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Entrepreneurs Reboot City Government
The social entrepreneurs profiled on the following pages, however, have decided that the “official” workings of cities can be just as robust and progressive as those of college-town startups. Seasoned professionals in Chicago are lending their business skills to maximize city revenues. An Ivy League-educated attorney forsook six figures to help young people find fulfilling careers in City Hall. And a software developer who had devoted his time to helping people couchsurf — a noble urban cause in itself — is using his organizational expertise to rally voluneteers. What red tape?
Chicago’s Public/Private Powerhouse
By Heidi Reijm
When President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in early 2009, then-Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago knew he needed to think differently about how best to obtain and effectively use ARRA funds to help mitigate the local impacts of the recession. So he turned to Civic Consulting Alliance, a Chicago-based nonprofit public/private partnership, to help structure the application for funds and the implementation of ARRA-backed programs.
Civic Consulting Alliance is a 25-year-old partnership between Chicago’s public and private sectors, started and funded by the city’s corporate and business leaders. It works closely with city agencies to define their long-term strategic needs, then recruits practitioners from the business sector to provide pro bono expertise and assistance to address those needs in ways that make permanent improvements to local government functions and service. While many other cities have business associations that advise public sector leaders, Civic Consulting Alliance is different in that it works directly with public officials and agency staff to implement concrete changes in the way the city does business, at no cost to taxpayers.
To position Chicago to receive ARRA funds, Civic Consulting worked with 25 city agencies, more than 50 foundations and numerous local universities and nonprofit organizations, known collectively as the Recovery Partnership. The partnership secured almost $2 billion, and through it the city received pro bono assistance from leading corporations, firms and universities, including Mayer Brown, the Boeing Corporation and the University of Chicago. Besides creating or saving 9,000 jobs (according to Chicago Recovery Partnership’s website), the partnership’s efforts have to date facilitated the investment of $1.4 billion in recovery efforts citywide. The pro bono teams helped the city devise a permanent, improved process for agencies to execute contracts, focused on a greater reliance on digital documentation and streamlined the approval chain, which cut the time from contract application to dispersal in half.
Civic Consulting Alliance has worked with the city in other areas. For example, the firm helped the Chicago Police Department reorganize its administrative functions, resulting in 150 officers’ reassignment from administrative to neighborhood operations. The group also worked with the chancellor of the Chicago Public Schools to redesign public vocational education, leading to a plan to open 35 new College and Career Academies by 2016. Besides public safety and education, Civic Consulting is also active in areas of workforce, the environment, affordability and economic growth. One of the firm’s roles is as an intermediary and convener. “Every project involves a public sector leader, private sector participation, and a collaborative process to figure out what needs to get done in the long term to make the city better,” says Brian Fabes, Civic Consulting’s CEO.
Aside from helping Chicago improve the way it serves its citizens, Civic Consulting provides an equally important benefit to the corporate partners that invest staff time to serve on various pro bono teams. Keith Bevans, a partner at Bain & Company who is active with Civic Consulting, describes it as an opportunity “to apply the skills we use in the private setting to help the city expand its capacity, for us to learn more about how the city works, and to think about city services in new ways.” Businesses and members of the pro bono teams are able to make a contribution to their city’s economic future while helping to build its civic infrastructure. The company’s leaders and city officials alike hope that the links Civic Consulting Alliance makes between sectors across the city will foster a long-term culture of innovation and partnership.
Wanted: New City Leaders
by Tracey Ross
As the populations of America’s cities increase, demographics shift and U.S. competitiveness is challenged, cities are facing increasingly complex issues that require sophisticated solutions. Yet tens of thousands of baby boomers who operate city governments are approaching retirement, while surveys show that more than 80 percent of college students express no interest in government work. Bethany Henderson, a Harvard Law School graduate and former New York City Urban Fellow (pictured above at far right), finds this “perfect storm” alarming, and is working to attract young talent to serve as our next leaders.
Inspired by her time in New York, Henderson believed that fellowship programs should exist in all city governments and could be the key to weathering the wave of retirements. In 2007 she quit her law firm job and launched City Hall Fellows, the nation’s only nonpartisan service corps designed to attract and prepare young people for local public service. The Teach for America-style program pairs employment in high-level offices with training to enhance fellows’ skills and understanding of the social context of their host cities, which include San Francisco, Houston and Baton Rouge, La.
