Completed for the City of Sacramento, From Disparity to Prosperity examines the Black wealth gap in Sacramento. The report outlines the historical events that led to today’s Black wealth gap; the current state of wealth disparities across housing, access to banking, and workforce development; and proposes strategies to address it, alongside sample initiatives for each. Initial strategy recommendations include expanding pathways for participation in high-growth industry sectors, providing targeted neighborhood investments, and expanding financial stability initiatives. These are meant to be a starting point – since closing the wealth gap will require a broad range of innovative and ambitious initiatives, focused on multiple pathways to wealth creation. For more information, see: https://ceteam.my.canva.site/citystart-sac-blueprint

Kane County’s diverse assets – its skilled workforce, industrial base, agricultural strength, good quality of life, natural beauty – provide tremendous opportunity for the county’s future economic growth. While the county has grown naturally over time, the next economy rewards deliberate, strategic growth planning. 

The Kane County Economic Development Strategic Plan presents a path forward for the county’s economic future. It begins with a market analysis exploring the county’s industries, human capital, innovation activities, built environment and institutions. It then proposes a set of set of strategies to grow Kane County’s industrial base, alongside leading-edge agricultural practices and quality of life for residents. This includes developing the institutional capacity for economic development coordination, through launch of an Economic Development Organization (EDO) to set Kane County on a path towards a vibrant, prosperous 21st century economy. 

As further described in Evolving Corporate Business Engagement in Community and Economic Development, changes in the economy are increasing the alignment between businesses’ bottom-line interests and the traditional goals of community and economic development (CED) to address economic and racial disparities and create more vibrant local economies. As a result, many businesses are investing in CED, not as charity or branding, but as strategic business development of products, markets and labor force.  

However, few structured opportunities exist for businesses to discuss the opportunities and challenges in this emerging practice. The Corporate Coalition of Chicago and RW Ventures, LLC convened a group of 70 business leaders to explore the practice of business-aligned CED activities. This report summarizes key takeaways from the lively and highly productive convening, highlighting how companies can identify and tailor initiatives to capture opportunities for business-aligned CED and exploring how to scale and codify the emerging field of practice.

The convening was made possible with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Upstream Illinois, prepared for Current, lays out a roadmap for the Chicago region to grow and sustain a globally significant Inclusive Blue Economy. The report summarizes findings from an analysis of the water cluster and its related industries (the “blue economy”) and proposes cross-sector collaborative strategies to develop and manufacture water treatment and monitoring technology. Strategies emphasize launching industry-led programs, building partnerships with water technology testing and demonstration centers, growing water product/component manufacturing, and delivering tailored business scale-up support.

Portland’s Inclusive Economic Growth Plan presents an ambitious plan for Portland to develop into a next generation model for inclusive and sustainable economic growth in the emerging economy. The report includes a market analysis of Portland’s industries, human capital, innovation activities, built environment and institutions – followed by a set of mutually reinforcing strategies to realize a vision for Portland: aligning economic growth with equity and climate resiliency to provide a prosperous, vibrant, healthy place for all Portland residents and businesses. Strategies include growing “green” products and services, providing targeted scale-up support and financial products for small businesses, and inclusively growing the food and beverage manufacturing cluster. This Plan was prepared in collaboration with several partners (see Appendix) for Prosper Portland.

Prosper Portland has integrated the Inclusive Economic Growth Plan with several aligned studies/initiatives and publicized it at www.advanceportland.com. The full Inclusive Economic Growth Plan can either be downloaded here or at: https://www.advanceportland.com/additional-resources.

This August 2018 presentation to a Council on Foundations conference describes the changing drivers of growth in the next economy, presents the data and analysis demonstrating why we must undertake economic growth differently moving forward and outlines, with examples, a new inclusive growth practice.