The City of Akron, OH announced plans to create the Office of Integrated Development (OID) in early 2018 to better align the City’s community and economic development efforts. The City has engaged Spirit for Change Consulting for a 15-month process to support OID in establishing mission, core values goals, and metrics that will inform a five-year strategic framework designed to advance equity, better leverage resources, and deliver improved services to all Akron residents. In addition the process is designed to build team capacity around a new way of work to support the implementation of the five-year strategic framework (October 2019 release anticipated.)

The inaugural Knight Public Spaces Forum, hosted by Knight Foundation, took place in June 2019 in Philadelphia. The invitation-only forum provided an opportunity for 300 diverse public space leaders to explore the role of public spaces in fostering more informed and engaged communities. The forum used a range of formats—community workshops, plenary session, lightning talks, breakout discussions and an unconference—to facilitate shared learning among participants. In partnership with the Knight team from October 2017-July 2019, Lynn led all aspects of the planning and execution of the forum content and logistics. 

New Growth Innovation Network (NGIN) is a national network for and by the people and institutions committed to leading inclusive growth strategies in their neighborhoods and regions. Building on the success of their 2018 launch event, Lynn is partnering with NGIN on the development and execution of their second annual convening in December 2019. 

Reimagining the Civic Commons is a three-year, national initiative with projects in five U.S. cities that revitalize and connect civic assets. A collaboration of national foundations and a network of local partners, the initiative is working toward four main goals: civic engagement, socioeconomic mixing, environmental sustainability and value creation. The demonstrations cities include Akron, OH; Chicago, IL; Detroit, MI; Memphis, TN; and Philadelphia, PA. The initiative is funded nationally by the JPB Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Kresge Foundation and the Knight Foundation.

Since 2017, Spirit for Change Consulting has supported the initiative on behalf of the Knight Foundation. Project and grant management services include representing Knight Foundation on the national steering committee and at initiative convenings; providing support to the demonstration team leaders as well as Knight program staff; and representing Knight Foundation to advance the initiative with allied organizations via speaking engagements and participation in external convenings. 

The Resilient Cities Summit is an annual event, co-hosted since 2015 by the National League of Cities (NLC), Urban Land Institute (ULI) and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) which convenes mayors, senior city officials, and nationally recognized resilience, sustainability, land use and finance experts. Lynn served as the summit facilitator for the two-day, invitation-only convening held in Los Angeles in July 2018. In this role, Lynn was responsible for guiding the multi-part event to ensure meaningful dialogue and peer-to-peer learning among the 75 participants. A report on the summit is available for download here.

Y Combinator Research (YCR) is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 2015 to help address problems that require a long time horizon, do not return a profit, or seek to answer open-ended questions. Their first effort is to launch a first-of-its-kind study in the U.S. on universal basic income. The study is large-scale and will require significant resources and collaboration with philanthropic and other funders. YCR engaged Spirit for Change Consulting in 2017 to provide message development support, collateral review and updating, and strategic advice on approaching philanthropy.