To support an improved Public Transit Network by conducting a comprehensive, modern route analysis/transit study. MAP 4.3.
Program Area: Communities
To strengthen civic leadership by continuing Knight support of the K880 Emerging City Champions, a program that supports, networks and funds 20 young people as they execute projects to strengthen public life in Knight communities.
Saturday, Knight Foundation announced $3.28 million in new support to Fairmount Conservancy to support a citywide civic engagement strategy that will allow residents to shape activities in Philadelphia’s public spaces.
It’s an essential time for communities to invest in places and spaces that bring us together. A neighborhood public library, park or recreation center are often the places where strangers come together, where we learn about each other, and where neighbors and local decision-makers meet to create a better community. Recent research by the Center for Active Design validates that public spaces can help to facilitate community connection, trust and involvement.
We have seen this first hand in Philadelphia as the pilot city for Reimagining the Civic Commons. Launched in 2015 with support from Knight Foundation and William Penn Foundation, the initiative focuses on connecting five neighborhood spaces as a way to foster connections between residents and create greater civic engagement.
Two years later, Reimagining the Civic Commons has supported local leaders around the five model projects to take risks, scale new ideas and share learning through a growing network of nonprofit, public and community partners. This effort helped serve as inspiration for the City of Philadelphia’s Rebuild initiative, which plans to invest $500 million in capital improvement of parks, recreation centers and libraries. In addition, in 2016 a group of foundations – including The JPB Foundation, Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation – expanded Reimagining the Civic Commons to four other cities, including two Knight cities, Detroit and Akron, along with Chicago and Memphis.
Building on this momentum, Knight recently announced that we will double down on our public space investment in Philadelphia with the goal of fostering more engaged and connected communities. A $3.28 million investment will support the Fairmount Park Conservancy and partners in developing a citywide civic engagement strategy to connect people to place and each other, inviting all Philadelphians to participate in shaping their neighborhoods.
With this new support, the Fairmount Park Conservancy and its partners will advance training and activities to jumpstart citywide participation and energy around public spaces. Lessons learned from Reimagining the Civic Commons will help the conservancy and partners develop fun, fast pop-up projects to experiment, gather insights and get residents of all kinds involved. Capacity workshops will help identify new community leaders and enlist them as allies in building engagement. Insights and best practices will be shared across the Reimagining the Civic Commons national network. In this way, we hope to amplify and strengthen the work happening locally.
In addition to strengthening civic engagement, our Philadelphia strategy will explore new ways to repurpose public spaces as community resources for learning skills and collaboration. It will also support ideas and new experiments that examine how public spaces can help bring people together and create pathways to opportunity, particularly through approaches that leverage technology and the arts.
The momentum and energy we are seeing around transforming Philadelphia’s public spaces has the potential to create a stronger future for the city. To get there, we need to ensure that investments are made in the people and communities who use these spaces, so they have a stake in shaping how their community spaces are built and activated. Through this process, we hope people feel an authentic connection to place, to each other, and to their city.
Patrick Morgan is Philadelphia program director at Knight Foundation. You can reach him at [email protected]; his Twitter is @PMorganPHL.
PHILADELPHIA – Nov. 4, 2017 – At today’s celebration of LOVE Your Park Fall Service Day in Norris Square, Knight Foundation announced $3.28 million in new funding to Fairmount Park Conservancy to support a citywide civic engagement strategy that will allow residents to shape activities in Philadelphia’s public spaces. The new investment is inspired by Philadelphia’s Rebuild initiative, which plans to invest $500 million in capital improvement of parks, recreation centers and libraries. Knight funding will help the Conservancy advance a network of public and nonprofit partners – including Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, Philadelphia Parks Alliance and Free Library of Philadelphia – to build community participation around public spaces, mobilizing residents as co-creators in shaping their neighborhoods.
“I appreciate Knight Foundation’s continued investment in revitalizing and activating Philadelphia’s public spaces,” said Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney. “It takes visionary and committed partners like Knight Foundation to advance this very important work. Every neighborhood deserves a clean park for its residents to enjoy and a safe playground for its children to play in.”
Mayor Kenney added, “Thanks to the many volunteers here at Norris Park and parks around the city, Philly Parks & Recreation is getting a big hand helping to maintain these essential public spaces.”
Knight’s support comes on the heels of the foundation’s investment in Fairmount Park Conservancy for the Reimagining the Civic Commons initiative, which began as a demonstration project co-funded by the William Penn Foundation in Philadelphia. The initiative has since expanded to four other cities. Knight selected the Conservancy for that initial project largely owing to the nonprofit’s track record of working collaboratively with public and private partners, particularly its longstanding partnership with Philadelphia Parks & Recreation and a network of over 100 volunteer groups through the City’s Park Stewardship Program.
Sam Gill, Knight Foundation’s vice president, communities and impact, said “We believe this is a fantastic opportunity for the people who live in Philadelphia to determine its future.”
Knight Foundation’s program director for Philadelphia, Patrick Morgan, elaborated. “The neighborhood library, park or recreation center are spaces where strangers come together, where we learn about each other across backgrounds and income levels, and where neighbors and local decision-makers converge to create positive community change. Giving people the opportunity to shape these spaces is essential to creating a stronger, more vibrant Philadelphia. This new effort aims to do just that with the help of Fairmount Conservancy and a network of partners that are invested in the city’s growth.”
Mr. Morgan noted that the new, citywide civic engagement initiative is also an opportunity to scale lessons and insights from the national Reimagining the Civic Commons initiative.
