so much so that they could not have their home modified through the program.

Long-term funding for the program also proves chal enging in rural areas. The Town of Blacksburg is able to receive Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding directly from HUD to help carry out the home modifications. However, in the more rural areas of the New River Val ey, CDBG funding is authorized by the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, which does not al ow the CDBG funds to be used for home modifications and energy upgrades.

Other initiatives include the New River Val ey TimeBank, which provides an online platform for exchanging volunteer services within the community. In rural areas, people do not often have access to the financial resources to make home repairs or receive other kinds of assistance. The TimeBank provides a platform for people of all ages to exchange services that they otherwise would not get. The TimeBank also started offering wildly popular semiannual repair cafes with the New River Val ey Habitat for Humanity, which al ow people to bring in things that need repair in order to make them functional again.

The most recent effort of the Aging in Place Leadership Team is the creation of an aging-in-place workbook, “Aging in Place: Your Home, Your Community, Your Choice.” The workbook is a useful tool to assist older adults to age at home and in their community.

It includes chapters on personal finance, health and wel ness, housing, transportation, and connection and growth. They are also currently making a “train the trainers” guide along with videos to be used by other groups interested in facilitating discussion on these topics, whether an interested neighborhood, community, church group, or other human, health, or social service professionals.

The workbook is available through a guided process online or available for print.

Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships 13

tHE sKILLMAn FOUnDAtIOn

THE SKILLMAN FOUNDATION

The Skilman Foundation has been a champion for children since the 1960s, working to expand equitable opportunity for Detroit children to ensure their wel -being and prosperity. In 2017, the Skil man Foundation won the Secretary’s Award for Public-Private Partnerships for its work with the program Grow Detroit’s Young Talent (GDYT).

The Skil man Foundation began working to create youth

employment opportunities in Detroit after hearing the city’s youth express that they had few job opportunities to obtain or aspire to. The foundation started with a small pilot to create 300 summer jobs in 2008. In an effort to grow this program, the foundation established a youth development consortium to access available federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dol ars, then provided early support to establish a citywide public-private partnership, and, as a result, GDYT was launched in 2014.

GDYT is a 6-week summer youth-employment program that combines work readiness training with on-the-job experience designed to prepare youth ages 14 to 24 years old for the workforce. In addition to leveraging traditional and social media, youth are recruited through local schools, community organizations, and the City of Detroit’s workforce development system. Applicants are matched with employers based on interest, ability, and accessibility. The employers can interview candidates or have GDYT Youth Specialists manage the placement process. Before entering the workplace, youth are prepared with at least 24 hours of work readiness training. Once youth begin employment, they are assigned a GDYT Youth Specialist to help them succeed in the workplace.

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Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships

tHE sKILLMAn FOUnDAtIOn

Since its inception, GDYT has placed over 30,000 youth in summer jobs. The program is currently able to provide around 8,000 jobs to the city’s youth each summer.

With the continued partnership of the Skil man Foundation and other philanthropic organizations, GDYT

has been able to add a career and academics component to its program. This new addition al ows young people to tie their academic work to future careers. Moreover, in addition to continuing to expand summer employment opportunities, the Skil man Foundation and its partners have set out to secure year-round jobs for young Detroiters.

Overal , the GDYT initiative has been successful because philanthropy was initial y supporting a body of work that was grounded in what was heard in the community. In addition, the deep buy-in from a number of partners from multiple sectors and a mayor who champions the work al ow GDYT to continue to thrive.

Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships 15

sEAttLE FOUnDAtIOn

SEATTLE FOUNDATION

Seattle Foundation has been working with local philanthropists since 1946. Today, the community foundation has over $1 bil ion in charitable assets and awards more than $100 mil ion in grants annual y to nonprofit organizations that are dedicated to making the greater Seattle area a stronger community.

Seattle and the surrounding regions have seen tremendous growth and prosperity in recent years and as a result have experienced chal enges that include the growing disparity between the rich and the poor. In order to address those challenges, Seattle Foundation teamed up with King County to specifical y address inequities in health, social, racial, and economic outcomes.

Seattle Foundation won the 2016 Secretary’s Award for Public-Philanthropic Partnerships for creating a framework that would engage other cross-sector partners, intermediaries, and investors into a col ective impact approach. The effort focused on place-based solutions and policy/system change solutions in partnership with affected communities. It was important that community partners had key roles in shaping and owning solutions.

This partnership resulted in Communities of Opportunity (COO), a network of residents, communities, decisionmakers, government, and funders who are dedicated to eliminating racial, health, and economic disparities.

Since its inception, COO partners have focused on preserving and developing affordable housing that is in close proximity to transit, jobs, and education; creating access to healthy, affordable food; developing the workforce to include local hires and expand job opportunities for young people; and increasing civic participation and cultural preservation.

Recently, COO built on early momentum to ensure

policies support community priorities and needs by

bringing together a group of grantees to develop a

policy change agenda. Participating organizations

came together to identify regional policy and system

shifts needed to advance equity in the region

and dismantle persistent racial injustice from the

perspective of the 50 participating community-based

organizations.

COO investments have also funded the Yesler

Community Col aborative (YCC), a network of

neighborhood-level organizations that advocate

for equitable development to preserve cultural and

economic diversity and affordable housing in one of

Seattle’s most diverse communities. YCC convened

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Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships

sEAttLE FOUnDAtIOn

community groups with developers to redevelop a

large block in the heart of the city’s historic African-American neighborhood with community needs and

cultural connections at the forefront. It includes a plan to build 120 apartment units for low-income residents.

