Dear Colleague,
Welcome to our July www.Community-Wealth.org newsletter. We celebrate the 237th anniversary of the American Revolution with a number of new developments:
- Mark your calendars for July 19 at 1pm when The Democracy Collaborative and the Responsible Endowments Coalition (REC) host a webinar presenting the findings of our jointly published report Raising Student Voices: Student Action for University Community Investment. This study explores how students, faculty, community organizations and college administrators can work together to help ensure institutional investment policies benefit the communities in which America’s colleges are based. RSVP for the webinar by contacting Annie McShiras at REC. We hope that you will be able to join us.
- In May, I had the privilege of speaking at a St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank event, entitled “Exploring Innovation in Community Development,” which was simultaneously webcast in four cities and broadcast nationally via streaming video. Speaking from the Memphis branch, my presentation focused on how community wealth building offers a new paradigm for sustainable economic development and included examples of best practices from across the country.
- In June, we continued our work to help expand the conversation on how hospitals as anchor institutions can improve the physical and economic health of their communities. On June 17 and 18, I spoke as part of an industry forum organized by Emerald Cities and hosted by The California Endowment, entitled “Leveraging the Power of Health Institutions to Build Community Wealth.” On June 27, research associate David Zuckerman keynoted a workshop at the Connecticut Hospital Association on the opportunities for advancing an anchor mission created by the new Affordable Care Act requirements. For the first time, nonprofit hospitals have to assess and implement strategies to address the health needs for their surrounding communities.
- Democracy Collaborative co-founder Gar Alperovitz continues his book tour for What Then Must We Do?. On June 18, Gar was interviewed by David Brancaccio on NPR's Marketplace Morning Report. Later that week on June 20, Leonard Lopate of WNYC — the New York City NPR affiliate — interviewed Gar. His work was also highlighted in Think Progress and on Shareable.
As always, we have added new links, articles, reports and other materials to the site. Look for this symbol *NEW* to find the most recent additions.
Ted Howard
Executive Director, The Democracy Collaborative
CW Interview: Kate Sofis
This month we interview Kate Sofis, founding Executive Director of SFMade, a non-profit organization launched in 2010 to support the building of a local manufacturing base in San Francisco. By building strong local manufacturing companies, SFMade aims to sustain and create job opportunities for the City’s low-income communities and individuals with less typical education, experience, or skills. In this interview, Sofis discusses key elements that make SFMade’s approach unique, the state of manufacturing in San Francisco and the challenges of working with the manufacturing sector, overlaps with environmental sustainability and cooperative models, and whether and how this model could be adopted in Rust Belt cities. Read More»