The Anchor Learning Network is a joint project of the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities (CUMU), a national organization dedicated to connecting urban universities and their community partners, and The Democracy Collaborative, and is supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. It builds on the success of the Higher Education Anchor Mission Initiative, a year-long pilot program launched in 2018, in bringing colleges and universities together to jointly explore how they can adopt an anchor mission: using their place-based assets—educational and operational—to advance the well-being of the communities they call home.

Hospitals and health systems, particularly nonprofit ones, are challenged with providing top healthcare in ever changing and challenging financial, regulatory, and service environments. They manage thousands of staff and provide care to nearly every American at some point in their lives. Given these

How anchor institutions can collaborate locally, leveraging the power of their economic assets to address social and economic disparities and to revitalize their communities.

This report focuses on the role of urban and metropolitan universities as anchor institutions in their community to address long standing inequities.

On June 11th and 12th, The Anchor Collaborative Convening brought together 135 leaders and champions of anchor collaborations from 35 communities across the US and Canada.

The Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) and The Democracy Collaborative (TDC) will today announce the launch of a joint research project to explore the role of the NHS within local economies across the UK.

This report offers an in-depth look at how the Toledo, Ohio based health system ProMedica (a member of the Healthcare Anchor Network) aligned its institutional operations and clinical practice to better tackle the social determinants of health, and serves a useful guide for hospitals and health systems embarking on similar shifts.

31 colleges and universities across the United States have been selected as inaugural members of the Higher Education Anchor Mission Initiative, a national collaboration designed to develop and share new strategies for deploying higher education’s intellectual and place-based resources to enhance the economic and social well-being of the communities they serve. The Higher Education Anchor Mission Initiative is a joint project of the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities (CUMU) , a national organization dedicated to connecting urban universities and their partners, and The Democracy Collaborative (TDC), a national research institute developing strategies for a more democratic economy, and is supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Monday, October 9, 2017 Denver, Colorado – Today the Democracy Collaborative is pleased to announce its collaboration with the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities (CUMU), the nation’s largest membership organization of urban university leaders, at its annual conference. CUMU members are

This report examines how an ongoing — and expanding — effort to track the impact of colleges and universities on the financial and social well-being of their surrounding neighborhoods is helping these anchor institutions align their resources to build stronger community partnerships and create more inclusive local economies.

Anchor institutions can play a key role in helping the low-income communities they serve by better aligning their institutional resources — like hiring, purchasing, investment, and volunteer base — with the needs of those of communities. The recommendations in this “playbook,” drawn from research carried out to help Rush University Medical Center (RUMC) align around its Anchor Mission, are being published to help other hospitals and health systems accelerate their own efforts to drive institutional alignment with community needs.

In 2016, leaders from 40 health systems gathered in Washington, DC to explore the potential to more fully harness their economic power to inclusively and sustainably benefit the long-term well-being of American communities. This report summarizes the events of that convening and next steps, inviting your hospital or health system to join the network and help advance the Anchor Mission of healthcare in your institution, in your community, and nationally.

The Democracy Collaborative today introduced the second in a toolkit series Hospitals Aligned for Healthy Communities, to help health systems use their hiring, purchasing and investing power to improve the health and well-being of underserved communities and communities of color. Inclusive, Local

This toolkit on local and diverse purchasing showcases examples of how hospitals and health systems are reevaluating their roles as their community’s largest purchasers, understanding that a thriving local economy is fundamental to a healthy community.

Establishing a local and inclusive hiring strategy is an important first step towards rethinking your health system’s role in the community. This toolkit can help you get started.

Cities are increasingly turning to their “anchor” institutions as drivers of economic development, harnessing the power of these major economic players to benefit the neighborhoods where they are rooted. This case study shows how the Greater University Circle Initiative achieved this coordination among three large anchor institutions located in Cleveland’s park-like University Circle area—almost one-square mile of world-class educational, cultural, and health institutions.

