Global Detroit is dedicated to uplifting Southeast Michigan's immigrant communities and mobilizing immigrant potential. Global Detroit was launched by New Solutions Partner Steve Tobocman with the groundbreaking Global Detroit study, funded by the New Economy Initiative of Southeast Michigan, the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, and the Skillman Foundation. Global Detroit is entirely managed by New Solutions partners Steve Tobocman, who serves as its director, and Sloan Herrick, its deputy director.
To date, the Global Detroit Initiative has helped launch over a half dozen distinct initiatives in southeast Michigan to make the region more welcoming and to capitalize on the economic opportunity that the international population and connections bring.
Global Detroit has raised over $7 million in philanthropic, corporate, government, and individual funding has been raised for innovative initiatives identified in the Global Detroit study, including international student retention, the Welcoming Michigan campaign, an urban neighborhood microenterprise training and lending program, the Global Detroit Welcome Mat network of immigration and social services, Cultural Ambassadors, a nearshoring initiative, and operation funding for Global Detroit.
Sarah serves as a policy associate for Michigan Future, Inc., a non-partisan, non-profit think tank whose goal is to be a source of new ideas on how Michigan can succeed as a world class community in a knowledge-driven economy.
Sarah contributed policy research to the 2017 report, Good-paying Careers for All Michiganders: A 21st Century state policy agenda. The agenda is based on an understanding of how technology and globalization have changed the world of work, and what Michigan needs to do to adapt. The three main policy levers it identifies are: education, placemaking, and sharing prosperity. We provide strategic thinking around the campaign to advance this policy agenda.
In addition, we facilitate learning conversations among educators and leaders who influence education on the 21st century skills that we should be building in kids.
Sarah regularly blogs for Michigan Future on education reform, changing demographics, placemaking, transit, and other state policy issues.
Michigan Future Schools was a high school accelerator designed to help launch new high schools at scale that substantially increased the proportion of Detroit students graduating from high school college-ready and ultimately earning college degrees. Before the program ended on June 30, 2016, MFS supported the launch of 11 open-enrollment high schools in Detroit––nine charter and two DPS––and provided around $800,000 of funding for each school. Additionally, MFS staff provided vital capacity building supports to help high school leaders understand college-readiness and design high schools intended to meet their ambitious goals.
From 2012-2016, New Solutions helped provide strategic support to MFS, with New Solutions partner Sarah Szurpicki serving as the organization's Strategic Development Manager. She provided coordination, evaluation, and reporting support, as well as strategic thought around advocacy, leadership development, and improving program efficacy.
The Michigan Credit Union League’s Urban Task Force retained New Solutions Group to research and develop individual and collective action opportunities for credit unions that would improve the financial resiliency of Detroit residents. New Solutions conducted a national best practice scan, researched financial conditions in Detroit, and conducted interviews and focus groups with nonprofits who focus on financial health and asset building for low-income Detroiters to explore ideas and resources for improving credit union offerings. By facilitating conversations with Task Force members and interviewing credit union staff, New Solutions was able to develop a sense of how to prioritize the possibilities we identified.
New Solutions produced a report that summarizes the research and provides a number of ideas that credit unions could pursue, some individually, and others collectively. While this is an area where innovation is occurring around the country, Detroit’s credit unions could seize the opportunity to break new ground in serving underserved (unbanked and underbanked) individuals. By pursuing banking relationships with these populations with intentionality, and carefully reducing the barriers underserved individuals experience to traditional banking relationships, credit unions can go far in improving the financial health of Detroiters.
New Solutions conducted an extensive report that blended quantitative and qualitative methods to create a set of strategies for leaders in Philadelphia to undertake to attract new residents. The project began with a study on the efficacy of resident attraction strategies undertaken by other U.S. cities, explored Philadelphia’s competitive advantages in resident attraction, and blended these findings to inform the design of such initiatives for Philadelphia.
A wide-ranging set of interviews with community leaders and focus groups with new residents gave the project critical local context to ensure that recommendations were relevant, feasible, and respectful of Philly's authentic assets and existing communities. The solutions that resulted included both policy and systems change approaches, and were based on the concept that Philadelphia should start with its great strengths--and build on them.
New Solutions Group assisted the Michigan Municipal League with a pilot community engagement project that eventually fed into their PlacePlans work (a major initiative today). New Solutions facilitated placemaking pop-ups in Berkley and Utica that were designed to both test out a different use of public space and to collect resident feedback and ideas.
Each of these projects involved ongoing civic engagement that meaningfully engaged both community leaders and city representatives in the design of the pop-up that was held during a summer festival. New Solutions then used the events to gather community input and produce a set of recommendations.
