Foundations to converge on Phila.
Deep pockets will be in Philadelphia next week. Representatives of more than 100 foundations with assets approaching $150 billion are gathering for the Funders' Network annual conference in Center City for three days.
Deep pockets will be in Philadelphia next week.
Representatives of more than 100 foundations with assets approaching $150 billion are gathering for the Funders' Network annual conference in Center City for three days.
The group focuses on environmental, social, and economic issues, and counts some of the nation's biggest foundations, such as the Ford Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, among its members.
The meeting, which on Friday had 301 people registered to attend, puts Philadelphia in the spotlight at a time when there is a growing "national curiosity about what is happening in Philadelphia," said Shawn McCaney, director of creative communities and national initiatives at Philadelphia's William Penn Foundation.
Of interest to the funders: The city's embrace of green infrastructure for dealing with storm water, the interaction of the rejuvenating neighborhoods spreading out from Center City with surrounding areas, and the development of public spaces such as Dilworth Park and Bartram's Mile in Southwest Philadelphia, McCaney and others said.
For William Penn, which is the largest foundation focused on the region, the conference also offers a chance to recruit help.
"We really are interested in attracting new nonlocal funding to replace the loss of large institutional funders here in the city," McCaney said, referring to the Pew Charitable Trusts' overall move to the national stage and the Annenberg Foundation's shift to California.
Attracting $5.4 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for an effort known as Reimagining the Civic Commons was an example of William Penn's leveraging its own $5 million grant plus $8 million from the city to pull in national money, McCaney said.
The civic commons project includes developments around the city designed to create more neighborhood interaction, such as the planned Reading Railroad Viaduct park and Lovett Library and Park in Mount Airy.
"That initiative is now being explored as possibly being replicated in six other cities," McCaney said.
That's a major trend. Today's foundations have little interest in giving away money unless it can be leveraged into something bigger or can be duplicated in other parts of the country.
"We're interested in good work, but we're interested in how good work spreads," said Phil Henderson, president of New York's Surdna Foundation, which funds efforts nationally to support environmental sustainability, local economies, and thriving cultural life.
Surdna has donated almost $6 million in Philadelphia in the last three years, Henderson said.
A Philadelphia example of leveraging what works is the Common Market, a tax-exempt distributor of produce and other products from local farmers to institutions, such as schools, hospitals, and universities as a way to rebuild local food systems.
Surdna has been a regular supporter of Common Market, which started operating in 2008, and is now helping the Philadelphia group expand its model to other cities.
First up is Atlanta, with April 4 targeted as the first delivery date, Common Market cofounder Tatiana Garcia-Granados said Friday. The group has three staffers in Atlanta, but Philadelphia's procurement manager has been helping build the farmers' network in Georgia.
"A big part of it is leaning on the expertise that we've developed here," Garcia-Granados said.
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