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• non-profit bodies (from civic-scale asset support groups through to neighborhood and resident-driven
organizations), for whom it offers a range of tips around promotion, fundraising, and volunteer management;
• charitable foundations, for whom it offers a range of insights into how to support assets;
• individuals with an interest in defending public assets or giving more generally, for whom it offers a range
of ways to get involved and the encouragement that many have already trodden the same path;
• businesses eager to make a community contribution, for whom it suggests ways in which they can
best engage;
• trade unions, for whom defense of assets, and with them public sector jobs, pay, and work conditions,
are paramount;
• urban and public services researchers, for whom it offers many findings and suggestions for further research.
The research that underpins the toolkit
The research that underpins the toolkit was funded via an Urban and Regional Policy Fellowship awarded
by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and was undertaken in the summer and early autumn of
2012. Prior to the award, I worked in my home nation, the United Kingdom, looking at public policy around
cities, community development, and civil society. In recent years, the U.K. has seen many policy developments
— some driven by perceived economic necessity and some by ideology — that all seemed to make it likely
that government, especially central government, would play less of a role in sustaining community and civic
assets and that civil society (individuals, employees, business, unions, charitable foundations, and non-profit
organizations) would be asked to do more. The U.K., particularly England, seemed to be headed to a more
typically U.S. model — high levels of voluntary giving of time and money by the public, and a more decentralized
system in which cities have more powers to innovate.
Following a large U.S.-wide canvassing for interesting policies and projects that had been, or could be, used
in sustaining assets, I selected three metropolitan areas that had the greatest critical mass of interesting ideas:
the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul in Minnesota, the Detroit metro area in Michigan, and Baltimore in
Maryland. I interviewed over 160 individuals from local government, foundations, neighborhood non-profits,
and academic institutions, and completed an extensive literature review during and after the interviews. The
near-final draft of the toolkit was also then circulated to the interviewees and to organizations and initiatives
mentioned but not interviewed.
Summaries | 6