NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--JPMorgan Chase today announced the first winning cities in the AdvancingCities Challenge, an annual competition to source innovative and sustainable solutions to address the most persistent problems facing communities. The Challenge is part of AdvancingCities, the firm’s $500 million, five-year initiative to drive inclusive growth and create greater economic opportunity in cities. JPMorgan Chase will award five winning cities—Chicago, Ill., Louisville, Ky., Miami, Fla., San Diego, Calif., and Syracuse, N.Y.— $3 million each over a period of three years, for a total of $15 million.
The AdvancingCities Challenge launched in September 2018, attracting more than 250 proposals from 143 communities across 45 states and territories. Proposals were required to incorporate at least two of four strategic drivers of inclusive growth within JPMorgan Chase’s Model for Impact: jobs and skills, small business, neighborhood revitalization and financial health.
Winners were announced in conjunction with JPMorgan Chase’s 2018 Corporate Responsibility Report, which showcases the firm’s impact in communities around the world and highlights the Seven Traits of Advancing Cities. The winning cities and programs each demonstrated these key conditions for success that position a city to meaningfully expand opportunity.
“Businesses have a role to play in bringing communities together to create greater opportunity,” said Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase, who made the announcement today in Louisville. “All five of these cities have shown that they understand this type of investment and the ability to work together to solve problems is not just the right thing to do, it is also in our shared interests.”
Led by local nonprofits, the selected cities successfully built local coalitions of public, private and nonprofit leaders working together to address major social and economic challenges such as employment barriers, financial insecurity, and neighborhood disinvestment.
The successful proposals from each city include:
- West Side United (Chicago): Chicago’s West Side residents have life expectancies that are 16 years shorter than their neighbors in The Loop, an affluent neighborhood just seven train stops away. West Side United will leverage the hiring, procurement and investment power of major health systems on the West Side to improve the health and economic vitality of the surrounding neighborhoods. Specifically, the collaborative will address social determinants of health by connecting low-wage healthcare workers to career pathways in hospitals that provide financial security. At the same time, West Side United will support local entrepreneurs and help them take advantage of procurement opportunities at anchor institutions that can grow and create local jobs. West Side United brings together the Rush University Medical Center, Sinai Urban Health Institute, the Chicagoland Workforce Funders Alliance, Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership, Skills for Chicagoland’s Future and Accion Chicago to develop a plan to benefit residents of Chicago’s West Side.
- Digital Inclusion and Economic Resilience (Louisville): Louisville’s low-income residents face significant barriers to employment, leaving them increasingly disconnected from well-paying jobs in high-growth sectors. This is exacerbated by the lack of a coordinated referral network of resources across sectors—financial, health, education and human services—that are available to help low income residents build financial security. Louisville’s Digital Inclusion and Economic Resilience program will use high-touch community outreach strategies in six of the city’s lowest income neighborhoods, working to equip residents with skills necessary to compete for jobs while also connecting them to services through a formalized referral network and a new shared data platform. Metro United Way of Louisville will work with Goodwill Industries of Kentucky, The Greater Louisville Workforce Development Board (KentuckianaWorks), Russell: A Place of Promise, Catholic Charities, AMPED, One West, Evolve502, and the Commonwealth Institute of Kentucky to execute this effort.
- Resilient305 (Miami): Resilient305 is a soon-to-be-released comprehensive strategy co-led by Miami-Dade County, the city of Miami and the city of Miami Beach with support of The Miami Foundation that will enable Greater Miami and the Beaches (GM&B) to more effectively tackle emerging global challenges and trends such as urbanization, globalization and climate change. Recognizing that income inequity is a resilience issue, this Building Prosperity initiative was collaboratively born out of a work group of government, university, nonprofit and corporate partners charged with developing collective actions that build prosperity for all. AdvancingCities will fund work focused specifically on training local GM&B residents and businesses to be more resilient to chronic financial stresses, such as lack of access to well-paying jobs and insufficient business opportunities. Resilient 305 will integrate efforts of service providers to increase access to quality jobs and work with anchor institutions to connect small businesses to procurement opportunities. The Miami Foundation partnered with the city of Miami, Health Foundation of South Florida, Florida International University and other government, university, and nonprofit partners to develop this Resilient305 -- Building Prosperity initiative.
