The Washington Post: Bloomberg to give $42 million to help cities do more with data
April 20, 2015
Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable arm of former New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, is making a big bet that it can accelerate that process. It will announce on Monday that it is spending $42 million to create the What Works Cities Initiative, which is aimed at helping 100 mid-size cities make better use of data and evidence in their policymaking.
Read morePolitico: Michael Bloomberg: Philanthropy should ’embolden government’
April 6, 2015
Michael Bloomberg, who has become one of the world’s most ambitious philanthropists since leaving the New York mayor’s office last year, says modern philanthropies should work with governments to encourage them to experiment and take risks that they can’t or won’t take on their own.
Codifying his philanthropic principles for the first time in an “Annual Letter on Philanthropy” to be released Monday, Bloomberg writes: “[S]ome still see philanthropy as an alternative to government. I see it as a way to embolden government.”
Read moreGoverning: How Bloomberg’s Still Changing the Way Cities Operate
March 30, 2015
The most consequential of Landrieu’s decisions was to apply for a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, which was offering several million dollars each to cities willing to create an “innovation team” of in-house consultants that would apply data-oriented problem-solving to urban challenges. The team members — some were longtime public employees and others came from the private sector — would be sent to troubled city agencies. The premise behind the Bloomberg grants was that a team from the mayor’s office could make government more effective at relatively little cost by teaching public employees how to be more collaborative, strategic and focused on measurable results. Unlike most foundation grants, this money wasn’t tied to a specific policy area. Its sole mission was to stimulate innovative management practices.
Read moreThe Wall Street Journal: Michael Bloomberg Backs Health-Data Push
March 22, 2015
Bloomberg Philanthropies, the billionaire entrepreneur’s philanthropic foundation, and the Australian government are launching a $100 million, four-year effort to help 20 African, Southeast Asian and Latin American countries learn more about the lives and deaths of their peoples. The initiative will pay for new tools and systems to improve birth- and death-registration systems and help the countries gather more information on risk factors for premature deaths.
Read moreThe New York Times: Climate Change’s Bottom Line
February 3, 2015
In May 2014, the committee members gathered at the Bloomberg Philanthropies offices in Manhattan to hear two of the authors commissioned by the Rhodium Group — Robert E. Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University, and Solomon M. Hsiang, an economic policy researcher at the University of California, Berkeley — present their findings. Among their conclusions if the status quo persisted: Climate change would increase energy demand in Texas by between 3.4 and 9.2 percent by midcentury. Crop yields in Missouri and Illinois would face a 15 percent decline over the next 25 years. And in the Northeast, annual property damage from severe storms — from hurricanes to blizzards — would likely increase $11.1 billion, to a total of $15.8 billion by the end of the century.
Read moreThe New York Times: For States, $48 Million to Help Cut Emissions
January 21, 2015
Two charitable groups will spend $48 million over the next three years to help states figure out how to reduce emissions from electricity production, an effort to seize the possibilities that are opening up as the cost of clean power falls.
The plan is to be announced Wednesday morning in New York. Half the money will come from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization set up by Michael R. Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City, and half will come from Mark Heising and Elizabeth Simons, a California couple who have taken a strong interest in reducing the risks of climate change.
Read moreThe New Yorker: The Talking Cure
January 12, 2015
In 2012, the mayor of Providence, Angel Taveras, heard about the Mayors Challenge, a new competition being offered to cities that proposed a bold idea for making urban life better. The prize was to be given by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the foundation started by Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, on the premise that cities are “the new laboratories of democracy.” The city that won the grand prize would receive five million dollars to realize its project, and four other cities would be given a million each. As Taveras recalled, “They announced that challenge on Twitter, and right away I said, ‘We’re going to go for it.’ And I didn’t know exactly what it would be at the time, but I knew it was going to be on early-childhood education.”
Read moreInside Philanthropy: Who’s Empowering Wonks to Fuel Economic Growth in American Cities?
January 8, 2015
Bloomberg Philanthropies made our list of most interesting foundations in 2014 because of its wide range of huge gifts, signaling ways the foundation may be forging new giving paths in Michael Bloomberg’s first year outside of the mayor’s office. But there’s one interesting initiative at BP we’ve haven’t talked about much that’s been getting big funding and spreading to new areas: Bloomberg’s Innovation Teams.
This initiative is mainly associated with Mike Bloomberg’s wonky obsession with making government more efficient. But it also offers insights into how one of America’s top funders aims to foster economic growth and job creation in U.S. cities, a challenge which has confounded many foundations and yet is attracting new energy amid a growing focus on urban renewal.
Read moreFortune: Inside a NYC museum’s radical $81 million reboot
December 16, 2014
Take, for instance, the critical role played by Bloomberg Philanthropies in helping to finance the digital aspects of the renovation.
“When I first went to them, the conversations weren’t about money,” Baumann recalls. “They would say to me, ‘Caroline, this is the future of museums, so of course we’re interested. The money came later, but they have been partners from the start.”
Read moreCNN: Michael Bloomberg: Cities drive innovation
December 15, 2014
More and more cities are becoming engines of policy innovation, searching for bold new solutions to tough problems that Washington has failed to address. Coming up with innovative new ideas requires creative thinking based on rigorous data analysis. And then, once the best ideas are selected, the hard work begins — implementing them.
Successful innovation depends as much on the ability to generate ideas as it does the capacity to execute them. The trouble is, many mayors have small staffs who are already stretched thin just keeping the trains running on time. It is often impossible for them to devote the kind of time and energy that is necessary to research, develop and implement innovative new policies.
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