"Anchor institutions are enterprises such as universities and hospitals that are rooted in their local communities by mission, invested capital, or relationships to customers, employees, and vendors. As place-based entities that control vast economic, human, intellectual, and institutional resources, anchor institutions have the potential to bring crucial, and measurable, benefits to local children, families, and communities. All told, U.S. hospitals and universities combined spend over $1 trillion a year, have endowments in excess of $500 billion, and employ 8 percent of our labor force. Increasingly, anchor institutions across the nation are embracing the responsibility their economic impact entails and are expanding their public or nonprofit mission to incorporate what we call an “anchor mission”—consciously applying their long-term, place-based economic power, in combination with their human and intellectual resources, to better the long-term welfare of the communities in which they reside."
"Anchor institutions are nonprofit institutions that once established tend not to move location. Emerging trends related to globalization—such as the decline of manufacturing, the rise of the service sector, and a mounting government fiscal crisis—suggest the growing importance of anchor institutions to local economies. Indeed, in many places, these anchor institutions have surpassed traditional manufacturing corporations to become their region's leading employers. If the economic power of these anchor institutions were more effectively harnessed, they could contribute greatly to community wealth building. The largest and most numerous of such nonprofit anchors are universities and non-profit hospitals (often called "eds and meds").
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These best practices can be extended and adopted to other types of nonprofit anchor institutions such as cultural institutions (e.g., museums and community arts centers), libraries, hospitals, community foundations and other locally-focused philanthropies, faith-based institutions (such as churches, mosques, and synagogues) and community colleges. Indeed, never has the economic role of these institutions been more important.
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Anchor institutions - with the proper incentives and motivation - have the economic potential to leverage their assets and revenues to promote local private sector development through such means as:
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This link between anchor institutions and community wealth building is not merely theoretical. Many churches, for instance, have long sponsored and raised funds for community development corporations (CDCs). Indeed, according to the 2006 census conducted by the National Congress for Community Economic Development, 24 percent of all CDCs—roughly 1,100 total, nationwide—are faith-based.
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