To ensure inclusive, long-term, and community-driven economic growth, each city formed a cross-sectoral steering committee made up of local business ecosystem actors and led by an anchor partner. With an intimate understanding of their city’s unique competitive advantages and the needs of its residents, the steering committee focuses on three main goals: crafting an overarching vision for inclusive growth, identifying strategies and investments needed to advance this vision, and developing an inclusive and accountable plan of action. After 15 months, our six inaugural cities have begun implementing strategies in access to capital, ecosystem strengthening, inclusive procurement, and commercial corridor revitalization.

The City Action Lab serves as the convening and technical assistance arm for each committee, ensuring alignment around the vision and bringing in other local and national voices to build a large coalition for implementation. Our capacity-building strategy follows these three pillars:

Procurement

The Procurement Playbooks were action research initiatives undertaken in partnership with Drexel University’s Nowak Metro Finance Lab to drive systems change in the public procurement landscape and accelerate the growth of Latino- and Black-owned businesses. The current influx of federal funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, among others, provides an opportunity to scale minority business enterprises (MBEs) by opening up local procurement opportunities. However, current government procurement systems are fragmented and complex, forming significant barriers to entry for small minority businesses. This initiative aimed to identify challenges and gaps in public procurement systems, offer stakeholder-tested solutions, and support local partners in their initial implementation. The goal was to create a market where small minority businesses can scale and build wealth for their communities.

The Procurement Playbooks were comprehensive research initiatives performed in three phases: diagnose challenges, develop solutions, and collaborate on implementation. They attempted to highlight best practices on both the supply and demand sides of public spending procurement to increase the utilization of small minority businesses in specific ways that lead to a measurable economic impact in underinvested communities. Additionally, the playbooks augmented the depth of understanding of the field among local decision-makers and equipped them with policy tools for transformative policy and institutional interventions.

These playbooks were applied and tested in two communities, first San Antonio and then El Paso. The results were the creation of two customized initiatives – Supply SA and Supply El Paso- that are now at different stages of implementation. The San Antonio and El Paso Playbooks have been embraced and stewarded by public, private, and civic leaders who have begun to practice a form of radical collaboration in the service of increasing the local share of public procurement.

Supply San Antonio

Supply El Paso

Investment Playbooks

The federal government is offering considerable funding to assist communities as they rebuild their economies in the aftermath of the pandemic. However, it is the responsibility of local stakeholders to ensure that these myriad funding opportunities result in an authentic and transformative outcome for their city and its residents.

Aspen Latinos, in partnership with Drexel University’s Nowak Metro Finance Lab, works with cities to produce Investment Playbooks that help local stakeholders create a comprehensive and integrated revitalization plan to catalyze community wealth building. The playbook serves as a blueprint for local business ecosystems to itemize concrete, costed-out projects and align them with federal, state, and private capital investments that can support their implementation.

San Bernardino Investment Playbook