We promote equitable and inclusive wealth building by addressing barriers to capital investment, shared knowledge, and the collective action of its members, partners, and network of city leaders.
View Impact ReportAll people in U.S. cities are economically secure, building wealth and living abundant, dignified, and connected lives.
To close the racial wealth gap using the collective power of philanthropy, financial institutions and local governments.
To advance inclusive capital in key wealth-building pathways for Black, Indigenous, Latine and Asian Americans.
Living Cities’ core values are fundamental to our success and act as light posts that help us stay on track and achieve our mission. Our core values are collaboration, innovation, leadership, impact, and racial equity and inclusion.
These organizational values guide our everyday decisions about how, why, and what we do:
As a partnership of foundations and financial institutions, collaboration is at the core of our work. We believe that respect, diverse perspectives, power-sharing, and the open exchange of ideas among varied partners will lead to the structural changes necessary to close racial income and wealth gaps.
Changing broken systems and closing racial gaps requires disrupting the status quo and elevating and sustaining successful ideas from communities while recognizing the value in fresh approaches to old problems. We aim to take risks and test novel solutions in service of economic opportunity for all.
We continually ask difficult questions, engage in uncomfortable conversations, challenge obsolete assumptions, and support others to do the same to close racial gaps in our institutions and across systems. We strive to lead by example and to learn from the labor of those who came before us and those who continue to do the work.
We are committed to the economic security of all people in U.S. cities by undoing racist systems that create disparities for people of color. Through race-centered approaches and a results focus, we hold ourselves accountable to this commitment and are intentionally self-reflective as we work to continuously improve.
Racism is at the root of so many of the problems we are trying to solve, so addressing racism must be squarely at the center of how we work. We rely on each other to hold the organization accountable to moving the needle on racial equity and inclusion by living the following cultural norms: work to understand history and the ongoing legacy of racism, interrogate our own biases, extend mutual acknowledgment and respect, challenge damaging power norms, be open to vulnerability and risk.
We are driven by a set of core values that guide our decisions every day about what we do, why we do it, and how we will achieve our mission. We believe this is fundamental to our organization’s success.
Meet Our PeopleOver the course of our history, we have remained committed to improving the lives of people in U.S. cities. In 2007, we pivoted from our original focus on neighborhood-level transformation to address the many, interrelated systems—education, transit access, workforce development and more—that impact peoples’ economic well-being, and since then have evolved to our current commitment of closing racial income and wealth gaps in U.S. cities.
This timeline is a brief overview of our racial equity journey:
