Overview

Anchor institutions are nonprofit or public place-based entities - such as universities and hospitals - that are rooted in their local community by mission, invested capital, or relationships to customers, employees, residents, and vendors. Anchor institutions have an ability to engage in long term-planning in a manner that aligns their institutional interests with those of their local communities. Thus, they have both ability and motivation to play a key role in improving the long-term well-being of the communities they serve by better aligning their institutional resources - like hiring, purchasing, investment, and volunteer base - with the needs of those communities.
​
An increasing number of anchor institutions have joined together to form anchor collaboratives. Anchor collaboratives can take many forms but generally consist of a network of anchor institutions based in the community that join together to support initiatives that advance equitable and inclusive economic development strategies and provide a platform for managing area-wide anchor collaborative initiatives. Through collaboratives, anchors are able to share best practices, collaborate, and plan interventions that accelerate community growth. ​
​
The challenges our cities face today are daunting. But when a community’s leading anchor institutions commit to working together collaboratively, the solutions we need are in reach. By intentionally aligning their collective resources for stronger and more inclusive  economies and healthier communities, anchor collaboratives have the power to make real change happen locally — if they can work together to effectively set and advance goals.

Core Activities of Network 

The Anchor Collaborative Network convenes place-based collaboratives to share emerging practices for advancing an anchor mission approach within their communities, address common challenges, and co-develop new tools that can enhance work on a local level and also advance the field.

Core activities of the network include: ​

Connecting and aligning through convenings and site visits 
Leaders of anchor collaboratives value having a space to come together to share best practices, coach one another through challenges, and work together to build and share resources. This Network will convene in-person twice each year. One convening will be focused on going deep -- this convening will be attended by 1 - 2 key leaders from each collaborative. With a smaller, focused group, the conversation in these convenings will be tightly focused on building solutions for shared challenges. The second convening of each year will be broader in its scope and open to a cohort from each collaborative in order to create a space for funders, anchor institutions, and other partners to consider the perspective of the collaborative and to learn about the work that others are doing in their communities.
​

Elevating emerging best practices through development of toolkits and case studies.
​While there are many tools and resources that this group is interested in building together, the design team identified case studies on anchor collaboratives as the highest value item that this group could produce. While the content and format of the case studies will be determined by Network members, initial conversations suggest that these case studies will profile different anchor collaboratives, including how the collaborative got started, collaborative structure, how anchor institutions and community participate in the collaborative, and funding structures. TDC will facilitate a process to determine which content is of highest value to the group, while the content will be created by individual collaboratives. 

Building and sharing resources through an information hub. Leaders of anchor collaboratives will accelerate their work by drawing from and adapting existing tools and resources. Sample MOUs, job descriptions, business model information, contact of different collaboratives, and other tools and resources will be shared through the information hub.

Accelerating learning and cross-pollination through webinars.
In order to learn more about the work of other collaboratives, the Network will host regular webinars that highlight a specific approach to this work (ie, a focus on collaboratives that built joint hiring pipeline programs) or that put a spotlight on the work of a particular collaborative. Through webinars and at in-person convenings, Network members will  have the opportunity to unpack and workshop current challenges together.

Working Groups

Strategies to get to Systems Change
Are we making changes in the systems that we’ve set out to impact? What system(s) are we trying to change? Some collaboratives think of the local economy as a system, others focus on the anchor institution’s internal operations as a system. No matter the system, designing impactful interventions that address the underlying causes and structures of a problem is complex.

​This working group will spend the first few months of the year learning about different tools, frameworks, and methodology for designing system change interventions and defining what kinds of systems they are trying to change through the work of our collaboratives. Over time we will shift toward focusing on the tools and interventions that are most helpful for anchor collaboratives in changing the systems we’re working within.

Anchor Collaborative Success Factors 
One of the first questions that leaders of collaboratives ask is how the work of their collaborative compares to the work of others. How does our structure compare? Are we doing our work right or even the right work? Are we moving quickly enough or focusing clearly enough? Do we have the right players at the table? These questions are currently very challenging to answer because each collaborative is structured differently, has different goals, different backbone organizations, and is made up of different sets of member organizations.
 
​This working group will collaborate to design, build, and test a tool that helps collaboratives evaluate and reflect on their strengths and weaknesses in order to celebrate and acknowledge their successes and shift resources and attention toward areas of growth.

Community of Early Practice  
Engaging anchor institutions for the first time and engaging them in a process of working together to join, form and launch a collaborative is hard work. Each collaborative is unique, and while we can point to many success stories, there is no single roadmap or playbook that can be replicated and implemented.

This working group is specifically designed for individuals who are new to the world of anchor collaborative organizing. The objective of this group is to create a supportive space for participants to learn and to get resources, inspiration and coaching for the journey that they are undertaking in their community. Working group meetings will incorporate a variety of learning and planning activities including guest speakers, peer coaching, and discussion and thought partnership.

Building Place-based Ecosystems for Employee Ownership 
​Employee-ownership is a key component of building community wealth. The goal of this working group is to help anchor collaboratives more deeply connect with their local employee-ownership ecosystem, and to explore how the work of collaboratives can intersect with the world of broad-based ownership.

​This working group will focus heavily on learning about different models of employee ownership, and the different elements of an employee ownership ecosystem.  We will begin by looking at the basics of different forms and by identifying “big questions” that are relevant to the participants, and building a baseline familiarity with models of employee ownership and what cities are currently doing to support those models. Tapping into TDC’s national network to coordinate presentations and input from content experts from across the country. Participants of this working group will also explore their local employee-ownership ecosystem. Working group members will be encouraged to connect their work with the  growth of local employee-ownership ecosystem players.