Michael Bloomberg is spinning off one of his foundation’s programs into a stand-alone nonprofit that will expand its efforts to help mayors across the nation put volunteers to work on specific challenges, such as fighting obesity or beautifying neighborhoods.
The group, Cities of Service, will be led by one of the former New York City mayor’s government employees and is the second organization focused on cities that Mr. Bloomberg has started since leaving office. The first, Bloomberg Associates, is a consulting organization that will provide free advice to cities.
Bloomberg Philanthropies is providing a $4.6-million grant to Cities of Service to cover its operating expenses for three years as the new executive director, Myung Lee, hires a staff of six to eight people and finds a new office.
Since Mr. Bloomberg started Cities of Service with 16 other mayors in 2009, the program has grown into a bipartisan coalition of 170 mayors.
The program—funded primarily by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Rockefeller Foundation—has awarded $6.5-million in grants to more than 50 cities to hire chief service officers, develop approaches to encourage community service, or enlist volunteers to focus on ways to improve education, help young people and veterans, promote health and sustainability, revitalize neighborhoods, and improve local safety and preparedness for disasters.
Blueprints for Programs
Cities of Service has produced 11 detailed blueprints that offer advice on how to start programs dealing with such issues. They include Operation Integration, a plan for recruiting veterans as volunteers to help fellow veterans adjust to civilian life; Love Your Block, a plan to clean up alleys, streets, and yards; and Graduation Coaches, a plan for training volunteers to help students stay in school.
“It’s made a huge change in the three-plus years that we’ve been involved with Cities of Service,” said Scott Smith, mayor of Mesa, Ariz.
Last year nearly 5,200 volunteers in Mr. Smith’s program participated in Love Your Block efforts that served 11,000 residents with debris removal, painting, and other neighborhood-revitalization efforts.
Mr. Smith is one of the 25 mayors who decided to keep paying for chief service officers out of their own budgets after foundation grants for the positions ran out. The job coordinates volunteer efforts among city agencies, neighborhood groups, nonprofits, and local businesses.
Fighting Obesity
Putting a chief service officer position in the mayor’s office gets all participants moving faster, said Mark Stodola, mayor of Little Rock, Ark.
Little Rock won a $200,000 two-year grant in 2010 to pay for a chief service officer to lead Little Rock Serves. He also funded the position once the grant ran out last year.
“[The grant] was a great stimulus to get this off the ground,” Mr. Stodola said. “We wouldn’t have been able to do it without that.”
Little Rock focused its volunteer efforts on fighting obesity with the Love Your School Childhood Obesity Intervention, which taught healthy exercise and eating habits to elementary-school students in poor neighborhoods. It started with 260 students in two schools and has been expanded to eight elementary schools serving 3,000 students.
All of the programs funded by Cities of Service require reports of results.
In the two-school pilot, students lost body fat and increased test scores, the mayor said.
The program inspired even the mayor to lose weight: “I’ve dropped 35 to 40 pounds,” he said.
Ms. Lee is scheduled to start by the end of February, and Cities of Service is expected to be operating on its own by March.
Ms. Lee had been overseeing the division of early care and education at the New York City Administration for Children’s Services. Before that, she was executive director for the mid-Atlantic office of Jumpstart for Children, which pairs adult volunteer tutors with low-income children. She also once worked at the Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency that administers AmeriCorps volunteers.