Catalyst Fund Grantees

New models of education are taking on very real barriers that constrain many students. Workshop Learning’s Workshop U pilot program seeks to create a college environment focused on real world learning and skills for recent high school graduates, centering traditionally excluded populations. The pilot program aims to reduce the cost of the college experience, help students develop valuable workplace skills that serve them within and across careers, and ground students’ learning journey in a deep understanding of who they are and what they want from life. By working with a cross-sector of partners and organizations, Workshop U is creating a model for collaboration, iteration and long-term systematic adoption of this educational model.

ProMedica Foundation (“ProMedica”), the philanthropic arm of the ProMedica healthcare system, has partnered with the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative (“GHHI”) and the Philadelphia Energy Authority (“PEA”) on 1,000 Healthy Homes, a program that leverages the work of these three organizations to preserve affordable homes and improve health outcomes. 1,000 Healthy Homes is based on the GHHI Intervention Model, which is a unique, comprehensive process encompassing outreach, centralized intake, resident education, home assessment, health-related housing interventions and resident follow-ups. The partners anticipate completing housing interventions in at least 1,000 Philadelphia homes over three years impacting approximately 4,000 residents. By demonstrating outcomes, ProMedica hopes to bolster the case for increased healthcare investment to address the social determinants of health that result in numerous inequities in Philadelphia and across the country.

Philadelphia Contemporary has launched a Lived Culture program with the goal of creating an entire series of programs devoted to the practice of lived culture – the artistry of living and thriving in the everyday. Funding will support two major boundary-pushing projects: Supine Horizons (2022), which focuses on rest, and More Than the Sum of Our Parts (2023), which focuses on food and culinary traditions. It is unique because it centers and institutionalizes everyday creative practices within a contemporary art museum setting, and challenges the traditional way of viewing these practices. PC believes that the Lived Culture curatorial program has the potential to help shift the contemporary art world at large. The hope is that this program will begin to change the discourse around contemporary art, particularly who it is for and who gets to determine what kinds of art get produced and presented.

Philly Rise is a five-year real estate accelerator program for emerging black and brown real estate developers designed to provide them with the training, affordable capital, technical assistance and networks they need to grow their companies. A cohort of 10-12 black and brown real estate developers will be recruited into Philly Rise each year with each developer receiving 14 weeks of high-level training, a committed pool of capital that they can promptly access for their projects, mentorship and coaching through the predevelopment and construction phases of their projects, and access to an ecosystem of developers, architects, contractors, and other residential development professionals in Philadelphia. The Philly Rise accelerator brings together a range of partner organizations (Black Squirrel, Urban Land Institute, Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation and AR Spruce) to provide developer cohorts with these resources.

Food Connect is challenging the conventional wisdom underlying the traditional hunger relief model using effective data-driven designed technology. Funds will support the design and testing of a Partner Portal, that aims to address three critical problems plaguing the hunger relief network: lack of predictability, communication barriers and seamless collaboration. The Portal will enable large frontline hunger organizations, food donors and food donation recipients to easily communicate needs and availability to take advantage of the abundance of existing resources that are being massively underutilized. The Portal will act as a one-stop-shop for hunger relief organizations whose singular goal is to feed the hungry. This integrated approach to connecting food donors’ resources, recipient needs, and real-time transport has not been addressed in the field of hunger-relief.

Seventy-five percent of individuals in the United States from the lowest economic quartile who started post-secondary degrees, never finished. College Unbound (CU) is a contemporary accredited college that aims to reinvent the higher education experience to address the very real barriers that constrain underserved adult learners. A convenient schedule and support system tailored to working and parenting adults initially attracts students. They stay engaged because of the small cohort model and transformational curriculum that develops high-value, field-specific knowledge that builds on their interests and provides credit for life experience. After successfully completing the rigorous, project-based curriculum, students are awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Organizational Leadership and Change. CU partners with nonprofits and businesses to enable access to CU’s target adult population and to embed degree completion in the workplace. In January, 2022 College Unbound (CU) Philadelphia launched two pilot cohorts in partnership with the Philadelphia Housing Authority and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. The business model limits student debt and aims to further economic advancement.

