What is an Anchor Institution?
Anchor institutions are enduring organizations that are rooted in their localities. It is difficult for them to leave their surroundings even in the midst of substantial capital flight. The challenge to a growing movement is to encourage these stable local assets to harness their resources in order to address critical issues such as education, economic opportunity, and health. It is difficult to imagine fragile local economies and widening social disparities changing without leveraging stable institutions, especially amidst a decline in government resources. These dynamics have given rise to the concept “anchors” as agents of community and economic development.
What We Do
Engaging government and philanthropy, the Task Force is enhancing anchor institution practices by:
• Bringing together scholars, university presidents and other leaders in higher education, and practitioners;
• Increasing cooperation and alignment among government, anchor institutions, businesses, schools, community organizations and philanthropy;
• Developing strategies to promote interagency government collaboration;
• Providing tools for anchor institutions to enhance their societal missions, address local needs, as well as strengthen democratic, mutually beneficial partnerships between institutions of higher education, schools, and community based organizations;
• Providing tools for anchor institutions to help students develop as democratic citizens who are lifelong contributors to communities and the nation’s well-being.
• Complementing philanthropic strategies to support and strengthen vulnerable communities.
AITF Management and Administration
The Task Force is led initially by the University of Pennsylvania and administered by Marga Incorporated.
The University of Pennsylvania’s experiences in recent decades provide a persuasive case as to how an anchor institution can comprehensively contribute to a neighborhood and city, by tapping its intellectual, social, economic, human, and physical capital to transform its environment. Numerous lessons have been drawn from this story in the form of the Anchor Institutions Toolkit (Netter Center, 2009), which provides a useful guide for anchor institutions on how to simultaneously strengthen their purpose and surroundings and the results of a Penn-sponsored national conference, “Urban Anchors in the 21st Century: A Commitment to Place, Growth and Community” (October 2007). The Penn Institute for Urban Research, co-directed by Eugenie Birch and Susan Wachter, coordinated the development and publication of a series of task force reports titled Retooling HUD for a Catalytic Federal Government: A Report to Secretary Shaun Donovan, which included the “Anchor Institutions” report. Eugenie Birch was also the co-chair on the “Anchor Institutions Task Force” report. The Director of Penn’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships, Ira Harkavy, is the chair of the Task Force. Marga Incorporated is a consulting firm dedicated to strengthening partnerships and philanthropic initiatives through research and strategic guidance.