Chad Wick
President
Knowledgeworks Foundation

I have developed a renewed optimism regarding the possibility of people and institutions to collaborate as a result of my involvement with Living Cities through Strive, the education initiative focused on addressing student achievement from cradle to career. Living Cities is trying, on multiple fronts, to rebuild our civic infrastructure on a much sounder and, hopefully, self-renewing basis. The beauty of Living Cities is that the organization is not trying to define any single pathway but is helping to create multiple pathways to that outcome. The pathways create the opportunity to learn how to work together, establish trust and build new forms of leadership that is more citizen based. This is healthy and teaches both the “institutions” that they do not need to rely only on elites and teaches “people” that they can trust in the process because they have a role. It is a shared leadership model.

In our partnership with Living Cities, the pathway is education. This is essential because thriving cities must have a continual pool of talent to maintain a healthy economy and resilient civic infrastructure. There are no sustained and permanent federal or state solutions to this challenge. The permanent solutions to developing talent are to harness the assets and commitment of a community so that they use their resources strategically, and see the pipeline to producing that talent starting at the beginning of the education pipeline. Living Cities support of and belief in that approach makes me optimistic.

Living Cities also has changed how philanthropy works—most directly by forming a funding collaborative that unifies purpose and desired outcome. Perhaps even more important is the funding of infrastructure over a long period of time. It has provided a model of collaborative philanthropy that should influence other strategic funding needs and opportunities.

This strategy also impacts the way that debt is brought into communities. Philanthropic capital is seen as “smart capital” so its influence and long-term nature most definitely leverage local public and private funds. It is a must for social risk-taking investing.