MML publicly released the report from Berkley as model of civic engagement in placemaking in 2014 (you can download it here), and went on to support Berkley's placemaking efforts over two years.
The report Placemaking in Legacy Cities: Opportunities and Good Practices, a report prepared by New Solutions for the Center for Community Progress, explores how residents and leaders in Legacy Cities have used placemaking principles to transform blighted public spaces into revitalized community assets.
The report uses case studies to explore placemaking in four different Legacy City settings: downtowns, anchor districts, neighborhoods and corridors/trails. Featured placemaking sites are: Over the Rhine in Cincinnati, Ohio; Midtown, the Georgia Street Community Collective, and Clark Park in Detroit, Michigan; Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, New York; and the waterfront development and associated trail system in Pittsburgh, PA.
Placemaking in Legacy Cities: Opportunities and Good Practicesexamines how placemaking can be adapted to these settings, which often include high vacancy rates, a shrinking property tax base, and other challenges that differ from those of cities experiencing high growth rates and development pressures. New Solutions conducted all research and writing for the report, which can be downloaded here from CCP.
New Solutions Group served as the Project Coordinator for Let’s Save Michigan, a project of the Michigan Municipal League, from 2011-2013. Let’s Save Michigan was an effort to build widespread support for policies that benefit Michigan’s cities and the communities, residents, businesses, and cultural institutions they encompass. In addition to general management of the social media activities of Let’s Save Michigan, New Solutions hosted “twitter town halls” on transportation policy in Michigan and placemaking that reached over 50,000 and over 80,000 twitter feeds, respectively, and administered a public “design and build” competition. That competition, entitled “It’s About Place,” asked Michigan residents to submit designs for “placemaking” projects (high quality spaces that engage the public). Through this competition, Let’s Save Michigan garnered nearly 50 submissions and saw the online engagement of over 15,000 residents.
New Solutions grew the twitter follower list of Let’s Save Michigan by over 83% during its management, and received significant earned media.
From 2009-2012, New Solutions provided the staffing to the Michigan Foreclosure Task Force (MFTF) coordinated by the Community Economic Development Association of Michigan (CEDAM)–the state trade association for community development. MFTF consisted of nearly 200 member organizations including nonprofit housing counseling agencies, banks, legal services organizations, community development corporations, local units of government, and other statewide advocacy organizations. The Task Force provided state policy advocacy, information, training, and awareness about Michigan’s foreclosure crisis.
In addition to expanding the resources to assist local communities and organizations to attack this issue, the Task Force pioneered the Michigan Foreclosure Corps, an innovative Americorps program that connected 80 Americorps members with nonprofit housing counseling organizations across the state to assist these organizations in serving Michigan residents facing foreclosure and building awareness of government resources and free counseling and legal services. Collectively, the Michigan Foreclosure Corps has helped thousands of Michigan homeowners.
A 2011 project for the Community Economic Development Association of Michigan (CEDAM) included a six-month long strategic planning effort for the Michigan Earned Income Credit Coalition (which CEDAM inherited as administrator after funding for the previous administrative system was cut). For MEIC, New Solutions facilitated a series of coalition meetings resulting in a new mission and vision, performed one-on-one meetings with coalition members, performed substantial best practice research on similar organizations around the country, and recommended a structure, committees, and a five-year workplan and budget for advancing the coalition’s goals.
New Solutions also facilitated some of the initial committee work, which informed a well-developed workplan that CEDAM is currently implementing. Since our work was completed in December 2011 and based on that work, CEDAM was able to secure additional operational funding to support MEIC.
From September 2011 to September 2012, New Solutions served as the Interim Director for the Community Development Advocates of Detroit (CDAD). In this role, New Solutions reported to CDAD’s Board of Directors, while also facilitating the engagement of some 50 nonprofit directors and community leadersto ensure collaboration and collective movement forward. New Solutions partners each “staffed” different CDAD committees to ensure accountability and efficiency.
In under a year, our team developed budgets, memberships lists, a website, and email lists where none existed; engaged in fund development planning and fundraising—building the resources to support four FTEs from a point where there virtually were no resources; expanded the membership in both number and type of organizations; drove forward numerous strategic partnerships; and implemented a broad communications strategy (including the launch of a new website, new email newsletter list, and social media accounts).
New Solutions also helped improve CDAD’s relationship with other entities and initiatives (such as the Detroit Works Project, as well as the Community Economic Development Association of Michigan), and facilitated the development of a new mission, vision, and workplan.