- Advancing San Diego (San Diego): Small businesses represent 98 percent of firms in San Diego, but they struggle to compete for qualified talent, especially talent reflective of San Diego’s growing Hispanic population. To remain competitive as a region, San Diego must double its production of skilled workers and create 50,000 new quality jobs in small businesses by 2030. San Diego will leverage a collaborative, employer-led strategy that aligns multiple systems around a common goal to connect underrepresented residents to high-demand jobs and provide small businesses access to diverse talent pipelines. The program will streamline information from employers to help educators design training curricula that equips residents with the right skills for existing and future jobs in San Diego’s high-growth sectors, while also providing pathways to those jobs. San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation, San Diego Workforce Partnership , San Diego and Imperial Counties Community College Association, United Way of San Diego County and City of San Diego developed a regional proposal that focuses on all cities within San Diego County.
- Syracuse Surge: Blueprint for Inclusive Growth (Syracuse): Syracuse’s southern Downtown district and Southside neighborhoods are poised to receive major public and private technology investments, but without specific interventions, long-time residents and businesses may not benefit from this prosperity. Through Syracuse Surge, the city demonstrated a clear commitment to equitable growth, shared among the business community, local nonprofits, anchor and educational institutions. Syracuse Surge will develop long-term strategies to surface talent from vulnerable populations and connect them to jobs in high-tech industries, while also attracting, expanding, and incubating tech businesses led by diverse founders. CenterState CEO led a successful coalition including Allyn Family Foundation, City of Syracuse, Le Moyne College and Onondaga County.
About AdvancingCities
AdvancingCities is a $500 million initiative that combines the firm’s lending capital, philanthropic capital and expertise to make investments in cities. The program consists of two key features, the AdvancingCities Challenge and large-scale investments in cities where the conditions exist for success such as Detroit, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Paris.
AdvancingCities is also collecting insights, developing research and best practices, and driving peer-learning to ensure the benefits of these investments are shared with other cities.
Based on the firm’s previous experience, JPMorgan Chase expects its $500 million AdvancingCities commitment to attract an additional $1 billion in outside capital at a ratio of 4:1, resulting in a total of $1.5 billion directed to efforts that will increase inclusive growth in cities.
“We know from experience that collaboration is the key to successfully driving inclusive growth and cities and we were impressed with the collaboration shown in these applications,” said Irene Baker, Head of Advancing Cities, JPMorgan Chase. “The five winning cities presented creative, thoughtful and forward-looking strategies that will enable more Americans to participate in a growing economy, and we are excited to help scale these efforts.”
The winning initiatives through the AdvancingCities Challenge will drive solutions and help break down silos between local programs, strengthen underlying systems and advance holistic solutions to create more widely-shared prosperity. The cities will also have access to a wide array of JPMorgan Chase resources, including data and research, employee expertise, and global network. Based on learnings from past investments, AdvancingCities is making investments in cities that demonstrate a collaborative approach to the following:
- Commitment to tackling barriers to economic opportunity and upward mobility;
- Innovative strategies that make measurable progress to solve challenges related to inclusive growth;
- Presence of high-capacity nonprofits and government entities and strong engagement from the business community working together to implement solutions;
- Alignment between the future challenges and opportunities in the city and JPMorgan Chase’s four philanthropic areas of focus; and
- Opportunities to use the firm’s data, employee expertise and business lending capital to create sustainable solutions.
For more information, visit www.jpmorganchase.com/advancingcities
About JPMorgan Chase & Co.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) is a leading global financial services firm with assets of $2.7 trillion and operations worldwide. The Firm is a leader in investment banking, financial services for consumers and small businesses, commercial banking, financial transaction processing, and asset management. A component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, JPMorgan Chase & Co. serves millions of consumers in the United States and many of the world's most prominent corporate, institutional and government clients under its J.P. Morgan and Chase brands. Information about JPMorgan Chase & Co. is available at www.jpmorganchase.com.
