The Economy League of Greater Philadelphia will award a $50,000 grant to a social entrepreneur who pitches an innovative, actionable solution that makes a direct, immediate impact on historically disinvested Philadelphia neighborhoods — without displacing existing residents.
The contest, called The Fair City Challenge: Community Solutions for Reinvesting in Philadelphia Neighborhoods, is the latest from the Economy League's Impact Labsinitiative.
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"We launched Impact Labs, our social innovation incubator and accelerator, in 2019 as a response to Hopeworks Founder Dan Rhoton's comment at a conference that 'It's OK to fail in Philadelphia as long as you do it just like everybody else before you,'" said Jeff Hornstein, executive director of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia. Essentially, Rhoton was saying "despite Philly's legacy of tech and scientific innovation, we're a little, um, backwards when it comes to social innovation."
The current challenge stems from the "Know Your Price, Philly" report the Economy League released in December 2023. That report, which showed a wide gap in cumulative property values between mostly Black and mostly white neighborhoods, was inspired by the work of the Brookings Institute's Andre Perry, most notably his work about the devaluation of property in cities with majority Black populations.
"We analyzed 70 years of property data and discovered a $57 billion gap in cumulative property valuation between non-white and white-majority neighborhoods in Philadelphia," Hornstein said. "While the gap itself wasn't surprising, the magnitude shocked even me (and Andre) and led us to ask, 'What is to be done?' As it happens, again Andre was the inspiration since he had partnered with the Ashoka Foundation to run a series of 'revaluation' challenges in Black-majority cities like New Orleans and Detroit. We were fortunate that several corporate sponsors stepped up with $300,000 in contributions to fund our current competition."
The ethos of Impact Labs, in general, and of the Fair City Challenge, in particular, is that impacted communities often have great ideas for solving thorny problems, but they lack the resources to refine, test and scale them to maximize impact.
"Working with a broad network of community partners, it is our goal to identify community-driven ideas and apply tech-style rigor and 'fail-fast' methodologies to help bring one or more of them 'to market,' so to speak," Hornstein said. "Our project manager, Meg Niman, comes out of the tech world herself, and the manager of the incubator and accelerator, LaunchPoint Labs, has a deep track record of working with start-ups and early-stage firms."
Hornstein said the reason for this challenge is glaring in the "Know Your Price, Philly" report: there would be billions of dollars more wealth in some of Philadelphia's most marginalized communities if properties there were not systemically undervalued. If neighborhoods had not been systemically under-invested, the city and its residents would be much better off, the report suggests. And even partly closing the gap would go a long way toward making Philadelphia more equitable.
All proposals for the Fair City Challenge must be driven by an idea that is somewhat original, pilotable and potentially scalable, and for which a $50,000 investment could be catalytic. Applications are being accepted online through March 28. Proposals can be submitted by nonprofit or for-profit organizations.
"We're anticipating a range of organizations from groups of block captains, civic associations, relatively small neighborhood-based organizations (to) perhaps small, for-profit mission-driven real estate developers or investors," Hornstein said. "… It's hard to predict in part because it's an issue that cuts across so many lines of difference."
Finalists will each receive $10,000 and be entered into an accelerator program to develop a business plan that advances their ideas. The grand-prize winner gets $50,000 and the opportunity to pilot their project.
The Economy League has chosen three basic categories to frame the application process:
• The home & the homeowner: Micro-level strategies to increase the worth of homes and the families that live in them. Examples include educational campaigns about effective use of home equity, aging-in-place strategies or education about predatory purchasing.
• The Neighborhood: Meso-level strategies that focus on making a neighborhood more 'desirable,' thereby boosting property values. Examples include novel forms of land use like land trusts, creating green spaces or repairing sidewalks, and attracting neighborhood amenities.
• The City: Macro-level policy changes and advocacy strategies that help historically disinvested low- and moderate-income communities regain lost wealth. Examples include tax policy changes to incentivize rehabbing homes; a significant boost to citywide funding for basic systems repairs and advocacy regarding appraisal and assessment bias.
"Ideally the grand-prize winner will execute a demonstration project, supported by the Economy League's network of talent, that will attract attention and additional investment," Hornstein said. "That's what's happened to all three of (the) prior winners, as well as a few of our runners-up.
"It's a long and rigorous application for a reason … this is not just an award for an idea, it's the gateway into a pretty intense six-month process of developing a passion project into a functioning, scalable pilot. Applicants who make it beyond the first round will all get something out of this — connections, publicity, mentors, business coaching. But we encourage those with passion, drive, ambition and a mission to make positive change in Philadelphia to apply."
The Economy League's first challenge, the Full City Challenge in 2019, asked entrants to solve this paradox: Philadelphia has world-class food assets, but it also has world-class food insecurity.
At the time, the winner received a $5,000 grand prize. The Economy League received a few dozen proposals. It ran a rapid incubator and accelerator, attracted media attention and helped spark the creation of what is now the nonprofit College Together, which initially helped college dropouts working in the food service industry finish their degrees.
Along the way, the Economy League identified several other organizations, including Rebel Ventures, a student-run project that aims to establish a healthy corner store. The Full City Challenged helped the Economy League realize there was an untapped market for social innovation in Philadelphia.
Just as the Full City Challenge was wrapping up, Independence Blue Cross joined the Economy League's board and gave the Economy League $500,000 to run the first Well City Challenge in 2020 and 2021. That challenge was driven by research on the poor mental health of the millennial generation.
"With IBX resources behind us, we built a more robust model, with a rigorous application process, a one-month incubator to prepare teams to pitch to win $10,000 and access to a three-month accelerator, with a $50,000 grand prize at the end," Hornstein said. "This time, Hey Auntie!, a for-profit venture focused on intergenerational wellness for Black women, won the grand prize, and our investment catapulted the project. IBX was evidently pleased with what we had done, and they wrote us a $1 million check for a second health-equity focused Well City Challenge 2.0, focused on behavioral and cardiovascular health."
That challenge followed a similar structure, but in addition to the grand prize, it also helped the winner, That Could Be Me Foundation, develop a business model and a network of support for a project focused on the mental health of young Black males.
The Fair City Challenge is sponsored by TD Bank, Comcast, Independence Blue Cross, and NewCourtland.
"We are proud to support the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia's Fair City Challenge and its mission to create scalable, community-driven solutions that create opportunities for upward economic mobility," Gregory E. Deavens, president and CEO of Independence Blue Cross, said in a statement. "By empowering local innovators with necessary resources, the competition fosters opportunities for transformative ideas with positive economic impact to take root and flourish in communities served by Independence Blue Cross."
