2017 Challenge Winner

Denver: An Entrepreneurial City

Problem

Governments today – at the federal, state, and local level – must accomplish more with fewer resources while ensuring taxpayer funds are wisely spent. Decision making and problem solving often rely on institutional inertia and a top-down managerial approach, making the entire organization less responsive to constituent demands. By contrast, startup businesses and entrepreneurs generally embrace innovative solutions that leverage unique insights into action, regardless of where those insights come from. In short, governments tend to operate as a hierarchy; entrepreneurs and startups tend to operate as a network. The challenge is how to apply an entrepreneurial mindset and skillset to the public sector to both spur innovation and manage resources, creating workable solutions to pressing problems.

Solution

The innovative Governmental Entrepreneurial Leadership Accelerator (GELA) fellowship explores a new model of governmental problem solving and leadership development, graduating 30 fellows in 2 years, building a new model of professional development and collaboration. GELA begins with a boot camp, which integrates a range of books and articles, guest speakers from the entrepreneurial community and hands-on exercises. This boot camp was followed by six weeks of work on difficult city problems, from bridging the digital divide to addressing overdoses from the opioid epidemic. During pitch night, fellows pitched their ideas to public sector leaders such as Mayor Hancock and Stephanie Copeland, a member of the governor’s cabinet.

The City of West Sacramento Kids’ Home Run

Problem

Since its incorporation in 1987, West Sacramento has been a regional leader for infill housing and economic development. The city’s workforce development activities however, have yet to mature with the changing economic landscape. Once a blue collar city across the river from Sacramento, West Sacramento has developed tremendously in the past 28 years into a hub of research and development, advanced manufacturing, food processing, and logistics. The education system has yet to fully respond to the altered business environment, and the area has one of the highest unemployment rates in the region.

Solution

The Kids’ Home Run is an educational and jobs initiative that combines new and existing programs in the lives of children ages four to eighteen. The initiative supports improved alignment of the education system and workforce needs, providing classroom instruction and on the job training for entry level careers while ensuring high school youth enroll and complete community college, all through partnerships between the city, school district, community college, and local nonprofits. The initiative is composed of four programs: Universal Preschool for every four year old, a guaranteed $50 college savings account for kindergartners, guaranteed internships for high school students and a college promise program for one year of fee free community college. Voters approved funding the initiative in November through a sales tax initiative, and our business community, school district and community college district have all come together to support it.

Community College Gap Assistance

Problem

In 2015, a Nebraska Chamber of Commerce Survey of 1,200 employers found that 52% had experienced difficulty hiring qualified employees within the previous year, and one fourth said that limited availability of labor and skilled employees was limiting growth. A number of states, including Nebraska, face workforce shortages in technical job fields that require skills certificates. Despite these shortages, no state or federal aid existed for non-credit community college courses and skills certificates. This created problems both for the economy at large, and individuals. On the state level, it restricted economic growth. On the individual level, it shut employees out from a variety of well-paying careers.

Solution

The Community College Gap Assistance program addresses workforce needs through financial aid to lower-income students taking non-credit courses, helping them to build the 21st century skills they need to work in competitive industries. Skills certificates and degrees have a proven return for employees that seek them. We’re taking a proven way to create career opportunities, work certificates and degrees, and aid is focused on training for industries experiencing workforce shortages. Furthermore, after completing the program, those that have degrees can continue through the career ladder and have a greater ability to pursue an associate’s degree or field-specific training.

Nebraska’s effort builds on Iowa’s success by expanding eligibility so low-income adults can apply. By expanding gap assistance program eligibility, more workers can gain access to in-demand jobs and Nebraska leverages our existing under-employed workforce.

BankLocal

Problem

Over 90% of companies in Rhode Island are small businesses, employing much of the private sector workforce. Entrepreneurs need access to affordable capital to launch and expand businesses, and the consolidation of the national banking industry has made it increasingly difficult for small-scale businesses to find lenders who are responsive to their needs. At the same time, the remaining local community banks and credit unions that are most likely to offer flexible financing arrangements to small businesses are often capital constrained. Challenges obtaining access to capital have historically been particularly acute for women and minority owned businesses, with a recent national NMSDC survey finding that half of minority owned businesses have been unable to obtain financing to grow their operations over the past four years.

Solution

BankLocal moves state cash deposits to local community banks and credit unions as an incentive for small business lending, using some of the $500 million to $1 billion in state cash on hand at any point during the year. Participating lending institutions are eligible to receive a cash deposit equal to the amount of each small business loan the institution makes, up to $250,000. Loans must be made to businesses within the state of Rhode Island, to companies with 100 employees or less. Loans to women or minority owned businesses, or to businesses founded by first-time entrepreneurs, are eligible for a 2-to-1 match. Deposits are “sticky”, with the state pledging to keep the deposits at the lending institutions for the duration of the matched loans.

Statewide Imagination Library Partnership

Problem

85% of detainees in juvenile detention facilities are functionally illiterate. This is not a coincidence. Children who show up to kindergarten with no prior exposure to books—an outcome far too frequent in our society—do not have the neurological infrastructure to learn. Given the crucial years of early brain development, they may never have the capacity to realize their true potential. Lack of quality early childhood education leads to a host of societal problems, including increasing the likelihood of committing any crime, committing a violent crime, using drugs, becoming a teen parent, relying on government assistance, while quality early childhood education substantially increases the chances for a host of societal goods, including graduating from high school, going to college, owning a home, and having a productive career. Lack of affordable, quality, early childhood education programs is a real problem in our society.

Solution

Investing in the neurological, social, and emotional development of our children is the smartest investment we can make. This program provides every child in the state with a total of 60 books over the first five years of their lives, sending one age appropriate book per month for $1.10/book through a partnership with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, who has negotiated rates with Penguin Press and the USPS, and who has an early childhood panel of experts who select the books. The program works best when the state provides 50% of the funding for the entire state, and a non-profit organization in each county raises a matching 50% of the funds for the eligible children in that county. For Arkansas, the total cost of the program would be roughly $3 million, with the state’s share being $1.5 million.

Supporting Workers in the Gig Economy

Problem

New technology has yielded a modern economy that allows greater flexibility for independent contractors, but because many of their jobs do not come with health insurance, retirement plans or paid leave, these workers are more vulnerable than many of their counterparts in the traditional workforce.

Solution

This proposal focuses on addressing the changing dynamic of work with a system of portable benefits that would allow those in the independent workforce, to access basic benefits available to workers in the traditional workforce. This safety net will save taxpayers as a whole in the long run while also caring for workers in the new economy.

Denver: An Entrepreneurial City

Problem

Solution

The City of West Sacramento Kids’ Home Run

Problem

Solution

Community College Gap Assistance

Problem

Solution

BankLocal

Problem

Solution

Statewide Imagination Library Partnership

Problem

Solution

Supporting Workers in the Gig Economy

Problem

Solution

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