With new Knight support, Fairmount Park Conservancy and its partners will advance training and activities to jumpstart citywide participation and energy around public assets; programs will be developed with the needs and preferences of residents in mind. In addition, the Conservancy will work to develop fun, fast pop-up projects to experiment, gather insights and get residents of all kinds involved. Capacity workshops will help identify new community leaders and enlist them as allies in building engagement.
The funder and partners are looking to leverage the Rebuild initiative so that Philadelphia will have an even stronger system of neighborhood leaders to care for the newly renovated sites and ensure that their programming is responsive and inclusive.
“We are grateful for this investment from the Knight Foundation in the work of the Conservancy and its partners,” said Jamie Gauthier, executive director of Fairmount Park Conservancy. “It validates our belief that the power of organized and engaged resident leaders is crucial to the upkeep, sustenance and vitality of public spaces within our neighborhoods, as well as to the health of our very city. We look forward to working, as a collective, to strengthen the ability for residents to shape neighborhood investment, in anticipation of the historic investment brought by Rebuild.”
Parks & Recreation Commissioner Kathryn Ott Lovell also expressed her appreciation. “I am thrilled that Knight Foundation has decided to make this significant investment into civic engagement programming for our public spaces,” said Ott Lovell. “It is imperative that we work with community members in an intentional and strategic way to help shape the future of the city’s parks and recreation facilities. I look forward to working with Fairmount Park Conservancy and Knight Foundation to build on Parks & Recreation’s existing community engagement programs.”
About Knight Foundation:
Knight Foundation is a national foundation with strong local roots. We invest in journalism, in the arts, and in the success of cities where brothers John S. and James L. Knight once published newspapers. Our goal is to foster informed and engaged communities, which we believe are essential for a healthy democracy. For more, visit knightfoundation.org.
About Fairmount Park Conservancy:
The Conservancy exists to champion Philadelphia’s parks. We lead capital projects and historic preservation efforts, foster neighborhood park stewardship, attract and leverage investments, and develop innovative programs throughout the 10,200 acres that include Fairmount Park and more than 100 neighborhood parks around the city. For more information, please visit myphillypark.org, join us at facebook.com/fairmountparkconservancy and follow us on Instagram and Twitter @myphillypark.
Contacts:
Sharene Azimi, Principal, Mission Communications, 646-784-5547, [email protected]
Cari Feiler Bender, Founder, Relief Communications, 610-416-1216, [email protected]
Anusha Alikhan, Director of Communications, Knight Foundation, 305-908-2646, [email protected]
To promote community and stakeholder engagement in community and business activities in a rapidly revitalizing Detroit neighborhood
To support the public engagement and visioning of Lexington’s public space around the courthouse that used to be one of the largest slave markets in the country.
To engage middle and high school students and their parents in civic engagement via the educational video-game, Counties Work.
How can we harness technology to promote civic engagement and more responsive government?
Though technology has transformed our lives as consumers, its impact on our lives as citizens has been limited. But over the past decade, there has been a surge of interest and activity in leveraging technology to empower residents and strengthen civil society. What began as a series of ad hoc efforts and “hackathons” has developed into a broader “civic tech” community of companies, nonprofits, funders and governments.
We at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Rita Allen Foundation have observed the growth of this field firsthand as funders supporting a range of tech organizations (mostly nonprofits but, in the case of Knight, a few for-profits) advancing open government, voting and civic participation, among other related fields.
In many respects, there has never been a more exciting time for civic tech. Activity in the field has gone from sporadic to commonplace, and a growing number of startups is promoting civic engagement through technology. The 2016 presidential election fanned the flames of citizen engagement and highlighted the importance and urgency of developing new approaches and tools for giving citizens voice in democracy. Furthermore, the election spurred more foundations, private investors and high net worth individuals to explore funding opportunities for increasing civic engagement and strengthening American democracy. In recent years civic tech entrepreneurs and funders have lamented the extremely limited number of funders in this field, so the additional capital could be transformational.
But despite the activity and investment in civic tech, very few startups in the space have been able to sustain and scale their work. The field has struggled to translate prototypes, pilots and products into full-fledged organizations equipped with the capital and business models necessary to expand their operations and impact. Even the best-known organizations face very real sustainability challenges. Conversations with our grantees, peer funders and other practitioners in the segment have reinforced this reality that the lack of viable and proven business models has constrained the growth of civic tech’s impact.
We commissioned this research to develop a more nuanced understanding of civic tech business models. The research captured the perspectives of startup leaders (for-profits and nonprofits), funders (foundations, venture capitalists and angel investors) and other key stakeholders on the challenges of sustainability, promising examples of success, and opportunities. It builds upon Knight’s report on “The Emergence of Civic Tech” and aligns with New Media Ventures’ recent “Making Money for Impact” report about revenue models.
This report summarizes insights with the intention of advancing a more consistent, collaborative and rigorous fieldwide conversation about sustainability of the civic tech sector. We hope that the findings will be instructive for startups and funders, and that the report promotes a more sophisticated discussion about business models. We are particularly excited to continue working with others to consider and pursue recommendations outlined in the report.
As a field, we have spent considerable time lamenting the lack of growing, financially stable organizations. With a greater appreciation of the challenge, we’re excited to focus energy on changing the narrative.
To establish a strategic home for civic participation and engagement in Detroit that will educate and engage residents in the non-partisan public decision-making of city life.
To implement and further develop a trustworthy and accessible recurring public opinion survey so that Detroit’s civic and community leaders can effectively prioritize issues and design better programs, policies and financial investments that enjoy broader resident support.
To develop and execute strategic sustainability plans for the Jane’s Walk festivals in Knight communities.