The program recognizes that young people tend to view city government as overly bureaucratic, scandal-ridden and ineffective. When recruiting applicants, Henderson challenges young people to improve their understanding of how city government works. “How many of you in the room have gone home and told your parents, ‘My mission in life is to work for the city’s sewer department’?” she asks. Seeing little to no response, Henderson reveals that this seemingly unglamorous department actually oversees many of the environmental issues that young people care strongly about.
She believes local government is a good place for young adults striving to be change agents, as it touches every social issue they are passionate about, and is where policy becomes practice. “It is the only institution in our society that impacts every single person every single day,” she says.
The message seems to be resonating with her audiences: Since the program’s start, more than 1,500 graduates have applied for 65 positions. Henderson believes the program is also served by college students’ familiarity with the service corps model exemplified by Teach for America and AmeriCorps, which enables graduates to make the connection between their interests and new job opportunities.
This model attracted Emily Patrick to the fellowship, despite her interest in foreign affairs. “The description of it just seemed to make a lot of sense, what it offered — a kind of segue into the real world,” she recalls. Patrick is currently working on health issues as a fellow for the mayor of Baton Rouge, and already wants to continue working in the city after her fellowship. “I want to look at more local public policy instead of at the federal level,” she says. “That’s something I never would have considered before.”
Jessica Huey, a former fellow, has continued working for the city of San Francisco since her placement in 2009. During her fellowship, Huey assisted in labor negotiations and planned a citywide workforce conference. “It’s sort of broadened my perspective on what city government does and the opportunities that are here to be a part of policy efforts and then be a part of program implementation,” she says.
As the program continues to grow, Henderson is looking to make a major impact. “We’ll be successful if working for city governments is as high up on college students’ lists as today working for Teach for America or McKinsey or going to law school is,” she says, “because that’s really the change I’m looking to have.” For the students who have heard her message so far, it seems to be working.
A Dispatch System for Volunteers
by Christine Fisher
In 2003 Joe Edelman revolutionized urban travel when he founded Couchsurfing.org, a website that helps travelers find a home to stay in free of charge while they explore new places, and which now connects more than 2.6 million people in 246 countries. Edelman has recently moved on to his latest project, Groundcrew, which may revolutionize how people engage with their cities — with government, institutions and one another.
Groundcrew is an interactive coordination platform that Edelman hopes will serve as a “real-world activity pipeline,” connecting residents, organizations, businesses and government departments with resources, manpower and activities. Edelman compares it to a taxi dispatch system. Participants can send out a message via SMS, a map-based Internet platform or an iPhone app. They can share a need, an activity or a resource, and other available Groundcrew users can respond and get involved right away.
For instance, in the wake of a powerful blizzard this past February, a community organization called Neighbors for Neighbors needed help removing snow from the streets of Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood. They used Groundcrew to rally willing volunteers, who by the end of the day had shoveled snow from 19 different locations.
Right now about 60 organizations are registered with Groundcrew, ranging from elder care services to the Vermont Department of Energy to the Red Cross. For many of these organizations, Groundcrew serves as a way to get people involved in their services or programs. It lets organizers use a map-based interface to see where available volunteers are, source projects, simplify logistics, open dialogue and create engagement.
This can be a tremendous time and money saver, Edelman says, because organizations, companies and government agencies can use Groundcrew rather than relying on a dispatch person. Additionally, organizations can easily connect with willing volunteers, who may not have been previously aware of their efforts and needs.
Edelman hopes city governments will realize the potential of Groundcrew’s services and that the buzz around coproduction will help the program spread to more cities. “For municipalities,” he says, “it has a lot to do with where there’s a forward-thinking CEO or CIO.” He is confident that Groundcrew will catch on in innovative cities, thanks to an uptick in the creation of formal service plans — many of which, he explains, require sophisticated coordinating mechanisms.
Challenges remain, however. “It’s a new thing to sell to cities,” he says. “It hasn’t taken off because it doesn’t fit into budgets. Even things that save money or improve services don’t sell if they don’t fit into the standard model.”
At this point Groundcrew is still in a type of paid-pilot stage. Citizens Logistics, its parent company, has been working on the product for about three years with different levels of accessibility for private customers. Their focus has been on perfecting the program before heavily marketing it to customers, in hopes that they can create a real infrastructure for society as a whole rather than a program that merely suits the needs of its first clients.
About six months ago Citizens Logistics launched Web-based membership services, and this summer they plan to launch an Android and iPhone app that they hope will engage a wide range of citizens and add more “fun activities,” Edelman says, like pickup sports games.
This article appeared in the Summer 2011 issue of Next American City magazine. SUBSCRIBE NOW!
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