Our President and co-founder Ted Howard co-authored a report entitled Can Hospitals Heal America’s Communities with Tyler Norris of Kaiser Permanente, cited here: “Life expectancy is lower and disease morbidity is higher in the United States than in other high-income countries.1 This situation

How are student activists uniting to change the food system from the inside? The Real Food Challenge is a national campaign to restructure university cafeteria buying structures for a more equitable, sustainable future of food.

A key reason that researchers of 30 of North America’s most innovative community foundations were attracted to the only Canadian community foundation highlighted in their report was its collaborative work. Edmonton Community Foundation (ECF) received a spot in the New Anchor Mission for a New

“You can feel the toe of the tsunami,” said one person in the circle. “There’s a great wave rising, and you can feel the power of it, even though it’s just beginning.” The time was mid-December 2014, and I was seated with 20 others in a circle at a San Francisco gathering of community foundations wanting to learn more about impact investing as a tool for building community wealth. Someone else shared a new report on Millennials, and how they are seeking jobs and investments with meaning.

Though a recent report about innovative community foundations focuses primarily on the U.S., its findings ring true for some Canadian community foundations also doing pioneering work in their field. Vancouver-based Vancity Community Foundation is one of these. Released in November, the “A New Anchor

Originally published in Shareable on December 8, 2014. Ted Howard, Executive Director of The Democracy Collaborative, calls it “the next great advance for American philanthropy”: the embrace, by a small but not insignificant group of community foundations, of an “anchor mission.” An anchor mission

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Takoma Park, MD — November 19th, 2014 The Democracy Collaborative, with the support of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, has convened a group of anchor institution leaders from six universities to explore how to better align their operations to benefit the places they call home

This report offers an overview of how 30 representative community foundations, large and small, urban and rural, are working toward adopting this new anchor mission.

The Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation is one of 30 groups featured in a national report released on Monday by The Democracy Collaborative called “A New Anchor Mission for a New Century: Community Foundations Deploying All Resources to Build Community Wealth.” The local group is part of what The

From the Florida Times-Union The crowd at Mayor Alvin Brown’s first Business Builder conference in early 2012 still bore the wounds of the Great Recession, casting a sense of guarded optimism among the budding entrepreneurs who turned out for the event. Brown convened his third annual Business

Communities across the country are recognizing the tremendous resources nonprofit anchor institutions (like hospitals and universities) can provide as engines of inclusive and equitable economic development. Increasingly, cities – including Mayors – are launching comprehensive and coordinated strategies to leverage their local anchors to address otherwise potentially intractable problems of unemployment and disinvestment.

Our infographic explains how the Cleveland Model functions and how it includes the entire community to keep wealth local.

An interview with the Democracy Collaborative’s David Zuckerman on the Community Wealth Building Roundtable convened by Jacksonville mayor Alvin Brown.

“A group of Jacksonville leaders trekked to snowy Cleveland in February to check out an economic initiative they hope to use as a model for the struggling northwest part of the city. The people behind that Cleveland initiative, a University of Maryland-based nonprofit called The Democracy

This report presents research to assist anchor institutions in measuring their community impact.

This report connects struggling communities to local institutional wealth through engaging student activism, profiling 3 administration-led initiatives and 3 student-led initiatives, as well as 5 potential future partnerships.

Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, discussions of healthcare policy in national politics and the mainstream media have overwhelmingly focused on the law’s impact on health insurance rather than public health. For example, the 2 percent of the population that will be affected by the individual mandate provision have received an inordinate level of attention.

This report provides an in-depth look at six hospitals in five cities that are rethinking their economic and community engagement strategies.

Co-published by two research centers of the University of California, Berkeley, this paper from the Democracy Collaborative explores the impact of anchor institutions on wealth building and job creation in low-income communities.

Authored by Rita Axelroth Hodges and Steve Dubb as part of Michigan State University Press’ series on Transformations in Higher Education, the book features ten in-depth cases and examines how universities, by pursuing an anchor institution mission to improve surrounding communities in cooperation

How can universities leverage their resources for community benefit? This report from The Democracy Collaborative outlines a comprehensive strategy to meet that goal.