ABOUT ME
Steve Dubb has spent over a decade working on community economic development strategy. Steve currently works as a senior editor for Nonprofit Quarterly (NPQ), where he writes, curates and edits content for the organization's many media channels, with a focus on community wealth building and community economic. Before that, Steve worked as a consultant for a year, working for a range of clients including Campus Compact, Democracy Collaborative, economist Micheal Shuman, Rising Tide Capital and Strong City Baltimore. Prior to that, for twelve years, from 2004 to 2016, Steve worked in various roles at The Democracy Collaborative. Steve also is engaged in a range of volunteer work, serving on the boards of Cooperation Works!, the Center for Community-Based Enterprise (C2BE) in Detroit, and the Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive (COFED) and is on the advisory board of North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO). In his work, Steve strives to support community-based business to build wealth in low-income communities and communities of color.
PROJECT INTERESTS
Develop community wealth building strategies
Help city governments, foundations, institutions, and community groups work together to develop ecosystems that support worker cooperatives, social enterprises, community land trusts, employee-owned companies, and related businesses that generate living wage jobs and build community-based economic institutions that foster economic self sufficiency and generate ongoing resources for reinvestment in low-income communities.
Help Health Care Systems Develop Strategies that Address Social Determinants of Health
Assist hospitals and health systems that are seeking to more effectively address the social determinants of health that drive so many health outcomes to develop an anchor mission that helps them align their procurement, community engagement, investment, and employment systems to be more effective community partners.
Conduct Community-Based Market Feasibility Studies
Using interviews and secondary data, identify sourcing needs of large community-based employers anchor institutions—with an eye toward identify ways to leverage their purchasing strength to build community wealth while simultaneously meeting institutional mission and supply chain goals. Strategies employed might include identifying investments to make in new community-owned businesses and/or better supporting existing businesses in low-income neighborhoods
Facilitate Learning Communities
Work with groups of like institutions (ranging from community-based organizations to large institutions like universities) to develop effective peer-to-peer learning networks that foster sharing of best practices and community building. This can involve a range of work from curriculum development to individual organization advising and coaching.
Assist Universities Develop Place-Based Strategies
This work involves helping universities identify how, given an institution's unique assets (which vary greatly depending on type of university), how it can best employ those assets to pursue an anchor institution mission to improve their surrounding communities in cooperation with community partners to positively impact the welfare of low-income residents.
Advise Philanthropic Organizations
Advise foundations regarding how to most effectively employ their assets to meet their goals. This can include developing topic-based strategy documents that advise regarding industry best practices (for example, a scan of best practices on impact investing), helping organize foundation community wealth building grant-making strategy, and/or working to provide technical assistance and support foundation-funded grantee organizations.