Our Values

Living Cities’ core values are fundamental to our success and act as light posts that help us stay on track and achieve our mission.

Our core values are collaboration, innovation, leadership, impact, and racial equity and inclusion. These organizational values guide our everyday decisions about how, why and what we do.

Values that are Fundamental to Our Success

Collaboration

As a partnership of foundations and financial institutions, collaboration is at the core of our work. We believe that respect, diverse perspectives, power-sharing, and the open exchange of ideas among varied partners will lead to the structural changes necessary to close racial income and wealth gaps.

Innovation

Changing broken systems and closing racial gaps requires disrupting the status quo and elevating and sustaining successful ideas from communities, while recognizing the value in fresh approaches to old problems. We aim to take risks and test novel solutions in service of economic opportunity for all.

Leadership

We continually ask difficult questions, engage in uncomfortable conversations, challenge obsolete assumptions, and support others to do the same in an effort to close racial gaps – in our institutions and across systems. And we not only strive to lead by example, but also learn from the labor of those who came before us and those who continue to do the work of fostering a more just and equitable country.

Impact

We are committed to the economic security of all people in U.S. cities by undoing racist systems that create disparities for people of color. Through a combination of race-centered approaches and a results focus, we hold ourselves accountable to this commitment and are intentionally self-reflective as we work to continuously improve.

Racial Equity and Inclusion

Racism is at the root of so many of the problems we are trying to solve, so addressing racism must be squarely at the center of how we work. We rely on each other to hold the organization accountable to moving the needle on racial equity and inclusion by living the following cultural norms: work to understand history and the ongoing legacy of racism, interrogate our own biases, extend mutual acknowledgment and respect, challenge damaging power norms, be open to vulnerability and risk.

Get Updates

We want to stay in touch with you! Sign up for our email list to receive updates on the progress we’re making with our network of partners, as well as helpful resources and blog posts.

Name