Client Engagements

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Community Change, with support from the Ford Foundation, launched the Housing Playbook Project in June 2020 to reimagine the federal response to our nation's current and future housing challenges with a focus on housing justice. The project is led by Lynn M. Ross of Spirit for Change Consulting who is serving as the Senior Fellow for the Housing Playbook Project at Community Change. As senior fellow, Lynn was responsible for all aspects of the initiative from project management to communications. Leading the project involved curating more the 400 ideas from the field; engaging an 20-person advisory committee; managing a team of 10 contributing authors and several external reviewers. The housing playbook was delivered to the Biden-Harris Transition Team in early November 2020 and released to the public as New Deal for Housing Justice in January 2021.

Starting with the 2019 inaugural event, Spirit for Change Consulting has served as the event partner to Knight Foundation on the Knight Public Spaces Forum. The invitation-only 2019 forum brought 300 diverse public space leaders together for two days to explore the role of public spaces in fostering more informed and engaged communities. The two-day 2020 forum, held virtually, engaged more than 850 attendees in timely discussions on the future of equitable public spaces. Spirit for Change Consulting led all aspects of program design and curation as well as providing event day management in coordination with Knight. 

Reimagining the Civic Commons is a national initiative working in 10 U.S. cities to 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 initiative is funded nationally by the JPB Foundation, Kresge Foundation, Knight Foundation, and William Penn Foundation. Since 2017, Spirit for Change Consulting has led Knight Foundation’s national engagement with Reimagining the Civic Commons including serving on the national steering committee for the initiative. 

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 a mission, core values, goals, and metrics to 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 working to support the implementation of the five-year strategic framework released in December 2019. The framework is available online here.

Spirit for Change Consulting has partnered with a number of organizations on a mission to advance equitable communities, including: 

• Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
• LOCUS/Smart Growth America
• Make Room
• National League of Cities
• New Growth Innovation Network
• NYU Furman Center
• Urban Land Institute
• Y Combinator Research