On June 3, 2021, PHENND hosted its annual K-16 Partnerships June Institute, reimagined for a virtual environment. This year’s theme was focused on interpretation of what we need most, as we emerge from months of pandemic-induced virtual learning, a time during which educational inequalities were simultaneously exacerbated and laid bare.

Community school leaders Martin J. Blank, Ira Harkavy, Jane Quinn, and Lisa R. Villarreal have released a brief, Partnerships for Equity and Excellence: The Community School Strategy, to inform school and community leaders how the American Rescue Act funds can be used to expand community schools.

The City Creative mounts a comprehensive study of placemaking in urban America, tracing its intellectual history and contrasting it with the efforts of people making positive change in their communities today.

A new report from the Community Research Collaborative, In It Together, Community-Based Research Guidelines for Communities and Higher Ed, offers advice for both community-based and campus-based people who want to do collaborative research.

A new report from the Community Research Collaborative, In It Together, Community-Based Research Guidelines for Communities and Higher Ed, offers advice for both community-based and campus-based people who want to do collaborative research.

August 18 - Replacing the neoliberal with the democratic civic university should be an institutional imperative for the US—and, indeed, global—higher education.

May 26 - “Foundations, corporations, and the Biden-Harris Administration can contribute by supporting higher education institutions that engage their range of resources (academic, human, cultural, and economic) with their local communities...”

May 4 - Higher education is deeply implicated in reproducing systemic discrimination and racism in the United States and around the world, postsecondary leaders, students, faculty and staff might humbly consider four steps to advance antiracist, diverse and just democracies locally and globally.

August 5 - The Milwaukee Anchor Collaborative, comprised of major healthcare and educational institutions, has pledged to hire more people of color and spend more with minority-owned businesses in the disadvantaged neighborhoods.

July 29 - A new report from the Brookings Institution calls for federal funding of “anchor institutions” to help sustain them and allow them to reinvest in communities where they are located.

 Once universities had addressed the immediate need to provide continuity of their academic programmes for students, they launched numerous efforts aimed at trying to support and benefit their local communities.

June 17 - Reparations should be a community-based effort, argues Earl Lewis, the founding director of the University of Michigan Center for Social Solutions and former president of the Mellon Foundation. This year, Lewis’s initiative, called “Crafting Democratic Futures: Situating Colleges and Universities in Community-Based Reparations Solutions,” received a $5 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

June 12 - Twelve health systems across the country announced signing the “Impact Purchasing Commitment” to build healthy, equitable, and climateresilient local economies through what and how they spend their dollars.

June 10 - The NHS organizations, local authorities and voluntary and community sectors across mid and south Essex, have pledged to work together to become “anchor” institutions and further support the wellbeing of their local communities.

August 18 - An initiative that will better serve Newark's minority-owned businesses by increasing contract relationships with anchor institutions was launched on 10th of June by Rutgers Business School’s Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CUEED).

June 1 - Silverlode Consulting's third economic impact study for University Hospitals quantifies the health system's role as a major economic driver in Ohio. 

May 19 - A new collaboration was announced by the Murphy Administration of New Jersey. The collaboration is between University Hospital in Newark and L+M Development Partners, Type A Projects, and MSquared under the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency’s (NJHMFA) groundbreaking Hospital Partnership Subsidy Program, through which leading hospitals partner with experienced residential developers to provide vital affordable and supportive housing — including homes for frequent users of emergency services — in their host communities.

March 15 - Comunidad Partners is a real estate investment firm that buys apartment communities, renovates them, and manages them. Comunidad is for-profit, but mission-based. It works in tandem with a nonprofit called Veritas Impact Partners, co-founded by Comunidad managing partner Antonio Marquez, to provide services to its tenants.