CIVIC LEADERSHIP
The Cambridge Community Foundation is committed to thinking big and pursuing bold, innovative ideas to solve our city’s most pressing problems. Founded in 1916 with a visionary gift for scholarships, the Foundation’s history has always been about the future.
Today, we’re uniquely positioned to spark hyper-local solutions—we’re an independent organization with deep knowledge of issues and the community; we hold relationships with the City, universities, nonprofits, businesses, and donors; and we have the capacity to foster action, leverage resources, and contribute funds to solve intractable social issues.
Our civic leadership includes three core functions: research, engagement, and ideas.
We commission research to help identify priorities, set shared goals, and spark innovative and effective solutions for our city. In keeping with our mission of helping make Cambridge a just, equitable and vibrant city, we are committed to providing our community with a deep understanding of the strengths and challenges in our community. Our original research to date including reports Boom Town/Hometown (2017), Equity & Innovation Cities (2021), and Cash Empowers (2023), shed light on on the growing income and wealth disparities in a powerful economy.
The Equity & Innovations Cities report confirmed Cambridge is a leader among the nation’s innovation cities, and through a decade of data, told the story of how the city’s unprecedented prosperity has benefited some residents, while others, primarily Black and low-income residents, have been left behind. We convened a series of community conversations around the research to help drive the development of a new civic agenda for Cambridge. Our most recent data brief, Cash Empowers, reveals startling facts on the pressures faced by low-income families eligible for Rise Up Cambridge, the City’s non-lottery cash assistance program. Explore our research reports.
Forthcoming research in 2025 will include a focus on the efficacy and impact of Rise Up Cambridge, the city-wide cash assistance program; analysis of the state of Cambridge’s nonprofit sector; and updated data from our Equity & Innovation Cities report.
Engagement
Collaboration is one of the Foundation’s four values. It will take collective action, deep partnerships, and strategic investments to solve our city’s biggest problems. We believe everyone can play a role in ensuring a vibrant, just, and equitable Cambridge.
Convening is a unique power of the Foundation. We bring together sectors of the community to understand issues, build collaboration, and craft collective solutions. Our research serves not only to inform but to invite the community to come together in conversation and collective action, so we can leverage the city’s unique assets to reverse troubling trends. We host community events and conversations where everyone is invited to the table to engage in learning about and problem-solving the issues facing Cambridge.
Ideas
We seek solutions to local problems from the ground up through creative, bold thinking. We honor the contributions of every member of the community and believe in the power of hyperlocal ideas to take on our most intractable social issues.
Our civic leadership work aims to find and foster great ideas that can improve quality of life for everyone in our city. Our staff regularly engage in public forums—from City Council meetings to regional and national conferences and media—lending an independent voice with deep knowledge of our community and the power of philanthropy. We listen to our community members, donors, nonprofits, businesses, and local government to understand different perspectives on the city’s needs.
And we follow up words with action: by investing in ideas both big and small and building cross-sector coalitions, the Foundation works to help ensure lasting, equitable change.
