Opportunity Collaboratives, or hubs, are innovative initiatives designed to revitalize distressed communities by centralizing services and resources. This approach focuses on leveraging existing nonprofit and government resources efficiently, ensuring services are located where they are most needed, and scaling them to match community needs. This article explores how the Insight Strategic Concepts®’ (ISC) and OBE Advisors LLC process works, its principles, and its potential to universally help communities achieve prosperity.

Approximately 16 million properties in the United States are considered vacant and abandoned, often indicative of blighted or distressed real estate. This figure represents about 11% of the total housing inventory, highlighting a substantial challenge for community revitalization. Given that 83% of the U.S. population resides in urban areas, it is estimated that around 13.3 million of these properties are located in urban or more populated regions, presenting significant opportunities for revitalizing downtowns to foster prosperous communities.

Kenosha Innovation Neighborhood (KIN) located on the 107-acre former Chrysler Engine Plant site, has a specific focus on fostering neighborhood opportunities in education, workforce training, entrepreneurial development, and job placement. KIN will be centered around connecting Kenosha residents to opportunities in high-growth digital, and science technology, engineering, and math (STEM) occupations.

NWI Works in Northwest Indiana is critical to workforce development because of its local focus, training programs, job placement services, support for diverse populations, economic impact, and partnerships with key stakeholders. By investing in NWI Works, the region can build a stronger, more skilled workforce that drives economic growth and prosperity for years to come.

Approximately $30 million has been allocated to fund the Tolleston Opportunity Campus in Gary, Indiana. The Tolleston Opportunity Campus will establish a convenient, visible, and inviting “front door” to a wide range of opportunities that are easily accessed through a central location. The project will encompass resources of the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Northwest Indiana, Methodist Hospital, and the Crossroads YMCA to provide childcare, exercise classes, community programing, and health care clinic.

For more than 100 years, BakerRipley has aspired to empower our neighbors to build a more promising tomorrow for themselves and their families. This aspiration is at the heart of their purpose and work. As a community development organization, embraces the fact that everyone shares the same aspirations. Through the use of their programs, partnerships, and interventions, they provide the opportunity to optimize every Neighbor’s earning potential, learning opportunities, sense of belonging, and health and well being.

The YOU will provide a holistic approach that encompasses the entire spectrum of a child’s life; bringing together nutrition and wellness, family learning, and social interactions with neighbors and the community at large. This comprehensive focus will positively impact individual and collective community youth development.

Serious social problems such as poverty, low education levels, crime, and a host of health issues are often interrelated. They frequently reinforce and compound each other. Many organizations are addressing one or more of those issues, but typically each organization is focused on only a piece of a more complex set of problems. The public sector tends to do this through large, bureaucratic silos, while the not-for-profit sector is incredibly fragmented. Many organizations do good work. Unfortunately, though, fragmented and siloed approaches to complex problems seldom lead to lasting impacts.

Trends for almost two decades now is for most households to prefer to live where they can live, work, shop, recreate and find most of the services they require within a convenient distance – approximately 15 minutes away. Ideally, we are finding that many residents prefer the car trip to be less, and that they can access these conveniences by foot or bike in 15 minutes or less. Neighborhoods that immediately provide these everyday needed and desired amenities, we call Complete Neighborhoods.

The John Marshall Neighborhood Opportunity Hub on the eastside of Indianapolis solves a list of community needs with private sector collaboration at a abandoned high school in one of the city’s most highly populated distressed neighborhoods.

In 2017, the City of Elkhart adopted the River District Revitalization Master Plan. Developed with broad community stakeholder involvement, the plan was built on the previous decades of investment in Elkhart’s struggling Main Street. This effort shared a vision for the River District to be an expansion of downtown, as a walkable, mixed-use neighborhood redeveloped on 100-plus acres of parking lots, out lot retailers, former industrial sites, and auto-repair shops. Over 65% of the $300-plus million mixed-use development has been realized within five-years. The area continues to attract significant new private investment.  

Distressed neighborhoods often experience a steady decline in household wealth, education levels, and individual health indicators. This is not just a local phenomenon but one that carries across much of the nation. Poverty, household income, and inequality as economic indicators have been moving in a negative direction for much of the past decade for a growing number of urban and rural neighborhoods.

Most cities lack experienced leadership in change management. This, along with the resounding challenges that cities face have only compounded since the pandemic and the overall polarization and contentiousness of current times.

In this new age of a pandemic, racial tension, political divide, global power shifts, redefinition of family and individual identities, and the inequality of accessible, quality educational opportunities, how do leaders provide shared prosperity? The quest for freedom and the American Way remains much the same as our forefathers intended - through the balance of private and public partnerships.