STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education is widely understood to be critical to the United States’ ongoing global competitiveness. In fact, the federal government spends nearly $3 billion per year on over 200 programs designed to increase K-12 interest and postsecondary degree attainment. The millions invested by foundations, corporations, benefactors and parents are not included in that figure. Unfortunately there has been little measurable change in STEM engagement, college attendance or workforce readiness, particularly among American minorities and females. Philadelphia mirrors the national disconnect between STEM talent demand, and the projected supply.

In a complex organization like the School District of Philadelphia, there will always be competing priorities and constant problems. When we put school district issues into basic black-and-white terms like district vs. charter or more money vs. layoffs, we are doing a disservice to our community, teachers and staff.

With a recent Oxford University study predicting that an astonishing 47 percent of today’s jobs could be automated in the next two decades, how might educators better prepare their students to secure promising long-term careers? For some, blended learning, whereby students learn through online delivery of content and instruction, with some element of student control over time, place or pace as well as face-to-face interaction, is seen as one way to support flexible teaching alternatives given ever-increasing budget constraints.

Thinking about school design propelled me back in time, 30 years ago, to a period in my life in which I studied Aristotle’s Physics, specifically, to a passage there about his concept of telos, or final cause. Telos means “that for the sake of which” a thing is done. In the rush of life, it is easy to skip an inquiry into the ultimate purposes of activities and institutions. But such an inquiry can yield profound insights, especially when one contemplates design.

Over the course of my 20-year tenure, I have had the privilege of knowing and observing five School District of Philadelphia CEOs. Each has been well-qualified, well-meaning and effective in different ways. They shared the following strengths:

Philadelphia’s Office of Emergency Management showcases no- and low-cost innovations to coordinate vulnerable populations and utilize diversified notification strategies during emergencies.
            
The ebb and flow of emergency management can make it challenging to garner attention and momentum around preparedness. At the height of an emergency and in the immediate aftermath, there is significant emphasis on disaster preparedness. Grant funding is flowing steadily, governments are rethinking strategic investments and the public is building kits and developing emergency plans for their households and workplaces. Yet once a crisis is abated, that momentum diminishes. It is the job of emergency management agencies to sustain the preparedness drumbeat and find meaningful and sustainable ways to grow and maintain prepared communities.

ABSTRACT: Philadelphia is the most violent of the nation’s ten largest cities. In order to reduce gun violence and provide for a safer city, an innovative solution is necessary. Professor David Kennedy’s model of focused deterrence, notifying violent offenders of the consequences of their actions and providing priority social services for those who want a change, is being implemented with success in South Philadelphia.

The City of Philadelphia is embarking on a ground-breaking strategy to drive innovation in government built upon the sharing of valuable city data in highly usable formats with outside users and engaging technical and creative classes in our city to help turn this raw data into valuable solutions to improve the lives of citizens.

Philadelphia's efforts are part of the larger “open data” movement that has been adopted by other cities across the country and in other parts of the world. But there are some characteristics to what is happening in Philadelphia that make it unique among large cities and that can produce lessons for other cities to follow.

Just a few months ago, I (Eryn) was taking my three-year-old daughter to the ladies room and as we approached two doors, she simply asked, “Mom, which door do I use?” I replied in my best preschool teacher voice, “Well honey, what do those symbols on the door tell you?” She looked up at the doors and without looking back at me for my approval pushed the heavy door and walked in. Of course, because she’s the smartest kid in the world, she picked the right symbol—the one with a stick figure wearing a triangle skirt around her legs.

The infusion of geospatial technology has been game changing for the Philadelphia Police Department. Putting functionality in the hands of users and giving them the ability to manipulate their own data in real time has led to more effective and efficient decision making.            

In the mid-1990s, the Philadelphia Police Department was at the cutting edge of geospatial technology. The creation of a Mapping & Analysis Unit, which would ultimately develop an internal mapping site (GIS) along with a host of other data-related services, started the initial concept of using spatial data to make decisions in a more effective way. This was furthered by the introduction of the comparative statistics program (CompSTAT) under Commissioner John Timoney in the late 90s, which still continues to be used today but in a modified format. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the use and leveraging of geospatial technology.

