MOBILE, Alabama – City Hall is set to receive a multimillion-dollar boost after Mobile was chosen as one of 14 cities around the world, and one of 12 in the United States, to receive a Bloomberg Philanthropies grant aimed at building a dedicated municipal innovation team.
The grant, expected to total around $1.65 million spread over three years, will allow the city to hire and fund a small team of staff dedicated to tackling persistent social and economic challenges using data-driven methods. Mayor Sandy Stimpson referenced the pending award as “transformational” during a December city council and executive staff retreat, before the source and scope of the funding had been publicly confirmed. A spokesman for the mayor’s office later confirmed the total figure once the announcement became official.
The funding comes from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable foundation established by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, as part of an expansion of its “i-team” program. Twelve U.S. cities in this funding round are splitting a combined $45 million, alongside two international cities added to the program for the first time. Mobile was one of just five U.S. recipients whose funding is specifically earmarked for economic development initiatives, a group that also includes Albuquerque, Long Beach, Los Angeles and Seattle.
According to Bloomberg Philanthropies, cities were selected from a pool of more than 30 applicants that each had populations of at least 100,000 residents and mayors with at least two years remaining in their terms. The innovation teams are designed to give mayors a dedicated internal unit that can identify problems, design new interventions, build partnerships across city departments and outside organizations, and track measurable outcomes over time.
A Bloomberg Philanthropies official overseeing the foundation’s government innovation programs said the initiative exists because city halls often lack reliable tools for pursuing meaningful innovation, particularly as municipal budgets face growing constraints. The foundation cited earlier rounds of i-team grants, first awarded in 2011 to cities including Atlanta, Chicago, Louisville, Memphis and New Orleans, as evidence the model can produce results. Those cities reported outcomes such as reduced retail vacancies, fewer unnecessary ambulance trips to emergency rooms, faster restaurant licensing and reduced homelessness following the creation of their own innovation teams.
For Mobile, the grant arrives at a time when city leadership has been emphasizing long-range planning and economic development as priorities heading into the new year. City officials have not yet detailed exactly which local challenges the new innovation team will target first, but the funding is expected to support staffing and program development over the full three-year grant period.
City leaders have signaled that more details on staffing and specific project priorities for the innovation team are expected to follow as the grant funding is formally implemented in the coming months.