The neighborhoods adjacent to the Drexel University campus – Mantua and Powelton Village – are rapidly changing. Part of a federally designated Promise Zone program created by President Obama that identifies them as high-poverty but also high opportunity, they are experiencing growth. This often means that existing residents have a difficult time remaining in their homes, due to rapid gentrification.  Students also look to this area for more affordable housing options than in University City. In an attempt to ensure that the residents who live in these communities that surround this anchor institution can benefit from its growth, Drexel University’s Writers Room will develop and pilot an intergenerational co-living housing model. They will leverage their relationships with other neighborhood partners to include the voices of residents and students alike in shaping the pilot. Begun in 2014 at the Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships, Writers Room is a university-community literary arts program that uses creative programming and art for social justice. Their mission is to develop inclusive, intergenerational, co-creative places that foster connection and community.

The Philadelphia region is home to hundreds of arts and heritage properties. Challenges faced by organizations holding these assets include ongoing reliance on contributed income and a lack of capacity to manage and maintain their properties. This is financially unsustainable and too often leads to problems with physical stewardship. In response, Social Impact Commons formed the Cultural Equity Realty Trust (CERT) as a community-based, nonprofit development organization with the purpose of developing, activating and sustaining arts and heritage real estate through direct community stewardship and ownership. CERT will develop a portfolio of properties under common management whose diversity in income streams and balance sheet holdings can act as a platform for increased stabilization and efficiency for the arts and heritage community with regard to its real property.

Since the coronavirus has created a barrier between audiences and live theater performances, theater companies across the world are looking for solutions to continue engaging with their audiences. The Wilma is seizing the opportunity to reimagine how they make theater and how they might take the lessons learned during the pandemic and change the field at large. Recognizing that audiences crave live theater while needing to stay at home, they are exploring a hybrid model of theater-making for the next season that marries the digital world with live performance. The Wilma envisions a multifaceted approach that involves altering their physical space on two levels: (i) embedding HD cameras throughout the theater to film productions and livestream them while (ii) changing the audience configuration of the auditorium to provide a safe, socially distanced experience.

This grant was made as part of Barra’s Reimagining Theater for Changing Times initiative for projects that reinvent how performing arts organizations can present work at a time when social distancing has caused many to cancel their 2020 seasons. These companies are considering how to not only safely present to audiences but are also being thoughtful about incorporating social justice issues into their programming and engaging diverse audiences. Selected projects stood out for their willingness to be daring, think creatively, work collaboratively and share their learning broadly about new models that can be used throughout the pandemic and beyond.

Given their deep community connections and variety of existing programs, People’s Light has the capacity and experience to test unique methods for entertaining the community where they are. They will roll out newly developed socially distanced programming, (which may include the Beards truck as a potential approach) providing new experiences to their community partners that are immediate and timely. If successful, these models of community-based delivery will allow them to be more responsive to current events and community needs and to honor the experiences of community members, especially Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC). Others will be able to learn from these experiments, as COVID-19 wears on and into the future.

This grant was made as part of Barra’s Reimagining Theater for Changing Times initiative for projects that reinvent how performing arts organizations can present work at a time when social distancing has caused many to cancel their 2020 seasons. These companies are considering how to not only safely present to audiences but are also being thoughtful about incorporating social justice issues into their programming and engaging diverse audiences. Selected projects stood out for their willingness to be daring, think creatively, work collaboratively and share their learning broadly about new models that can be used throughout the pandemic and beyond.

COVID-19 social distancing restrictions have made anything but the smallest gatherings impossible for the foreseeable future. As an organization used to presenting cabaret style performances in small venues, The Bearded Ladies Cabaret (“Beards”) quickly shifted from delivering programming inside to taking it outside. Joining forces with other organizations throughout the region, they are developing a mobile arts venue that will bring diverse, small-scale experiences to open spaces in neighborhoods. The truck will open out into a stage complete with speakers and other technical equipment, transforming into an alternative performance space for the Beards and their partners. At a time when social justice is at the forefront of conversation, people are looking to engage with each other in new ways. The arts can help to accomplish this. This mobile venue will serve as a forum for connecting with people in their own neighborhoods, providing an opportunity for broader engagement and access.

This grant was made as part of Barra’s Reimagining Theater for Changing Times initiative for projects that reinvent how performing arts organizations can present work at a time when social distancing has caused many to cancel their 2020 seasons. These companies are considering how to not only safely present to audiences but are also being thoughtful about incorporating social justice issues into their programming and engaging diverse audiences. Selected projects stood out for their willingness to be daring, think creatively, work collaboratively and share their learning broadly about new models that can be used throughout the pandemic and beyond.

