Anchor Institutions

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

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. [...]

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. [...]

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)

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.