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City Accelerator Grant Offers Philly Chance to Improve Services for Low-Income Residents

August 26, 2014 Category: Uncategorized

Updated: Philadelphia was selected on September 4 as one of three participants in the first City Accelerator program. Read more in a City of Philadelphia press release.

The City of Philadelphia has submitted a proposal to a national grant competition designed to help cities develop innovative solutions to persistent social and economic problems.

The program, titled City Accelerator, is an initiative of Living Cities, a collaborative of 22 foundations and financial institutions that are investing in cities worldwide. Citi Foundation is providing funding and technical assistance.

There will be three rounds with three grantees each, totaling $3 million in funds. Six finalists were chosen for the first round, and City Accelerator is now crowdsourcing reviews of their pitches through a platform on Governing.com, a news site that reports on municipal governance across the country. Readers can leave comments on the proposal pages, which will be considered when selecting the grantees.

Philadelphia’s proposal states that it would:

  • work to increase awareness of tax payer assistance programs and reduce barriers to accessing those programs;
  • increase capacity to target residents who would reap the greatest benefit from the above efforts; and
  • apply innovative strategies to change how programs work, revamping policies and procedures to increase enrollment in assistance programs.

It’s not exactly clear how the city plans to achieve this — but the pitch video mentions using behavioral science to get more people to access programs and benefits like the Homestead Exemption, which, the video states, is vastly underutilized.

From our Partners

Philadelphia is up against Albuquerque, Denver, Louisville, Nashville and San Jose for the first round. The three winning cities will be announced in eight days. Watch Philadelphia’s pitch video below:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlpIZePuDrE&w=560&h=315]

Photo via Flickr user Bob Snyder

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