Barra’s investment in The Philadelphia Learning Collaborative (PLC) aims to further embed the innovative education approaches the Foundation has previously supported. Through a “thematic review,” in 2018 Barra looked back at several investments it had made in new school models including Science Leadership Academy, Building 21, Vaux Big Picture and the Workshop School and found that there were challenges to embedding these approaches into practice. These schools (and others) came together to address their need to strengthen the student-centered deeper learning practices in their schools and spread the innovation to other public, independent and charter schools interested in implementation. The PLC is an efficient way for the schools to collectively address these challenges as well as some of the obstacles they face working with colleges and universities to build a pipeline of educators prepared to teach at their schools, professional development, authentic assessment and establishing real-world connections for learning beyond the classroom.

Value-Based Care is an emerging practice in the healthcare field; shifting the current “fee for service” system, which incentivizes volume/quantity, to one that focuses on quality and outcomes. Children’s Crisis Treatment Center (CCTC) will be the first children’s behavioral health provider in Philadelphia to fully embrace this shift through a transformation of their organizational practices. They will build out a new data analytics system, creating the ability to conduct the sophisticated data management and analyses required, and develop new ways of working both administratively and programmatically including piloting a new value-based contract/payment system with up to two programs. Through these efforts, they will increase the focus on quality and outcomes for the children and families they serve. Their approach has the potential for a ripple effect and could serve as a model for others locally and nationally.

The ongoing commitment of residents and community-based organizations to the Kensington section of Philadelphia has recently been bolstered by significant investments in the neighborhood. At the same time, economic forces associated with city-wide development threaten to change the neighborhood and make it unaffordable and culturally unwelcoming for current residents. Through a partnership with Shift Capital—a nationally-recognized impact developer—Impact Services Corporation will work with neighborhood stakeholders to create an emerging model for supporting the business corridor based on existing community land trusts. The Kensington Corridor Trust (Trust) will support sustainable and equitable community development through thoughtful real estate acquisition, community engagement, broad local ownership, small business lending and technical assistance. There are a few things that make this initiative different from other economic development efforts. The Trust will be controlled by a board of majority community stakeholders who represent the cultural and socioeconomic diversity of the current neighborhood and will hold and manage the properties. This community trust also aims to incorporate the commercial corridor, whereas other trusts have typically focused on residential community ownership. Neighborhoods around Philadelphia as well as other cities are watching the development of the Trust model as they consider how to avoid the economic inequality and displacement that often result from rapid gentrification.

Through NOW/NEXT the Institute will test four new models of flexible, time-limited exhibitions that engage visitors in current science and technology topics. They plan to upend the traditional museum model that depends on core exhibitions that last a decade. If effective, they will create a new approach for museum visitors’ experience—one where the majority of space is dedicated to relevant, hands-on learning and much less on static or long-term installations.

Community Legal Services and Regional Housing Legal Services will test a proactive approach to mass evictions in Philadelphia while advancing creative strategies to preserve affordable housing. The approach will leverage a unique moment related to the housing affordability crisis, making Philadelphia among the first cities to employ a preventative approach to mass evictions that engages both tenants and landlords in solutions that work for all and pave the way for sustainable investment.

As the music ensemble-in-residence at the new Cherry Street Pier, Orchestra 2001 has a unique opportunity to experiment in this new space and leverage its exposure to diverse audiences. By engaging viewers in the creation of new music, the Composer at Work window provides an opportunity to raise funds from audiences and gather the data to track future engagement. If they are successful, the model can be easily adapted by others. This project leverages technology to fill a gap between performers and audiences so that the excitement and energy generated by experiencing something new, is not lost when a viewer walks away.

The National Theater in London recently launched a new technology that allows hearing impaired audience members to access captioning through smart glasses that harness augmented reality to project captions within the user’s line of vision. Working with the local office of the National Theater’s technology partner, Accenture, the Temple University Institute on Disabilities will adapt the technology for use by regional theaters, who might not otherwise have the resources to develop such a tool. This approach overcomes existing cost and staffing barriers to providing closed captioning at every performance, allowing more equitable access for hearing impaired audiences. The Institute will extend the technology to include American Sign Language and Spanish language captioning.

