The Power of Place-Based Philanthropy

Panel Composition and Focus

• The session featured five leaders representing institutional and personal philanthropy focused on place-based strategies:
  • Diana Bucco (President, Buell Foundation, Pittsburgh).
  • Lejeune Callison-Montgomery-Tabron (President & CEO, W.K. Kellogg Foundation).
  • Wes Moore (CEO, Robin Hood Foundation, New York).
  • Shirley Franklin (Executive Board Chair, Purpose Built Communities; former Mayor of Atlanta).
  • Cindy Citrone (Founder & CEO, Citrone 33 Foundation).
• The panel defined place-based philanthropy as a strategy that anchors resources in specific geographic communities to address systemic issues like poverty, racism, and health disparities, rather than using a scattered, reactive grant-making model.

Core Motivations for Place-Based Approaches

• Cindy Citrone: Shifted from scattered grant-making to a targeted, place-based strategy after her father's diagnosis with end-stage renal disease; utilized the "City Champions" model in Pittsburgh to leverage local assets, including the Pittsburgh Steelers, Pirates, Penguins, and six universities.
• Lejeune Callison-Montgomery-Tabron: Adopted W.K. Kellogg's founding principle that "people in community have the best understanding of what change looks like," focusing on children's well-being through community-defined solutions.
• Wes Moore: Chose place-based work in New York to address the "unintended consequences" of poverty, noting that 42% of New Yorkers experienced poverty in the last three years and the fastest-growing poor population are the "working poor."
• Shirley Franklin: Established Purpose Built Communities after realizing that isolated interventions (e.g., a single school or housing project) failed without a holistic, neighborhood-scale approach to break cycles of intergenerational poverty.

Key Metrics, Statistics, and Outcomes

• Pittsburgh Organ Donation: Leveraged a single game event to potentially register 60,000 people; prior to the campaign, only 40–42% of Pittsburgh residents were registered donors despite 95% public support.
• Criminal Justice Reform: Robin Hood's data indicates 95% of incarcerated individuals will return to society, yet systemic barriers (housing, employment, voting) persist.
• Veterans Homelessness: Robin Hood's interventions reduced veterans homelessness in New York City to "essentially zero," with only approximately 30 individuals currently remaining homeless.
• School Performance: In Atlanta's East Lake neighborhood, a charter school that was the lowest-performing in the district 20 years ago is now in the top five, serving a high-need demographic.
• Investment Scale: The W.K. Kellogg Foundation invested $25 million in its "Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation" effort to foster community empathy and racial healing across 14 national sites.
• Policy Leverage: Robin Hood invested $4 million in legal assistance for public housing tenants; New York City subsequently allocated $150 million to the program after proving its efficacy.

Strategic Methodologies and Innovations

• Community Integration: Robin Hood employs the "Design Insight Group," a team of 1,100 New Yorkers living in poverty who are paid to co-design and test solutions.
• Trust Building: The W.K. Kellogg Foundation commits to staying in specific communities (e.g., Mississippi, New Orleans) for a "generation," defined as the point where all children in that community are thriving, to avoid "parachute philanthropy."
• Proximity and Governance: Purpose Built Communities emphasizes "proximity," requiring staff and leadership to live in the communities they serve to ensure accountability and reduce stereotypes.
• Venture Philanthropy: Cindy Citrone described the "white space" approach, where philanthropy acts as a risk-taker to launch initiatives (e.g., mental well-being) that are later scaled or adopted by government and established institutions.

Challenges and Obstacles

• Structural Barriers: Panelists identified racism, redlining, discriminatory housing policies, and legal barriers for formerly incarcerated individuals as primary systemic hurdles that philanthropy cannot solve alone.
• Trust Deficits: Historical "pop-in/pop-out" funding models have eroded trust, requiring long-term commitments and local hiring to establish genuine partnerships.
• Measurement Difficulties: Tracking social change over decades is complex, requiring the development of new "leading indicators" rather than relying solely on lagging financial or policy metrics.
• Political Resistance: Efforts to reform systems (e.g., preventing state takeover of the Jackson, Mississippi school district) require navigating partisan divides and overcoming entrenched bureaucratic inertia.

Future-Forward Statements and Strategic Goals

• Policy Evolution: The ultimate goal is for philanthropy to act as the "Series A investor," de-risking innovative models so that government can adopt them as permanent public policy.
• Regional Focus: Shirley Franklin posits that national poverty reduction is unattainable without specifically addressing the wealth and income gaps in the Southern United States.
• Civic Engagement: Citrone aims to make mental well-being a universal civic skill in Pittsburgh, utilizing local culture ("Pittsburghese") and sports figures to normalize coping mechanisms.
• Narrative Control: Wes Moore argues that changing the narrative is the leading indicator of policy change, necessitating a place-based approach to make systemic issues personal and relatable to the public.
• Scalability: Purpose Built Communities currently operates in over 20 cities, with 40–50 additional cities seeking consultation to replicate the holistic neighborhood transformation model.