A partnership in Jacksonville was recognized as a national model, receiving the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary’s Award for Public-Philanthropic Partnerships on June 14.
The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida was honored at the Council on Foundations’ annual conference in Denver for helping to establish the Office of Strategic Partnerships in the Jacksonville Mayor’s Office in 2016.
The award is presented annually to recognize excellence in partnerships that have transformed the relationship between the public and philanthropic sectors and led to measurable benefits for local communities.
Community Foundation Senior Vice President of Programs and Initiatives Kathleen Shaw and Dawn Lockhart, the city’s director of strategic partnerships, accepted the award.
“The city has embraced this position as an essential tool to foster collaboration with the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors. I especially want to express my gratitude to Dawn Lockhart, whose leadership has led to a measurable, positive impact in the community. She has exceeded our expectations for what we hoped to see when we championed the creation of this role,” Shaw said in a news release.
In 2015, Jacksonville became the first city in the Southeast to create a high-level city position to facilitate collaboration between the public sector, philanthropy, nonprofits and the business community.
In 2016, the first director, Lockhart, was hired. In 2019, the city fully funded the role and expanded the office with a second full-time staff position.
The Office of Strategic Partnerships has worked on quality-of-life issues related to economic growth, health, disaster resilience and housing access.
Jacksonville has decreased homelessness by 39% since 2015 through collaboration led by the Office of Strategic Partnerships among frontline service providers, philanthropy and the public sector.
The Office of Strategic Partnerships facilitated a network of local leaders to boost participation in the 2020 U.S. Census, leading to an increase of 4.5% in self-response from 2010 and increasing Jacksonville’s participation ranking among Florida’s 67 counties from No. 22 to No. 11.
Jacksonville responded collaboratively to the COVID-19 pandemic. The First Coast Relief Fund pooled support from the city and private donors to award $5.4 million to 112 organizations for coronavirus response and recovery.
“The Office of Strategic Partnerships has been essential to our work providing housing and health care to people who are homeless in Jacksonville. Through COVID, hurricanes, downtown development and more, Dawn Lockhart has helped connect us with resources and align our efforts with others’ to improve the quality of the services provided by the nonprofit sector,” Cindy Funkhouser, president and CEO of Sulzbacher, said in the release.
Private funders of the position include individual philanthropists as well as The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida, the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, the Jacksonville Jaguars Foundation and United Way of Northeast Florida.
The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida is the state’s oldest and largest community foundation. Established in 1964, the foundation has made more than $695 million in grants since its inception and manages philanthropic assets that surpassed $630 million at its 2021 peak.