YCC also developed a new neighborhood preference

policy to make new affordable housing units more

accessible to people who have been displaced from

their communities due to rising gentrification.

In addition to the policy change agenda, Communities

of Opportunity is also building a learning community

for groups and organizations to col aborate, share

their work, and gain additional skil s to advance

impact across the region.

Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships 17

tHE GREAtER KAnAWHA VALLEY FOUnDAtIOn

THE GREATER KANAWHA

VALLEY FOUNDATION

The Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation (GKVF)

in Charleston, West Virginia, is the largest

community foundation in West Virginia and

the largest in the central Appalachia region. The

foundation serves six counties through its discretionary grants and the whole state through its scholarship

program. Charleston, the capital, is the largest city

in the state, with roughly 47,000 people. In 2016, the

Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation’s “Investing in Our

Communities Initiative” was a recipient of the Secretary’s Award for Public-Philanthropic Partnerships.

In 2014, the foundation conducted a series of

stakeholder meetings and informal listening campaigns in each of its six counties in order to understand how to better serve the communities. While foundation staff and volunteers received a lot of good feedback, they wanted to take a more comprehensive approach to understanding the needs of Charleston’s West Side and partnered with the Kanawha Institute for Social Research and Action (KISRA) to design a needs assessment utilizing a survey and focus group discussions in this neighborhood. The survey gave the foundation a better idea of how they could help address the issues facing the West Side community, which is home to many low-income families. Based on the community responses from the survey and focus group discussions, the foundation focused its efforts on health, education, housing, and civic engagement.

The initiative launched three projects to help improve the neighborhood: Project West Invest, which incentivized law enforcement officers to move into the community; Second Avenue Community Center Restoration, which helped to restore a community anchor in the neighborhood; and the Handle with Care Mentorship program, in which law enforcement notifies the neighborhood elementary school—Mary C. Snow Elementary—if they are cal ed to a student’s home and then enroll the student, if interested, in the mentorship program.

Project West Invest was modeled after HUD’s Good Neighbor Next Door program. Project West Invest came about from a dialog between the foundation, the local police force, and the Charleston Urban Renewal Authority (CURA). Through Project West Invest, CURA and the foundation offer forgivable loans to police officers for purchasing homes on the West Side with the requirement that they live in the neighborhood for 10 years.

The project later expanded to offer up to $2,500 for exterior renovations to current homeowners. The police department partnered with the Mount Olive Correctional Complex to employ previously incarcerated individuals for the renovations as a means of workforce development. Now, multiple officers are living in the neighborhood, and the project is working to expand to include teachers.

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Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships

tHE GREAtER KAnAWHA VALLEY FOUnDAtIOn

The Second Avenue Center (Paul Dunbar Center) is a community anchor on the West Side of Charleston, providing services for seniors, an afterschool program for Mary C. Snow Elementary School students, and a summer basketball program. The Second Avenue Community Center had a leaking roof, and the foundation worked with CURA to repair the roof. The newly repaired community center continues to serve the neighborhood with a number of community activities. Since these renovations, a local church has taken an active interest in the center and provides tutoring on site, as well as other services.

Through the Handle with Care Mentorship program, which was piloted on Charleston’s West Side and is now growing national y, police officers notify the Mary C. Snow Elementary School whenever law enforcement encounters a student when answering a cal . To build upon its success, the Kanawha Val ey Council on Philanthropy, a consortium of local funders who pool their resources to support col aborative projects, supported a mentorship program that targets students who have experienced law enforcement’s interventions in their homes. By providing a mentorship program that pairs police officers with students, children who don’t always see law enforcement in a positive light have an opportunity to build constructive relationships with them. Lastly, in response to the increased communication between school administration, teachers, and the school nurse and the police department, the local legal aid office identified a need for onsite legal services. As a result, the school piloted the Lawyer in the School program, which ensures that an attorney is available 2 days a week at the school for parents to get legal advice. Through the Lawyer in the School program, more than 150

families have been provided with legal advice from pro bono attorneys and legal aid staff. Often the lawyers help caretakers obtain guardianship of the children in their homes, sometimes they prevent unfair evictions, and in other instances they help a family member retain employment. By stabilizing families, this program helps to increase students’ school attendance and decrease their behavioral incidents. Piloted on the West Side at Mary C. Snow Elementary, this program is growing statewide and has been recognized as a national model by the Legal Services Corporation.

The Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation’s

original commitment to the West Side

“Investing in Our Communities” initiative was

for 3 years; however, in December 2018, the

foundation’s Board of Trustees decided to

extend its commitment for another 3 years.

Through its West Side 2.0 initiative, the

foundation will focus on community economic

development projects that support workforce

development, placemaking, and the economic

stability of residence.

Scaling Solutions II: A look at best practices in successful public-philanthropic partnerships 19

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Policy Development and Research

Washington, DC 20410-6000

January 2020

Document Outline

- Introduction

- The Gulf Coast Foundation

- The San Francisco Foundation

- City Alive Foundation

- The Legacy Foundation

- The Community Foundation of the New River Valley

- The Skillman Foundation

- Seattle Foundation

- The Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Gulf Coast Foundation

The San Francisco Foundation

City Alive Foundation

The Legacy Foundation

The Community Foundation of the New River Valley

The Skillman Foundation

Seattle Foundation

The Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation