Ideas that Impact
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Unleashing the Potential of Los Angeles: The My LA2050 Grants Challenge Report

20/3/2014

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Last year, I had the chance to discover what happens when you crowdsource ideas for $1,000,000 to shape the future of a major metropolitan city, Los Angeles.  

In February of 2013, the Goldhirsh Foundation launched LA2050, a movement shaping and building the future of Los Angeles. Los Angeles is a tale of two cities- breathtaking beauty, poisoning pollution, extraordinary wealth, dire poverty- the paradoxes abound.  
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The LA2050 Report provided a snapshot of LA today across 8 indicators of wellbeing (arts & culture, education, environment, health, housing, income & employment, safety, social connectedness)  The LA2050 Report projected how LA might be in 2050 if things continued along the current trajectory. 

LA2050 sought to catalyze a different conversation- a new conversation- about how to bring Angelenos together to harness the creativity, passion and human capital to invent a new future for LA- a future that unleashes everyone's potential.  

To that end, LA2050 initiated an open contest, My LA2050 Grants Challenge, for fresh ideas for LA's future.  Angelenos created 279 submissions.  70,000 people voted on the projects. Goldhirsh Foundation invested $1M in the future of LA and awarded 10 grants of $100,000 to the open contest winners: one project per indicator + 2 wild cards.  LA2050 researched the 279 submissions to identify trends and to highlight promising citizen visions.  
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LA2050's latest report: 

Unleashing the Potential of Los Angeles identifies themes and trends that emerged in the My LA2050 Grants Challenge. 

Highlights from the report:

1) Collaboration - overwhelmingly proposals came from partnerships and/or proposed partnerships to achieve social impact

2) Cross Indicator Themes emerged: 
  1. Youth Engagement
  2. Technology
  3. Public Space
  4. Pop up/Mobile
  5. Design & Innovation
  6. Transportation
  7. The Sharing Economy
  8. Social Enterprise & Artpreneurs
  9. Storytelling 
  10. LA2050 Amplifiers

3) Alternative Metrics for Impact: Appendix III

Appendix III shares interesting, innovative ways that projects proposed to evaluate their impact.  Measurement and evaluation are increasingly the focus in the impact sector. Better feedback leads to better results and identifying new metrics for impact may 

The volume, breadth and creativity of the My LA2050 Grant submissions were inspiring!   It was a privilege to work on this report with an All Star Team: Tara Roth, Shauna Nep and Maite Hernandez Zubeldia
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