Day wage programs are being tested in cities around the country as a means to reduce street homelessness, increase connections to services and housing, and encourage re-entry into the workforce. Unlike traditional workforce development programs that seek to move participants into structured work environments, day wage programs recognize that participants first need to build a connection to basic services—in time, they will hopefully move towards readiness for employment. Together with Mental Health Partnerships (MHP), Mural Arts will introduce a day wage program in Philadelphia which will tap into Mural Arts’ experience providing training to marginalized populations. Prior to launching the program, a research and design phase will result in a white paper outlining policy, practice and evaluation recommendations. The City of Philadelphia’s Office of Homeless Services, Commerce Department and Office of Workforce Development as well as representatives of civic, behavioral health, workforce development and college/university partners will be consulted throughout the project. Following the design process, there will be two pilots of the program to allow for testing and learning.

AIM Academy has developed a research-based methodology that has proven to be successful in helping children with learning challenges succeed. Through their AIM Institute for Learning & Research, AIM has taken this approach and piloted it in the School District of Philadelphia to address struggling readers from low socioeconomic backgrounds who have a cognitive profile that is similar to children with learning differences. Given the limited reach of in-person trainings, AIM is developing AIM Pathways, a robust online platform that will decouple the opportunity to learn AIM’s approach from in-person courses allowing for more teachers to engage with this pedagogy. Because AIM Pathways is an online resource that is available anytime, anywhere, teachers will be able to continue to engage with the content and use its case study based curriculum in real time when identifying learning barriers in the classroom. AIM’s relationship with the Haskins Lab at Yale University’s Global Language and Literacy Innovation Hub provides a strong partner for designing the platform and dissemination model. The platform’s alignment with the goals of the national Grade Level Reading campaign provides opportunities for nationwide dissemination.

There are 14,000 people with autism or intellectual/developmental disabilities (I/DD) waiting for services in Pennsylvania due to lack of funding or staff. In AVAIL technology, a start-up based in Ireland, KenCrest sees a new way of providing services, empowering their clients, measuring outcomes and reducing costs. Through AVAIL’s simple-by-design mobile application, KenCrest’s staff will help clients set up goals, record personalized tutorials and then monitor the client’s independent progress. From setting the table for dinner to assembling a product at a work site, AVAIL helps clients accomplish activities that they might otherwise depend on others to help them complete. KenCrest will partner with another human services, JEVS, to pilot this new technology, which they believe has the potential to provide a more person-centered and person-driven approach to client care—and one that could be adopted by others in the field.

Adam Foss’s experience as an Assistant District Attorney (ADA) in Boston convinced him that prosecutors are the most influential actors in the criminal justice system. One ADA’s discretion and decisions can make the difference between a young person being charged with multiple felonies and beginning their adulthood in prison, or being diverted from the system without a criminal record and giving them second chance. By providing ADAs with the training and resources to approach their jobs with compassion, knowledge and creativity, he believes he can make a substantial impact on thousands, if not millions, of lives. Foss founded Prosecutor Impact in 2016 and began to seek partners who would be willing to test a radical new way to prepare ADAs for work. PI’s model is very new, but grounded in experience and research and tested on a small scale in other cities. This proposal would support an unprecedented partnership in Philadelphia’s District Attorney’s office that will allow them to credibly test their eight-week program for incoming prosecutors.

CultureWorks’ management commons approach—which is grounded in fiscal sponsorship—is a potential re-definition of capacity building: one in which they start to look at how to encourage capacity growth and scale for the field as a whole through local management commons, rather than the growth and scale of individual cultural organizations. CultureWorks will create a cohort commons model to address the needs of midsize organizations. They will serve as the partner—or “Copilot”—to organizations by providing back office services while the organizations retain all of the key elements of independence when it comes to mission, programs, constituent relationships and governance. In addition, CoPilot participants become part of a cohort with access to learning and networking opportunities with their peers and the chance to pursue solutions to common problems that they would normally struggle to tackle individually. This new model for management of midsize cultural organizations will be deployed simultaneously in two newly established CultureWorks’ programs in other cities, allowing for testing and growth across markets.

There is a growing interest in microcredentialing through online learning. It has the potential to provide educational opportunities for those who need more flexibility; however, retention for online learners is low. HospitalityTogether (HT) brings together nontraditional online learning through MIT’s edX with the Checkpoints student program to create opportunities for youth who choose to explore pathways other than college due to financial and personal barriers. The curriculum will be developed by a Credentialing Committee that includes Philadelphia’s top chefs and restaurateurs, who have the credibility to define new signals and standards for the hospitality marketplace. HT will expose participants to career pathways in the hospitality industry and provide access and encouragement to ongoing learning in support of career advancement. Ultimately HT envisions their program eventually serving as a model for the national restaurant industry.