Of philanthropic endeavours in the U.S. municipal space in recent years, there is perhaps no cross-sector initiative that has built a larger geographic footprint than What Works Cities, a Bloomberg Philanthropies-funded program that started with a handful of participating mid-size cities in April 2015 and plans to grow to include 100 participating cities by the end of this year.
What Works Cities, which is managed by Results for America in collaboration with a team of other partner organizations, can point to a wide array of results in performance management, transparency, access to data and the adoption of best practices and data-driven decisionmaking strategies.
Since the inception of What Works Cities more than two years ago, Route Fifty has tracked the growth of the network and the work that’s been done with program partners, including the Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University, the Government Performance Lab at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, the Sunlight Foundation and the Behavioral Insights Team.