“Cassville, Pennsylvania had no local food options after a gas station market burned down in 2007. The closest grocery store was 15 miles away. In 2009, Betsy and Mark Whitsel built the 3,200 square-foot Cassville Country Store. Using a grant from the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative, the Whitsels purchased two coolers for fresh produce and a commercial refrigerated prep table for deli food. Local farmers stocked the produce coolers with tomatoes, peppers, eggs and apples. The sales of local corn grew to justify an additional storage unit. The Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative extended loans and grants to existing and new stores in underserved communities to increase the availability of fresh food. Researchers assessing the initiative’s long-term impact in Pennsylvania found that Cassville Country Store added eight jobs to the local economy. The Convergence Partnership, a philanthropic collaborative which Kaiser Permanente co-founded in 2005 to leverage our impact nationally, has done amazing things to promote healthy food access. Through the Convergence Partnership, Kaiser Permanente provided critical support to bring a successful state model, the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative, to scale in the new federal Farm Bill.”
“Social impact bonds, a recent innovation in social finance, are designed to harness capital and knowledge from private nonprofit, for‐profit, and public entities to address pressing social problems. Although there is great policy interest in understanding how social impact bonds can be used to tackle…
“The public-private food assistance system (PPFAS) emerged during the 1970s to address ‘emergency’ food needs and has since grown into a regularized social welfare system of grocery and meal provision and related program delivery, realized through the collective efforts of organizations and individuals. We explore…
“The public pays for and provides an incredible amount of data to governments and companies. Yet much of the value of this data is being wasted, remaining in silos rather than being shared to enhance the common good—whether it’s helping governments to stop opioid addiction…
“In our latest City Accelerator guide, ‘Resilience, Equity, and Innovation,’ we share the tools and processes four cities, Pittsburgh, Saint Paul, San Francisco and Washington D.C., explored in an effort to increase equity and fund infrastructure. With new approaches to managing public resources, these cities…
“It’s still early days for governments experimenting with pay-for-success (PFS) projects, in which governments ask private funders to foot the bill for social programs, and then agree to repay those funders if the programs achieve agreed-on results. As public budgets tighten and social challenges remain…
“Social impact bonds—also known as ‘pay-for-success’ contracts, since they are not true bonds, but rather performance-based contracts—aim to help governments experiment with new ways of providing social services. The basic concept is this: Private investors provide the original funding, and the government only pays if…
✴︎Available only with purchase from publisher “State and local governments across the United States have increasingly utilized collaborative, interorganizational approaches to the delivery of public services. This shift in governance structure often necessitates that public managers not only lead the agency in which they are…
“This dissertation is an exploration of collaborative governance in municipal public administration, and the elements that successful collaborations have in common. For this dissertation, the term ‘successful’ means objectives sought after were achieved. As a foundational underpinning of this dissertation, I define collaborative governance as,…
“Multi-sector partnerships play an increasingly significant role in the movement to improve health, equity, and economic prosperity. These partnerships recognize that many of our most pressing challenges defy sector boundaries, and cannot be effectively addressed by any one institution alone. Progress Along the Pathway to…
“Vector Borne Diseases (VBDs) have a major impact on public health and socio-economic development. Inter-sectoral collaboration was recommended as one of the key elements of Integrated Vector Management (IVM), however limited evidence measures the effect and contribution of intersectoral approaches including but not only IVM….