IU College & Community Collaboration Support
Indiana University
Economic Strategy
Indiana University is the state’s flagship University with seven branch campuses, including its Main Campus in Bloomington. The Lilly Endowment created a $300 million Campus, Community, Collaboration challenge which encouraged Indiana’s institutions of higher education to work directly with community stakeholders to envision and jointly undertake significant community development efforts, creating more vibrant places to live, learn, work, and play. IU was eligible for up to three awards of $25 million in match funding, a transformational opportunity to improve quality of life in the campus communities.
Fourth Economy was hired to help the campuses engage with their communities and partners to identify meaningful projects and develop proposals.
Fourth Economy used our engagement toolkit to bring people together, working to build an understanding among campus leadership about the funding opportunity and its potential impacts. We developed campus work plans to facilitate engagement with civic, business, and economic development leaders to identify key challenges, brainstorm solutions, and secure match funding for potential proposals.
For all seven campuses, we prepared an assessment of economic, social, and quality of life disparities, including analysis of local and regional economic and demographic data, confidential stakeholder interviews with key community partners and potential project holders, and hosting Build Sessions to brainstorm potential investment and project opportunities. We worked with three campuses that ultimately submitted proposals, assisting each with market and feasibility assessments and match funding identification to support their proposal development.
All seven campuses formed an Engagement Committee that included members of their broader community, including local employers, business leaders, and nonprofits, a great foundation for ongoing collaboration for future community engagement and relationship building. The three proposals submitted for the first round of the program in September 2023 were not awarded funds, but were allowed to revise their submissions and re-submit in 2024. Indiana University in Bloomington was ultimately awarded a $16 million grant to fund redevelopment of a former industrial area into an innovation district less than one mile from the Bloomington campus.
Location
Indiana