One of Lee Fisher’s first acts as president and CEO of CEOs for Cities was to obtain permission from the dean of Cleveland State University’s Levin College of Urban Affairs to open an office there. The organization had been headquartered in Chicago ever since 1998, when it was founded as an exchange of best practices and new ideas between leaders in the nation’s municipalities.
“Mayor Richard Daley [of Chicago] was one of the co-founders and wanted the national headquarters in Chicago,” explains Fisher, a longtime Cleveland resident. But by the time he arrived in April 2011, fresh from his service as lieutenant governor and director of development in the administration of Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, Daley was no longer Chicago’s mayor. And Fisher came to believe he could run the nonprofit more effectively from a city he knew well. By late 2012, he’d rallied board support — including Chuck Ratner of Forest City Enterprises, another of CEOs for Cities’ co-founders — to relocate to Cleveland, distinguishing it as the only national nonprofit based in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame City.
“I wasn’t sure how our members would react,” the 64-year-old admits as he sits in a suite just off the Levin College of Urban Affairs’ main lobby. “But there wasn’t a single complaint from any one of our members. And we had members in 75 different cities.”
The move is only one of the changes made during Fisher’s five years helming the organization. Membership in cities from Portland, Oregon, to Pittsburgh, Milwaukee to Miami, has tripled to more than 700, a result of clarifying issues the nonprofit tackles; content provided in the form of newsletters, blogs, webinars and conferences has doubled; and an innovative dues structure and broad definition of CEO that extends far beyond that of the typical Mahogany Row inhabitant has been established.
“We believe that the new CEOs in America’s cities are change-makers regardless of their title, regardless of whether they have a corner office,” Fisher says. “As long as you are a change-maker who’s committed to the success of your city, we consider you a CEO.” He points out that the membership roster includes foundation and university leaders, entrepreneurs, bloggers, coders, architects, artists and urban planners as well as business executives, mayors and other elected public officials. “We are, I think it’s safe to say, the most diverse national urban organization in America.”
Fisher concedes that the nonprofit’s mission was once as jumbled as its membership. He’s worked to change that by spelling out the issues it addresses using the letters in the word “city.” C represents “The Connected City,” or how to connect physical, human and social resources; I stands for “The Innovative City,” or how to foster a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship; T refers to “The Talented City,” or how to develop, retain and attract talent; and Y represents “Your Distinctive City,” or how to identify and develop unique regional assets and competitive advantages.
“If you look at a city in those four different ways and you measure your progress, [if] you focus on doing not just more with less but more for those who have less, you can concoct a secret sauce that will move the needle on your city’s success,” he says.
The nonprofit also has promoted the “city cluster,” an alternative to individual and organizational membership that existed before Fisher’s tenure but wasn’t as well advertised or understood. It allows a group with a minimum of six people from a single municipality to join for $5,000, annual dues that increase with a group’s size. Aside from that, the only requirement the cluster must meet is that it is composed of people representing the public, private, nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. The purpose is to create cross-sector teams of people who may not see or talk to one another in the course of performing their normal duties.
“Each sector in each city tends to be its own audience: Mayors talk to mayors, college presidents talk to college presidents, and foundation leaders talk to foundation leaders,” Fisher observes. One of the newer perks is a national conference exclusively for cluster members.
“When I first came to CEOs for Cities, we had three or four city clusters,” Fisher says. “Today we have 27. And I’m expecting that within the next 18 months we’ll probably have 50 clusters.” He estimates that up to 50 percent of cluster members don’t pay any dues at all. “Many of our clusters are subsidized by one or two major funders,” he explains. The Indianapolis Foundation, for example, pays 90 percent of the $25,000 in annual dues for the city’s 40-member group.
Cross-sector interaction among cities has also been encouraged by the introduction of “city dividends,” incentives based on the idea that little improvements can reap big economic rewards. The first was a $1 million National Talent Dividend Prize, awarded to the city that increased its college completion rate the fastest as measured by the number of two- and four-year degrees granted in each participating metropolitan region from the beginning of 2011 to the end of 2014.
Cross-sector teams from 57 American municipalities competed in the contest, which required attending four national workshops and sharing their best strategies for success. Some of the most effective participants focused on getting adults who dropped out of college (often because of circumstances beyond their control)back into the classroom.
“Many of the business leaders instituted programs by which they would ask if there were people among their employees who had started college but hadn’t finished,” Fisher says. “They were given tuition assistance, mentorship, all ways to … make it easier for them to re-enter the world of college and to complete their degrees. That was the single most effective strategy, although every city did it differently.”
The city of Akron won the $1 million prize, which it split between collaborators in Cleveland and Youngstown as well as regional institutions of higher learning. But Fisher insists that there were no losers.
“Every single city in the competition accelerated their work, not just because there was a prize at the end of the rainbow but because they were learning from the other cities,” he says.
The next such opportunity is a healthiest cities challenge to be launched this year in partnership with a major health care foundation. It is that chance to interact with and learn from passionate people of different ages and professions that CEOs for Cities members count as their biggest benefit.
“They appreciate the fact that they don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” Fisher says.