Additional Impact

Network for Southern Economic Mobility

Hollingsworth Funds

Challenge

While boasting one of the most beautiful downtown transformations and a rapidly growing population, the city of Greenville, South Carolina was also one of the hardest places to rise out of poverty - especially if you were black, and especially if you were a black male. The challenge was to develop collective community leadership to address the main barriers to economic mobility.

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Solution

In 2018, a team from Greenville, SC joined MDC's Network for Southern Economic Mobility along with three other cities to explore the hard reality exposed by Raj Chetty's Equality of Opportunity Project, that Greenville was one of the hardest places to rise out of poverty in the country. Hollingsworth Funds - the program sponsor - hired Openfields to serve as the facilitating partner, providing expert facilitation, research and data analysis, and strategic planning for the collective impact project.

Watch the highlights from our capstone event:

Notes

“Our work with Openfields has helped us see the limits in our own thinking and begin to generate ideas and alternatives to challenge and transform the status quo."
Dr. Jackie Counts • Director of the Center for Public Partnerships & Research at the University of Kansas
Evaluating Firearm Suicide Prevention
Firearm Suicide Prevention Learning Cohort
Right for Kids Community of Practice
Reach Out & Read Community Impact Dashboards
Social Solidarity Among Parents in North Carolina
The Biophilic Institute Strategy Sprint
Kansas Future Fellows
Accelerating Women in Civic Leadership
Space for Humanity Strategy Sprint
Sustainability Leadership Initiative
2Gen Program & Data Strategies
Career Design at Stanford GSB
Purpose Ambassadors
Network for Southern Economic Mobility