As cities face increased financial and structural challenges, government will require a new operating model so that it continues to provide useful services to constituents. To find new ways of innovating with technology, the City of Philadelphia named its first chief innovation officer in 2011 and shortly thereafter established an Innovation Management group within the Office of Innovation and Technology. This group’s primary focus is public technology—finding new ways to make technology relevant and useful for the citizens of Philadelphia.

Can you tell the readers about the Office of Sustainability and Greenworks Philadelphia? 

KG: This is a new field and a new component within government. This all came about from an advocacy effort in the mayor [Michael Nutter’s] race in 2007. One hundred thirty different nonprofits, community groups came together to form the Next Great City Coalition. Greenworks is a result of that. It’s starting to force government to think in a more integrated and systems-based way. There are not necessarily a lot of initiatives that set a vision for the city, specific metric-based goals and then map out a role that all the departments can play. [What’s unique about Philadelphia] is Greenworks has done that. 

With social enterprise organizations striving to accelerate the adoption of innovative ideas across their organizations, the thought of investing time with government leaders is likely often last on anyone’s to-do list. Still, David Simms, chairman of Opportunity International (a global organization that p rovides microfinance loans, savings, insurance, and training to over five million people working their way out of poverty in the developing world), has uncovered two compelling arguments for engaging with government leaders.

The city of Philadelphia is no stranger to philanthropy. Philanthropic efforts have contributed widely to the worlds of arts, education and social services. Behind hundreds, and even thousands, of successful nonprofit organizations are the efforts of generous individuals who saw value in a good idea and wanted to ensure not only its existence but its survival.

In my former life as an assistant district attorney, I interacted regularly with police and detectives. One of them introduced me to a well-worn expression that served as a sort of philosophical view from behind the badge: “Justice is just us.”

As a lawyer, I found the thought disturbing but also deeply revealing. For all of the public sector’s grand symbols and architecture, individual human beings with all of their foibles were the ones who informed and performed the government’s daily pursuit of justice. This basic idea, that the government was actually all too human, held equally across the entire institutional spectrum. The public sector could design and decorate impressive-looking rooms, buildings, uniforms, titles and programs, but beneath all the layers, the government was really the private sector dressed up in a very important costume. The leadership, employees, physical tools and funds that inform the government all find their origin in the private sector. The boundary between public and private in our culture is more porous and uncertain than anyone likes to admit. Like Dorothy, we discover that the seemingly all-powerful public wizard is, indeed, an ordinary man from Omaha, Nebraska, pulling levers behind a flimsy curtain.

In January 2012, Pablo Eisenberg, a regular contributor to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, wrote an article titled, “Misplaced Giving Priorities of America’s Wealthy.” Eisenberg writes about the attention The Washington Post paid to David Rubenstein’s $7.5 million contribution to restore the Washington Monument, which had been closed due to damage incurred during the East Coast earthquake last year. Eisenberg finds this type of press coverage “disturbing.”

Social practice, community-based art and socially engaged practice are all terms that have been used to describe art-making that changes the relationship between artist and audience, the audience and the work of art, and the artist and the work created. From the perspective of Mural Arts, social practice at its core means engaging its closest audience—those who know most about why a work of art is made—directly in the creation of its meaning.

Einstein said something profound about solving problems: “The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” His thought contains two powerful ideas: that our thinking actually creates problems and that solutions entail different levels of thought.

While social enterprises have allocated significant resources in fundraising activities towards individual donors, one potential untapped segment are corporations. As corporate donations rose an estimated 10.6 percent to $15.29 billion in 2010 (Giving USA Foundation 2011), forward-thinking social enterprises have an opportunity to tap into the smallest contributing sector (approximately 5 percent of total philanthropic dollars), which may be an untapped market that just needs a new engagement model. In particular, the continued focus of many companies, especially Fortune 500 firms, on corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives has potential benefits for those nonprofits that invest the time to connect their capabilities against such efforts. As such, social enterprises might consider the following.

The theme of this Winter 2012 edition of the Philadelphia Social Innovations Journal is Community Impact. What is interesting about this concept is the approach—the proactive decision to collectively tackle some desired state of change. In this latest Philanthropy Column, I explore the “how” of community impact.